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

Baltasar Gracián

Most do violence to their natural aptitude, and thus attain superiority in nothing.

Aptitude | Nothing | Superiority |

Blaise Pascal

It is a strange and tedious war when violence attempts to vanquish truth. All the efforts of violence cannot weaken truth, and only serve to give it fresh vigor. All the lights of truth cannot arrest violence, and only serve to exasperate it.

Truth | War |

Claudian, latin Claudius Claudianus NULL

Gentleness is able to accomplish what violence can not.

Gentleness |

Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger

In crisis the most daring course is often the safest. The riskiest course in my experience has been gradual escalation that the opponent matches step by step, inevitably reaching a higher level of violence and often an inextricable stalemate.

Daring | Experience | Crisis |

Howard Zinn

Human beings do not naturally support violence and terror. They do so only when they believe their lives or country are at stake.

Terror |

Howard Zinn

The unique ability of humans to imagine gives enormous power to idealism, an imagining of a better state of things not yet in existence. That power has been misused to send young men to war. But the power of idealism can also be used to attain justice, to end the massive violence of war.

Ability | Better | Existence | Idealism | Justice | Men | Power | Unique | War |

Julia Ward Howe

Disarm, disarm. The sword of murder is not the balance of justice. Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.

Balance | Dishonor | Justice | Murder | Murder |

Lewis H. Lapham

A society that presumes a norm of violence and celebrates aggression, whether in the subway, on the football field, or in the conduct of its business, cannot help making celebrities of the people who would destroy it.

Aggression | Business | Conduct | Destroy | People | Society | Society |

Joseph Roux

The chief cause of our misery is less the violence of our passions than the feebleness of our virtues.

Cause |

Leonardo da Vinci, fully Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci

Force is only a desire for flight: it lives by violence and dies from liberty.

Desire | Force | Liberty |

Noam Chomsky, fully Avram Noam Chomsky

It's true that things like violence and rotten schools are destroying the cities - but they're destroying them because of a social structure that we've got to change, from the bottom up.

Change |

Nelson Mandela, fully Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela

We speak here of the challenge of the dichotomies of war and peace, violence and non-violence, racism and human dignity, oppression and repression and liberty and human rights, poverty and freedom from want.

Challenge | Freedom | Liberty | Oppression | Poverty | Right | Time | War |

Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL

Let us not accept violence as the way of peace. Let us instead begin by respecting true freedom: the resulting peace will be able to satisfy the world’s expectations, for it will be a peace built on justice, a peace founded on the incomparable dignity of the free human being.

Dignity | Freedom | Justice | Peace | Will | World |

Robert Kennedy, fully Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy

What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness, but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice towards those who still suffer within our country, whether they be black or they be white.

Compassion | Justice | Love | Need | Wisdom |

Claudian, latin Claudius Claudianus NULL

Power can do by gentleness that which violence fails to accomplish; and calmness best enforces the imperial mandate.

Calmness | Gentleness | Power |

Claudian, latin Claudius Claudianus NULL

Power can do by gentleness that which violence fails to accomplish; and calmness best enforces the imperial mandate.

Calmness | Gentleness | Power |

Elizabeth Klarer

Akon says to Elizabeth: “We found the pyramidal type of construction most suitable for Earth and Mars where many earthquakes plagued us and radiations remained a hazard. The pyramids were constructed by us and used by later civilizations for places of worship and for burial. They are cosmic libraries, and in time, will point the way to the stars. The human race of Earth will find an escape route to the stars and away from the violence within the Sun’s system created by its variable nature.”

Earth | Human race | Race | System | Will | Worship |

Elizabeth Klarer

Akon says to Elizabeth: The beauty and violence of our Galactic system harbours millions of others similar to such as these of the Sun’s System, where the cosmic rays emanating from the vast nucleus create life throughout, as in the countless other galaxies.”

Beauty | Life | Life | System | Beauty |