Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Related Quotes

Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.

Better | Trust | Wrong |

Ronald Knox, fully Ronald Arbuthnott Knox

The real tragedy of our prayers is not that God so often refuses to grant them. The tragedy is we so often ask for the wrong thing.

God | Tragedy | Wrong | God |

Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller

Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

Fidelity | Purpose | Purpose | Self | Wrong |

Martin Luther King, Jr.

I have tried to make it clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.

Ends | Means | Wrong |

Barbara Kingsolver

The friend who holds your hand and says the wrong thing is made of dearer stuff than the one who stays away.

Friend | Wrong |

Cleland Boyd McAfee

The average man who goes wrong in belief does it when he forgets that there are other truths besides his favorite one.

Belief | Man | Wrong | Truths |

Eugene Peterson

Repentance is not an emotion. It is not feeling sorry for your sins. It is a decision. It is deciding that you have been wrong in supposing that you could manage your own life and be your own god.

Decision | God | Life | Life | Repentance | Wrong |

Wayne Muller

Acceptance of death is acceptance of freedom – freedom to live each day with clarity and courage… If we know we are going to die, all danger disappears. There is less fear about what can go wrong, because the worst that can possibly go wrong – our own death – is completely assured. All there is left to do is live, and live well.

Acceptance | Courage | Danger | Day | Death | Fear | Freedom | Wrong | Danger |

Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman

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.

Compassion | Evil | Fairness | Generosity | Good | Morality | Principles | Right | Survival | Wrong |

Kenichi Ohmae

Rowing harder doesn’t help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction.

Wrong |

Thomas Paine

When, in countries that are called civilized, we see age going to the workhouse and youth to the gallows, something must be wrong in the system of government.

Age | Government | System | Wrong | Youth | Youth |

Richard Price

Right and wrong are the same for all in the same circumstances.

Circumstances | Right | Wrong |

Sitting Bull, aka Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake, born Hoka Psice NULL

What treaty that the white man ever made with us have they kept? Not one. When I was a boy, the Sioux owned the world; the sun rose and set on their land; they sent ten thousand men to battle. Where are the warriors today? Who slew them? Where are our lands? Who owns them? What white man can say I ever stole his land or a penny of his money? Yet they say I am a thief. What white woman, however lonely, was ever captive or insulted by me? Yet they say I am a bad Indian. What white man has ever seen me drunk? Who has come to me hungry and unfed? Who has ever seen me beat my wives or abuse my children? What law have I broken? Is it wrong for me to love my own? Is it wicked for me because my skin is red? Because I am a Sioux; because I was born where my father lived; because I would die for my people and my country?

Abuse | Battle | Children | Father | Land | Law | Love | Man | Men | Money | People | Woman | World | Wrong |

Henry Suso

All who allow themselves a wrong liberty make themselves their own aim and object.

Liberty | Object | Wrong |

Richard Carlson

One of the mistakes many of us make is that we feel sorry for ourselves, or for others, thinking that life should be fair, or that someday it will be. It's not and it won't. When we make this mistake we tend to spend a lot of time wallowing and/or complaining about what's wrong with life. 'It's not fair,' we complain, not realizing that, perhaps, it was never intended to be.

Life | Life | Mistake | Thinking | Time | Will | Wrong |