Great Throughts Treasury

"An organism lives by growth, by processes of change, by powers of generation, but its interfusion with other organisms and with its environment, also by its `mental state’ in which is vested the unifying principles pervading all its parts and subdivisions, rising in man to the conscious mental state, to self-awareness, and with this self-awareness to advance further by directed effort." - L. Francis Edmunds

"The old view that the principles of right and wrong are immutable and eternal is no longer tenable. The moral world is as little exempt as the physical world from the law of ceaseless change, of perpetual flux." - James Frazer, aka James George Frazer

"God is no dictator. He leaves us the freedom to master ourselves." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

"Character is distilled out of our daily confrontation with temptation, out of our regular response to the call of duty. It is formed as we learn to cherish principles and to submit to self-discipline. Character is the sum total of all the little decisions, the small deeds, the daily reactions to the choices that confront us. Character is not obtained instantly. We have to mold and hammer and forge ourselves into character. It is a distant goal to which there is no shortcut." - Sidney Greenberg

"When it is said and done, life’s journey isn’t about humanity in general, or even the person next door. It’s about you and me. Our individual lives are the focus, a picture framed by our birth and death. Our personal goals and principles are under scrutiny; our personal success or failure is in the balance." - Os Guiness

"International relations are governed by interests, not by moral principles." - B. H. Liddell Hart, fully Captain B. H. Liddell

"The same principles [that apply in polytheism] naturally deify mortals, superior in power, courage, or understanding, and produce hero-worship." - David Hume

"Purity and stillness are the correct principles for mankind." - Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze

"Important principles may, and must, be inflexible." - Abraham Lincoln

"It is loyalty to great ends, even though forced to combine the small and opposing motives of selfish men to accomplish them; it is the anchored cling to solid principles of duty and action, which knows how to swing with the tide, but is never carried away by it – that we demand in public men, and not sameness of policy, or a conscientious persistency in what is impracticable." - James Russell Lowell

"Policies are many, principles are few. Policies will change, principles never do." - John C. Maxwell

"If you want to find out how well you are living up to your spiritual values and higher principles, pay close attention to how you behave in the middle of an argument or a tense moment involving someone you live with, work with, or are in love with." - Mordecai Finley

"Power can be invested with a sense of direction only by moral principles. It is the function of morality to command the use of power, to forbid it, to limit it." - John Courtney Murray

"I question whether God himself would wish me to hide behind the principles of non-violence while innocent people were being slaughtered." - Abel Tendekayi Muzorewa

"Human morality is composed of four interconnecting principles: a genetic predisposition toward survival, the neural development of the brain, a social imperative toward group cohesion, and a cognitive propensity to make distinctions between right and wrong and good and evil. Our moral continuum appears to be strongly influenced by the degrees of connectedness we feel with others; the more connected we feel, the more we act with generosity, compassion and fairness." - Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman

"Man cannot make principles; he can only discover them." - Thomas Paine

"The harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. I love the man that can smile in trouble, that can gather strength from distress and grow brave by reflection. 'Tis the business of little minds to shrink; but he whose heart is firm, and whose conscience approves his conduct, will pursue his principles unto death." - Thomas Paine

"All the great things of humanity have been accomplished in the name of absolute principles." - Ernest Renan, aka Joseph Ernest Renan

"In God’s Kingdom the corrupting principles of domination and subjugation will be overcome. People will no longer model social or religious relationships; or even relationships to God after the sort of power that reduces others to servility. Rather they will discover a new kind of power, a power exercised through service, which empowers the disinherited and brings all to a new relationship of mutual enhancement." - Rosemary Radford Ruether

"Principles have no real force except when one is well-fed." - Seneca the Younger, aka Seneca or Lucius Annaeus Seneca NULL

"Our strategy is “pit one against ten,” and our tactics are “pit ten against one” – This is one of our fundamental principles for gaining mastery over the enemy." - Mao Tse-tung, alternatively Zedong, Ze dong, aka Chairman Mao

"One hundred volumes of international law are not the equal of a few cannons; a handful of treaties are not worth a basket of gunpowder. Cannon and gunpowder are not aids for the enforcement of given moral principles, they are implements for the creation of morality where none exists." - Fukuzawa Yukichi

"Liberty, equality - bad principles! The only true principle for humanity is justice; and justice to the feeble is protection and kindness." -

"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule, the majority are wrong, the minority are right." -

"A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both." -

"Whenever two good people argue over principles, they are both right." -

"The Ethics and equity and the principles of justice do not change with the calendar." -

"The Ten Commandments, and religious principles in general, simply tell you what to do. Learning to think morally (i.e., philosophically) helps you to discover both what to do, and why." - Peter B. Raabe

"It is easy to be tolerant of the principles of other people if you have none of your own." - Herbert Louis Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel

"Circumstances should never alter principles." -

"It is personalities, not principles, that move the age." -

"True character arises from a deeper well than religion. It is the internalization of moral principles of a society, augmented by those tenets personally chosen by the individual, strong enough to endure through trials of solitude and adversity. The principles are fitted together into what we call integrity, literally the integrated self, wherein personal decisions feel good and true. Character is in turn the enduring source of virtue. It stands by itself and excites admiration in others." -

"It is often easier to fight for principles than to live up to them." - Adlai Ewing Stevenson

"It is often easier to fight for principles than to live up to them." -

"It is often easier to fight for principles than to live up to them." -

"We know that we live in contradiction, but that we must refuse this contradiction and do what is needed to reduce it. Our task as men is to find those few first principles that will calm the infinite anguish of free souls. We must stitch up what has been torn apart, render justice in the world which is so obviously unjust, and make happiness meaningful for nations poisoned by the misery of this century." - Albert Camus

"We know that we live in contradiction, but that we must refuse this contradiction and do what is needed to reduce it. Our task as men is to find those few first principles that will calm the infinite anguish of free souls. We must stitch up what has been torn apart, render justice in the world which is so obviously unjust, and make happiness meaningful for nations poisoned by the misery of this century." -

"One of the most ordinary weakness of the human intellect is to seek reconcile contrary principles, and to purchase peace at the expense of logic." - Alexis de Tocqueville, Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville

"It is easier to fight for one's principles than to live up to them." - Alfred Adler

"Not by the Creed but by the Deed." - Alfred Adler

"Religion will not regain its old power until it can face change in the same spirit as does science. Its principles may be eternal, but the expression of those principles requires continual development." - Alfred North Whitehead

"Lack of experience diminishes our power of taking a comprehensive view of the admitted facts. Hence those who dwell in intimate association with nature and its phenomena grow more and more able to formulate, as the foundation of their theories, principles such as to admit of a wide and coherent development: while those whom devotion to abstract discussions has rendered unobservant of the facts are too ready to dogmatize on the basis of a few observations." - Aristotle NULL

"The pursuit of science in itself is never materialistic. It is a search for the principles of law and order in the universe, and as such an essentially religious endeavor." - Arthur Koestler

"If you would keep young and happy, be good; live a high moral life; practice the principles of the brotherhood of man; send out good thoughts to all, and think evil of no man. This is in obedience to the great natural law; to live otherwise is to break this great Divine law. Other things being equal, it is the cleanest, purest minds that live long and are happy. The man who is growing and developing intellectually does not grow old like the man who has stopped advancing, but when ambition, aspirations and ideals halt, old age begins." - Author Unknown NULL

"Among politicians the esteem of religion is profitable; the principles of it are troublesome." - Benjamin Whichcote

"Custom should be followed only because it is custom, and not because it is reasonable or just. But people follow it for this sole reason, that they think it just. Otherwise they would follow it no longer, although it were the custom; for they will only submit to reason or justice. Custom without this would pass for tyranny; but the sovereignty of reason and justice is no more tyrannical than that of desire. They are principles natural to man." - Blaise Pascal

"We know truth, not only by reason, but also by the heart, and it is from this last that we know first principles; and reason, which has nothing to do with it, tries in vain to combat them. The skeptics who desire truth alone labor in vain." - Blaise Pascal

"If we subject everything to reason, our religion will have nothing mysterious or supernatural. If we violate the principles of reason, our religion will be absurd and ridiculous." - Blaise Pascal

"It is certain that the soul is either mortal or immortal. The decision of this question must make a total difference in the principles of morals. Yet philosophers have arranged their moral system entirely independent of this. What an extraordinary blindness!" - Blaise Pascal

"Nature imitates herself. A grain thrown into good ground brings forth fruit; a principle thrown into a good mind brings forth fruit. Everything is created and conducted by the same Master; the root, the branch, the fruits - the principles, the consequences." - Blaise Pascal