Great Throughts Treasury

"We can surely no longer pretend that our children are growing up into a peaceful, secure, and civilized world. We've come to the point where it's irresponsible to try to protect them from the irrational world they will have to live in when they grow up. The children themselves haven't yet isolated themselves by selfishness and indifference; they do not fall easily into the error of despair; they are considerably braver than most grownups. Our responsibility to them is not to pretend that if we don't look, evil will go away, but to give them weapons against it." - Madeleine L’Engle

"The US government has given over $200 billion dollars in military aid to some eighty nations since World War II. US weapons sales abroad have grown to about $10 billion a year and compose about 70 percent of all arms sold on the international marketplace. Two million foreign troops and hundreds of thousands of foreign police and paramilitary have been trained, equipped, and financed by the United States. Their purpose has not been to defend their countries from outside invasion but to protect foreign investors and the ruling elites of the recipient nations from their own potentially rebellious populations." - Michael Parenti

"Have we not been able to cross the threshold of mistrust, though mistrust has not completely disappeared? Has not the political thinking in the world changed substantially? Does not most of the world community already regard weapons of mass destruction as unacceptable for achieving political objectives?" - Mikhail Gorbachev, fully Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev

"Budo is not a means of felling the opponent by force or by lethal weapons. Neither is it intended to lead the world to destruction by arms and other illegitimate means. True Budo calls for bringing the inner energy of the universe in order, protecting the peace of the world , as well as preserving, everything in nature in its right form. If your opponent tries to pull you, let him pull. Don't pull against him; pull in unison with him. Aikido does not rely on weapons or brute force to succeed; instead we put ourselves in tune with the universe, maintain peace in our own realms, nurture life, and prevent death and destruction. The true meaning of the term "samurai" is one who serves and adheres to the power of love. " - Morihei Ueshiba

"A man who stepped quarter of a million miles in space to the moon was unable to step length, a few meters of assisted his colleagues are dying of hunger in India and other Ashakhm injustice in Jerusalem, Vietnam .. and America meets Russia to brighten up the moon and fail to meet them in the Security Council. and escape from that soul and to Atbha space universe where the laws of God to rely on accurate it is safe and easy .. A thousand times easier than observing i'tikaaf rights on the same repairs and He should work out .. but at the same time escape from man's first message on the ground... To know himself and He should work out. Thought and religion and science together make man himself... The physical science alone, without faith and without creating not only made ​​from the same arrogant and distorted deformity giant moving between planets and invent a terrible terrible weapons of mass murder by destroying the All, and then destroys himself without knowing it. " - Mustapha Mahmoud

"For comparison, there was a nation over there and all they had was a grappling hook and a line... When they found something they would have to drag it to see if it would blow up. Whereas at the other end of the spectrum, we had the remote control robot that could take pictures and has all kinds of weapons attached to keep the operator himself from having to touch it." - Paul Davies

"The twentieth century saw the greatest rate of destruction to the environment in all recorded history. It was also the bloodiest century in history. Eighty million were slaughtered from the beginning of the century through World War II; since then, more than 23 million people (mostly civilians) have been killed in more than 149 wars... For every dollar spent on U.N. peacekeeping, $2,000 is expended for war-making by member nations. Four of the five members of the U.N. Security Council, which has veto power over all U.N. resolutions, are the top weapons dealers in the world: the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Russia. " - Paul Hawken

"Out of all weapons of destruction that man invented, the word is the most frightening and powerful… Only the following items should be considered to be grave faults: not respecting another's rights; allowing oneself to be paralyzed by fear; feeling guilty; believing that one does not deserve the good or ill that happens in one's life; being a coward. We will love our enemies, but not make alliances with them. They were placed in our path in order to test our sword, and we should, out of respect for them, struggle against them. We will choose our enemies." - Paulo Coelho

"Once there was a young warrior. Her teacher told her that she had to do battle with fear. She didn’t want to do that. It seemed too aggressive; it was scary; it seemed unfriendly. But the teacher said she had to do it and gave her the instructions for the battle. The day arrived. The student warrior stood on one side, and fear stood on the other. The warrior was feeling very small, and fear was looking big and wrathful. They both had their weapons. The young warrior roused herself and went toward fear, prostrated three times, and asked, ‘May I have permission to go into battle with you?’ Fear said, ‘Thank you for showing me so much respect that you ask permission.’ Then the young warrior said, ‘How can I defeat you?’ Fear replied, ‘My weapons are that I talk fast, and I get very close to your face. Then you get completely unnerved, and you do whatever I say. If you don’t do what I tell you, I have no power. You can listen to me, and you can have respect for me. You can even be convinced by me. But if you don’t do what I say, I have no power.’ In that way, the student warrior learned how to defeat fear. " - Pema Chödrön, born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown

"Nuclear weapons are the scourge of the earth; to mine for them, manufacture them, deploy them, use them, is a curse against God, the human family, and the earth itself." - Philip Berrigan

"There are never any occasions when you need think yourself safe because you wield the weapons of Fortune: fight with your own. Fortune does not furnish arms against herself and so men equipped against their foes are unarmed against Fortune herself." - Posidonius, aka Posidonius of Rhodes or Posidonius of Apameia (meaning "of Poseidon") NULL

"A cause breaks or exalts a soldier's strength; unless that cause is just, shame will make him throw his weapons away." - Propertius, fully Sextus Propertius NULL

"In an age when immense technological advances have created lethal weapons which could be, and are, used by the powerful and the unprincipled to dominate the weak and the helpless, there is a compelling need for a closer relationship between politics and ethics at both the national and international levels. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations proclaims that 'every individual and every organ of society' should strive to promote the basic rights and freedoms to which all human beings regardless of race, nationality or religion are entitled. But as long as there are governments whose authority is founded on coercion rather than on the mandate of the people, and interest groups which place short-term profits above long-term peace and prosperity, concerted international action to protect and promote human rights will remain at best a partially realized struggle." - Daw Aung San Suu Kyi

"I have said publicly no option should be off the table, but I would certainly take nuclear weapons off the table." - Hillary Rodham Clinton

"The first step is to take weapons off the streets and to put more police on them. The Brady Bill, which my husband signed into law in 1995, imposes a 5-day waiting period for gun purchases; time enough for authorities to check out a buyer's record and for the buyer to cool down about any conflict he might have intended the gun to resolve. Since it was enacted, more than 40,000 people with criminal records have been prevented from buying guns. The 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act banned 19 types of military-style assault weapons whose only purpose is to kill people… As part of a zero tolerance policy for weapons, drugs, and other threats to the safety of teachers and students, the President signed an executive order decreeing that any student who comes to school with a gun will be expelled and punished as a condition of federal aid." - Hillary Rodham Clinton

"The first step is to take weapons off the streets and to put more police on them. 25,000 new police officers are being trained, with the goal of adding 75,000 more by the end of the decade. Taking a cue from what's worked in the past, cities are deploying officers differently, getting them out from behind desks and putting them back on the sidewalks, where they can get to know the people who live and work on the streets they patrol. They will be doing what is called community policing. The other half of community policing, of course, is the community's role. Citizens have to be active participants in crime prevention. In Houston, nearly a thousand new officers added to the city's police force since 1991 have been joined by thousands of citizen patrollers observing and reporting suspicious or criminal behavior in an anticrime campaign." - Hillary Rodham Clinton

"Doing the right things for the wrong reasons is typical of humanity. Precession — not conscious planning — provides a productive outcome for misguided political and military campaigns. Nature's long-term design intervenes to circumvent the shortsightedness of human individuals, corporations, and nations competing for a share of the economic pie. Fundamentally, political economists misassume an inadequacy of life support to exist on our planet. Humanity therefore competes militarily to see which political system... is fittest to survive. In slavish observance of this misassumption, humans devote their most costly efforts and resources to killingry — a vast arsenal of weapons skillfully designed to kill ever more people at ever-greater distances in ever-shorter periods of time while employing ever-fewer pounds of material, ergs of energy, and seconds of time per killing." - Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller

"Before the advent of the 20th century and its technology, minds bent on destruction could not have come up with the Nazi agenda, even in their wildest dreams. Past administrators simply didn't have the means. They lacked today's communication network, and had no access to automatic weapons or highly toxic poisonous gases. Tomorrow's bureaucrat would not have this problem; he is better equipped than the German Nazis. Killing is no longer as difficult as it once was." - Raul Hilberg

"Because of its increasing triviality, everyday life has gradually become our central preoccupation. No illusion, sacred or deconsecrated, collective or individual, can hide the poverty of our daily actions any longer. The enrichment of life calls inexorably for the analysis of the new forms taken by poverty, and the perfection of the old weapons of refusal." - Raoul Vaneigem

"The same people who are murdered slowly in the mechanized slaughterhouses of work are also arguing, singing, drinking, dancing, making love, holding the streets, picking up weapons and inventing a new poetry." - Raoul Vaneigem

"What we and other nuclear powers are practicing is really nuclear apartheid. A handful of nations have arrogated to themselves the right to build, deploy, and threaten to use nuclear weapons while policing the rest of the world against their production. . . . Nuclear apartheid is utopian and arrogant. It is a recipe for proliferation, a policy of disaster." -

"If you want to do evil, science provides the most powerful weapons to do evil; but equally, if you want to do good, science puts into your hands the most powerful tools to do so. The trick is to want the right things, then science will provide you with the most effective methods of achieving them." - Richard Dawkins

"The questions continue to grow. The doubts are beginning to drown out the assurances. For every insistence from Washington that the weapons of mass destruction case against Iraq is sound comes a counterpoint from the field -- another dry hole, another dead end." - Robert Byrd, fully Robert Carlyle Byrd

"The struggle to get weapons is continuous, but the United States will aid us, if it finds Israel displaying a willingness for peace." - Yitzhak Shamir, born Icchak Jaziernicki

"Now history under God's providence has reached the era of perpetual emergency, when man's age~old sin combined with his new technology threatens the survival of the human race. Even the most violent of men must recognize that there can be no satisfaction in destroying an enemy by thermonuclear weapons while he is destroying us. But the world is caught in the mood of bitter, tragic necessity. The Sermon on the Mount offers no program to present to Congress or the United Nations. But something of its vision and daring, combined with wise statecraft, offer the only hope for mankind." - Roger L. Shinn, fully Roger Lincoln Shinn

"DUOLOGUE - God: "Daughter of Zion, tried in Sorrow’s furnace, E’en as I swore thy fathers, be at rest. I swore it for My sake, and now thy crying Hath mounted to My habitation blest, And I have heard, for gracious is My breast." Israel: "Obeisance low I made, for I am feeble, Thy kindliness responds to all who yearn. Come back, dear Lord, whose name is linked with pardon, No other saviour Israel can discern, Unto his myriad families return!" God: "Where’er thy origin, whosoe’er thy master, A man shall come—nay, I—thy cause to plead, Whoever holds the bill of thy divorcement. Like wall or tower of fire I guard thy seed, Then wherefore weep or heart affrighted heed?" p. 29 Israel: "Why do I weep? Because Thou keepest silence, Though violence rages and, all uncontrolled, The mob destroys, and we as slaves to strangers, Master and man together, have been sold, And no Redeemer do our eyes behold." God: "Who art thou thus to shrink from man in terror And be dismayed because of mankind’s scorn? My angel I will send, as wrote the prophet, And gather Israel winnowed and new-born: This miracle shall be to-morrow morn." Israel: "To gather me my chieftains Thou didst promise, The day comes not and miracle is none, Nor see I Temple built nor any herald Of Peace arrive to be my Holy One— Ah, wherefore lingers Jesse’s promised son?" God: "Behold, I keep the oath I swore to gather My captives—kings shall bring their gifts to thee; Created for a witness to the nations, My holy ones shall testify to Me— Yea, Jesse’s son Mine eyes already see."" - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron

"Almond blossom, sent to teach us That the spring days soon will reach us. Blossom of the almond trees, April’s gift to April’s bees. Early violets blue and white Dying for their love of light. He who died at Azan sends This to comfort all his friends: Faithful friends! It lies I know Pale and white and cold as snow; And ye say, “Abdallah’s dead”! Weeping at the feet and head, I can see your falling tears, I can hear your sighs and prayers; Yet I smile and whisper this: I am not the thing you kiss. Cease your tears and let it lie; It was mine—it is not I. The sunbeams dropped Their gold, and, passing in porch and niche, Softened to shadows, silvery, pale, and dim, As if the very Day paused and grew Eve. Pity and need Make all flesh kin. There is no caste in blood. Who doth right deeds Is twice born, and who doeth ill deeds vile. With a bee in every bell, Almond bloom, we greet thee well. A little rain will fill the lily’s cup, which hardly moists the field. It makes sweet human music,—oh! the spells that haunt the trembling tale a bright-eyed maiden tells! Life, which all creatures love and strive to keep,—wonderful, dear and pleasant unto each, even to the meanest,—yea, a boon to all where pity is; for pity makes the world soft to the weak and noble for the strong. Making all futures fruits of all the past. Oh, the spells that haunt the trembling tale a bright-eyed maiden tells! Pity makes the world soft to the weak, and noble for the strong. The ordered music of the marching orbs. There is no caste in blood. Yet who shall shut out fate?" - Edwin Arnold, fully Sir Edwin Arnold

"I consider all proposals for government action with an open mind before voting 'no.'" - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

"The size of the federal budget is not an appropriate barometer of social conscience or charitable concern." - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

"The more that social democracy develops, grows, and becomes stronger, the more the enlightened masses of workers will take their own destinies, the leadership of their movement, and the determination of its direction into their own hands." - Rosa Luxemburg, aka Rosalia Luxemburg, "Bloody Rosa"

"Rejoice in the Lord always." - Saint Paul, aka The Apostle Paul, Paul the Apostle or Saul of Tarsus NULL

"May it please our Lord that I be not one of these; and may His Majesty give me grace to take that for peace which is really peace, that for honor which is really honor, and that for delight which is really a delight. Let me never mistake one thing for another — and then I snap my fingers at all the devils, for they shall be afraid of me. I do not understand those terrors which make us cry out, Satan, Satan! when we may say, God, God! and make Satan tremble. Do we not know that he cannot stir without the permission of God? What does it mean? I am really much more afraid of those people who have so great a fear of the devil, than I am of the devil himself. Satan can do me no harm whatever, but they can trouble me very much, particularly if they be confessors. I have spent some years of such great anxiety, that even now I am amazed that I was able to bear it. Blessed be our Lord, who has so effectually helped me!" - Saint Teresa of Ávila, aka Saint Teresa of Jesus, baptized as Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada NULL

"The trade union movement represents the organized economic power of the workers... It is in reality the most potent and the most direct social insurance the workers can establish." - Samuel Gompers

"A hero is a man who stands up manfully against his father and in the end victoriously overcomes him." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"Any physical theory is always provisional, in the sense that it is only a hypothesis: you can never prove it. No matter how many times the results of experiments agree with some theory, you can never be sure that the next time the result will not contradict the theory. On the other hand, you can disprove a theory by finding even a single observation that disagrees with the predictions of the theory. As philosopher of science Karl Popper has emphasized, a good theory is characterized by the fact that it makes a number of predictions that could in principle be disproved or falsified by observation. Each time new experiments are observed to agree with the predictions the theory survives, and our confidence in it is increased; but if ever a new observation is found to disagree, we have to abandon or modify the theory." - Stephen Hawking

"As those who have seen Jurassic Park will know, this means a tiny disturbance in one place, can cause a major change in another. A butterfly flapping its wings can cause rain in Central Park, New York. The trouble is, it is not repeatable. The next time the butterfly flaps its wings, a host of other things will be different, which will also influence the weather. That is why weather forecasts are so unreliable." - Stephen Hawking

"A man s greatest glory doesn’t consist in never falling, but in rising every time he falls." - Stephen LaBerge

"You're going to tell me that poverty's nothing to be ashamed of. It's not true, though. If you can't hide it, then it is something to be ashamed of. There's nothing you can do, you're ashamed just the same, the way you're ashamed when you leave a spot on somebody's table. No matter if it's deserved or not, honorable or not, poverty stinks. Yes, stinks, stinks like a ground-floor room off an airshaft, or clothes that need changing. You smell it yourself, as though you were made of sewage. It can't be wiped away. It doesn't help to put on a new hat, any more than rinsing your mouth helps when you're belching your guts out. It's around you and on you and everyone who brushes up against you or looks at you knows it." - Stefan Zweig

"Our surest protection against assault from abroad has been not all our guards, gates and guns, or even our two oceans, but our essential goodness as a people. Our richest asset has been not our material wealth but our values." - Ted Sorensen, fully Theodore Chalkin "Ted" Sorensen

"We must also be careful to avoid ingesting toxins in the form of violent TV programs, video games, movies, magazines, and books. When we watch that kind of violence, we water our own negative seeds, or tendencies, and eventually we will think and act out of those seeds." - Thich Nhất Hanh

"The human character, we believe, requires in general constant and immediate control to prevent its being biased from right by the seductions of self-love." - Thomas Jefferson

"Yet where does this anarchy exist? Where did it ever exist, except in the single instance of Massachusetts? And can history produce an instance of a rebellion so honorably conducted? God forbid we should ever be 20. years without such a rebellion. The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions it is a lethargy; the forerunner of death to the public liberty." - Thomas Jefferson

"His justice is the love that gives to each one of His creatures the gifts that His mercy has previously decreed. And His mercy is His love, doing justice to its own exigencies, and renewing the gift which we had failed to accept." - Thomas Merton

"Pride makes us artificial and humility makes us real." - Thomas Merton

"There is a great deal of misery in the world, and many of us could easily spend our lives trying to eradicate it… One advantage of living in a world as bad as this one is that it offers the opportunity for many activities whose importance can’t be questioned. But how could the main point of human life be the elimination of evil? Misery, deprivation, and injustice prevent people from pursuing the positive goods which life is assumed to make possible. If all such goods were pointless and the only thing that really mattered was the elimination of misery, that really would be absurd." - Thomas Nagel

"If, as it appears, it was an act of terrorists, then we will do everything in our power to track them down and hold them accountable." - William Cohen, fully William Sebastian Cohen

"There are some reports, for example, that some countries have been trying to construct something like an Ebola Virus, and that would be a very dangerous phenomenon, to say the least... Others are engaging even in an eco- type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves." - William Cohen, fully William Sebastian Cohen

"And I am not so sure this last one is true:" - Wendell Phillips

"Saw a film on cancer yesterday, shown by the English delegation. No doubt about it. I'm right. Migratory cancer cells are amoebic formations. They are produced from disintegrating tissue and thus demonstrate the law of tension and charge in its purest form - as does the orgastic convulsion. Now money is a must - cancer the main issue - in every respect, even political. It was a staggering experience. My intuition is good. I depend on it. Was absolutely driven to buy a microscope. The sight of the cancer cells was exactly as I had previously imagined it, had almost physically felt it would be. Cancer is an autoinfection of the body, of an organ. And researchers have no idea of what, hor, or where!!" - Wilhelm Reich

"Despite the lack of precedent, a negative coupon security seemed possible in the present interest rate environment ... I asked Goldman Sachs to create such an instrument and they responded promptly with the innovative security being announced today." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha