This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"It is better to risk saving a guilty man than to condemn an innocent one." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
"Every man is guilty of all the good he didn't do." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
"My child can be no more guilty or deserving of punishment for my sin than he can see with my eyes and feel with my nerves." - Washington Gladden
"A guilty conscience is the mother of invention. " - Carolyn Wells
"He who puts a friend to public shame is as guilty as a murderer." - Hebrew Proverbs
"Think positively. Eat sparingly. Exercise regularly. Walk as much as you can. Be careful to see that your thoughts and actions are clean. A guilty mind breeds many diseases. There is the way to live a happy, healthy, harmonious life." - Dada Vaswani, born Jashan Pahalraj Vaswani
"Reason is God's gift, but so are the passions. Reason is as guilty as passion. " - John Henry Newman, aka Cardinal Newman and Blessed John Henry Newman
"To say that subjects in general are not proper judges (of the law) when their governors oppress them and play the tyrant, and when they defend their rights ...is as great a treason as ever a man uttered. Tis treason not against one single man, but against the state - against the whole body politic; tis treason against mankind; tis treason against Common sense; tis treason against God; And this impious principle lays the foundation for justifying all the tyranny and oppression that ever any prince was guilty of. The people know for what end they set up and maintain their governors, and they are the proper judges when governors execute their trust as they ought to do it." - Jonathan Mayhew
"False opinions are like false money, struck first of all by guilty men and thereafter circulated by honest people who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they are doing." - Joseph de Maistre, fully Joseph-Marie, comte de Maistre
"Guilt is a poor, helpless, dependent being. Without the alliance of able, diligent, and let me add, fortunate fraud, it is inevitably undone. If the guilty culprit be obstinately silent, it forms a deadly presumption against him; if he speaks, talking tends only to his discovery, and his very defense often furnishes the materials for his conviction." - Junius, psyeudonym of unknown English Political Writer NULL
"Metaphysical guilt is the lack of absolute solidarity with the human being as such--an indelible claim beyond morally meaningful duty. This solidarity is violated by my presence at a wrong or a crime. It is not enough that I cautiously risk my life to prevent it; if it happens, and I was there, and if I survive where the other is killed, I know from a voice within myself: I am guilty of being still alive." - Karl Jaspers, fully Karl Theodor Jaspers
"But each one of us is guilty insofar as he remained inactive. The guilt of passivity is different. Impotence excuses; no moral law demands a spectacular death. Plato already deemed it a matter of course to go into hiding in desperate times of calamity, and to survive. But passivity knows itself morally guilty of every failure, every neglect to act whenever possible, to shield the imperiled, to relieve wrong, to countervail. Impotent submission always left a margin of activity which, though not without risk, could still be cautiously effective. Its anxious omission weighs upon the individual as moral guilt. Blindness for the misfortune of others, lack of imagination of the heart, inner differences toward the witnessed evil--that is moral guilt." - Karl Jaspers, fully Karl Theodor Jaspers
"Though the dungeon, the scourge, and the executioner be absent, the guilty mind can apply the goad and scorch with blows." - Lucretius, fully Titus Lucretius Carus NULL
"It is better and more satisfactory to acquit a thousand guilty persons than to put a single innocent one to death." - Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL
"If anyone has a conscience it's generally a guilty one. " - Max Frisch
"But the guilty person is only one of the targets of punishment. For punishment is directed above all at others, at all the potentially guilty." - Michel Foucault
"To kill one man is to be guilty of a capital crime, to kill ten men is to increase the guilt ten-fold, to kill a hundred men is to increase it a hundred-fold. This the rulers of the earth all recognize and yet when it comes to the greatest crime—waging war on another state—they praise it! It is clear they do not know it is wrong, for they record such deeds to be handed down to posterity; if they knew they were wrong, why should they wish to record them and have them handed down to posterity? If a man on seeing a little black were to say it is black, but on seeing a lot of black were to say it were white, it would be clear that such a man could not distinguish between black and white. Or if he were to taste a few bitter things were to pronounce them sweet, clearly he would be incapable of distinguishing between sweetness and bitterness. So those who recognize a small crime as such, but do not recognize the wickedness of the greatest crime of all—the waging of war on another state–but actually praise it—cannot distinguish between right and wrong. So as to right or wrong, the rulers of the world are in confusion." - Mozi or Mo-tze, Mocius or Mo-tzu, original name Mo Di, aka Master Mo NULL
"He who slayeth one man is as guilty as if he killed the whole human race. And he who saveth a soul accomplisheth a deed as meritorious as if he had saved all humanity." - Muhammad, also spelled Mohammad, Mohammed or Mahomet, full name Muhammad Ibn `Abd Allāh Ibn `Abd al-Muttalib NULL
"Before we try to destroy someone else, we should first pass judgment on ourselves. Before finding fault with others, we must first pass judgment upon ourselves. Before we backbite others, we must first pass judgment upon our selves. Before we lie about others, we must first judge ourselves. Before we hurt the heart of another, we must first pass judgment on ourselves. Like that, we have to pass judgment on our thoughts and on all actions done by our eyes, ears, nose, hands, and mouth. The guilty ones are within our own body and mind. These are our qualities which exist in our actions. All these qualities exist within us, do they not? So we have to pass judgment on them. That is the state of Iman-Islam. That is what is called Islam. To first see the fault in yourself and then to pass judgment and correct yourself is true justice. Those who perform that justice are in the religion of truth. They are the leaders of the religion of truth. They are in the state of Iman-Islam. They are the true believers." - Bawa Mahaiyadden, fully Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen
"Children are born capable of all feelings, ranging from affection to rage. In the beginning they respond genuinely with how they feel -- screaming, cooing, cuddling. In due time, however, children adapt their feelings according to their experiences. For example, children are naturally cuddly, yet can learn to become rigid and to withdraw in fear when someone approaches the crib. Children naturally seek pleasure over pain, yet can adapt to seek pain, even death. Children are naturally self-centered, yet can learn to feel guilty about wanting anything for themselves. Children are not born with their feelings already programmed toward objects and people. Each child learns toward whom and what to show affection. Each learns toward whom and about what to feel guilty. Each learns whom and what to fear. Each learns whom and what to hate." - Muriel James and Dorothy Jongeward
"Science is a subordinate category. When science offers itself as the final stage or form of knowing, it is guilty of a false quantity, in that it puts the accent, which belongs elsewhere, upon the penultimate." - Nicholas Murray Butler
"Buddhist words such as compassion and emptiness don't mean much until we start cultivating our innate ability simply to be there with pain with an open heart and the willingness not to instantly try to get ground under our feet. For instance, if what we're feeling is rage, we usually assume that there are only two ways to relate to it. One is to blame others. Lay it all on somebody else; drive all blames into everyone else. The other alternative is to feel guilty about our rage and blame ourselves." - Pema Chödrön, born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown
"He who cackles laid the egg (he who talks first is the guilty party)." - Philippine Proverbs, aka Philipino, Filipino, Ilocano and Tagalog Proverbs, Salawikain or Sawikain
"One is often guilty by being too just." - Pierre Cornielle
"Rabbi Dostai ben Yannai said in the name of Rabbi Meir: He who forgets one word of his study, Scripture regards him as though he was liable for his life; for it is written (Deuteronomy 4:9) "But take care and watch yourselves closely, so as not to forget the things that your eyes have seen." Could this apply even if a man's study was too hard for him? Scripture says (ibid.): "Nor to let them slip from your mind all the days of your life." Thus a person is not guilty unless he deliberately puts those lessons away from his heart." - Pirke Avot, "Verses of the Fathers" or "Ethics of the Fathers" NULL
"But this is not difficult, O Athenians! to escape death; but it is much more difficult to avoid depravity, for it runs swifter than death. And now I, being slow and aged, am overtaken by the slower of the two; but my accusers, being strong and active, have been overtaken by the swifter, wickedness. And now I depart, condemned by you to death; but they condemned by truth, as guilty of iniquity and injustice: and I abide my sentence, and so do they. These things, perhaps, ought so to be, and I think that they are for the best. " - Plato NULL
"It’s better in fact to be guilty of manslaughter than of fraud about what is fair and just. " - Plato NULL
"It is not the object of war to annihilate those who have given provocation for it, but to cause them to mend their ways not to ruin the innocent and guilty alike, but to save both." - Polybius NULL
"That the State must be separated from the Church is a thesis absolutely false, a most pernicious error. Based, as it is, on the principle that the State must not recognize any religious cult, it is in the first place guilty of a great injustice to God; for the Creator of man is also the Founder of human societies, and preserves their existence as He preserves our own. We owe Him, therefore, not only a private cult, but a public and social worship to honor Him. Besides, this thesis is an obvious negation of the supernatural order. It limits the action of the State to the pursuit of public prosperity during this life only, which is but the proximate object of political societies; and it occupies itself in no fashion (on the plea that this is foreign to it) with their ultimate object which is man's eternal happiness after this short life shall have run its course. But as the present order of things is temporary and subordinated to the conquest of man's supreme and absolute welfare, it follows that the civil power must not only place no obstacle in the way of this conquest, but must aid us in effecting it." - Pope Pius X, aka Saint Pope Pius X and Pope of the Eucharist, born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto NULL
"It is well known that the man who first made public the theory of irrationals perished in a shipwreck in order that the inexpressible and unimaginable should ever remain veiled. And so the guilty man, who fortuitously touched on and revealed this aspect of living things, was taken to the place where he began and there is for ever beaten by the waves. " - Proclus, fully Proclus Lycaeus NULL
"The following points are intended to amplify my meaning: 1. All children are born to grow, to develop, to live, to love, and to articulate their needs and feelings for their self-protection. 2. For their development, children need to the respect and protection of adults who take them seriously, love them, and honestly help them to become oriented in the world. 3. When these vital needs are frustrated and children are, instead, abused for the sake of the adults' needs by being exploited, beaten, punished, taken advantage of, manipulated neglected, or deceived without the intervention of any witness, then their integrity will be lastingly impaired. 4. The normal reactions to such injury should be anger and pain. Since children in this hurtful kind of environment are forbidden to express their anger, however, and since it would be unbearable to experience their pain all alone, they are compelled to suppress their feelings, repress all memory of the trauma, and idealize those guilty of the abuse. Later they will have no memory of what was done to them. 5. Disassociated from the original cause, their feelings of anger, helplessness, despair, longing, anxiety, and pain will find expression in destructive acts against others (criminal behavior, mass murder) or against themselves (drug addiction, alcoholism, prostitution, psychic disorders, suicide). 6. If these people become parents, they will then often direct acts of revenge for their mistreatment in childhood against their own children, whom they use as scapegoats. Child abuse is still sanctioned -- indeed, held in high regard -- in our society as long as it is defined as child-rearing. It is a tragic fact that parents beat their children in order to escape the emotions from how they were treated by their own parents. 7. If mistreated children are not to become criminals or mentally ill, it is essential that at least once in their life they come in contact with a person who knows without any doubt that the environment, not the helpless, battered child, is at fault. In this regard, knowledge or ignorance on the part of society can be instrumental in either saving or destroying a life. Here lies the great opportunity for relatives, social workers, therapists, teachers, doctors, psychiatrists, officials and nurses to support the child and believe in her or him. 8. Till now, society has protected the adult and blamed the victim. It has been abetted in its blindness by theories, still in keeping with the pedagogical principles of our great-grandparents, according to which children are viewed as crafty creatures, dominated by wicked drives, who invent stories and attack innocent parents or desire them sexually. In reality, children tend to blame themselves for their parents' cruelty and to absolve their parents, whom they invariably love [I would say 'need' - SH] of all responsibility. 9. For some years now, it has been possible to prove, through new therapeutic methods, that repressed traumatic experiences of childhood are stored up in the body and, though unconscious, exert an influence even in adulthood. In addition, electronic testing of the fetus has revealed a fact previously unknown to most adults -- that a child responds to and learns both tenderness and cruelty from the very beginning. 10. In the light of this new knowledge, even the most absurd behavior reveals its formerly hidden logic once the traumatic experiences of childhood need no longer remain shrouded in darkness. 11. Our sensitization to the cruelty with which children are treated, until now commonly denied, and to the consequences of such treatment will as a matter of course bring an end to the perpetuation of violence from generation to generation. 12. People whose integrity has not been damaged in childhood, who were protected, respected, and treated with honesty by their parents, will be -- both in their youth and in adulthood -- intelligent, responsive, empathic and highly sensitive. They will take pleasure in life and will not feel any need to kill or even hurt others or themselves. They will use their power to defend themselves, not to attack others. They will not be able to do otherwise than respect and protect those weaker than themselves, including their own children, because this is what they have learned from their own experience, and because it is this knowledge (and not the experience of cruelty) that has been stored up inside them from the beginning. It will be inconceivable to such people that earlier generations had to build up a gigantic war industry in order to feel comfortable and safe in this world. Since it will not be their unconscious drive in life to ward off intimidation experienced at a very early age, they will be able to deal with attempts at intimidation in their adult life more rationally and creatively." - Alice Miller, née Rostovski
"If I were to remain silent, I'd be guilty of complicity. " - Albert Einstein
"The judge is condemned when the criminal is absolved. [The judge is found guilty when a criminal is acquitted.]" - Publius Syrus
"To spare the guilty is to injure the innocent." - Publius Syrus
"Better to bear a false accusation in silence, than by speaking to bring the guilty to public shame." - Rabbinical Proverbs
"He who refuses to teach a precept to his pupil is guilty of theft, just as one who steals from the inheritance of his father," - Rabbinical Proverbs
"We are all guilty in some Measure of the same narrow way of Thinking ... when we fancy the Customs, Dresses, and Manners of other Countries are ridiculous and extravagant, if they do not resemble those of our own." - Walther Rathenau
"Remember that every guilty compliance with the humors of the world, every sinful indulgence of our own passions, is laying up cares and fears for the hour of darkness; and that the remembrance of ill-spent time will strew our sick-bed with thorns, and rack our sinking spirits with despair." - Reginald Heber
"Under these circumstances, silence among such a large group of people is an uncomfortable thing to experience. Guilt spreads around even to those who have nothing to feel guilty about. Many held their breath. Or, as I heard later, many did what me and my mum did and closed their eyes. We closed our eyes in a bid to remove ourselves." - Lloyd Jones
"I am a house gutted by fire where only the guilty sometimes sleep before the punishment that devours them hounds them out in the open. " - Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
"In any organization, the man at the top must bear the responsibility. That responsibility, therefore, belongs here, in this office. I accept it. And I pledge to you tonight, from this office, that I will do everything in my power to ensure that the guilty are brought to justice and that such abuses are purged from our political processes in the years to come, long after I have left this office." - Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon
"Treading beneath their feet all visible things, As steps that upwards to their Father's throne Lead gradual... Lovely was the death Of Him whose life was Love! Holy with power, He on the thought-benighted Skeptic beamed Manifest Godhead." - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
"We need you, we need your youth, your strength, and your idealism, to help us make right what is wrong." - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan
"It has been my experience that one cannot, in any shape or form, depend on human relations for lasting reward. It is only work that truly satisfies." - Bette Davis, Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis
"A Platonic friendship is perhaps only possible when one or other of the Platonists is in love with a third person." - S.G. Tallentyre, nom de plume for Evelyn Beatrice Hall
"Earthly riches are like the reed. Its roots are sunk in the swamp, and its exterior is fair to behold; but inside it is hollow. If a man leans on such a reed, it will snap off and pierce his soul." - Saint Anthony of Padua or Anthony of Lisbon, born Fernando Martins de Bulhões NULL
"Do not measure your loss by itself; if you do, it will seem intolerable; but if you will take all human affairs into account you will find that some comfort is to be derived from them." - Saint Basil, aka Basil of Caesarea, Saint Basil the Great NULL