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

Erasmus Darwin

He who allows oppression shares the crime.

Character | Crime | Oppression |

John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one's own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.

Character | Commitment | Oppression |

David O. McKay

The true purpose of life, aside from resisting oppression from without, each individual carries within himself, the responsibility of living nobly or ignobly.

Character | Individual | Life | Life | Oppression | Purpose | Purpose | Responsibility |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Had I no other proof of the immortality of the soul than the oppression of the just and the triumph of the wicked in this world, this alone would prevent my having the least doubt of it. So shocking a discord amidst a general harmony of things would make me naturally look for a cause; I should say to myself we do not cease to exist with this life; everything reassumes its order after life.

Cause | Character | Doubt | Harmony | Immortality | Life | Life | Oppression | Order | Soul | World |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Luxury is a remedy much worse than the disease it sets up to cure; or rather it is in itself the greatness of all evils; for every State, great or small: for, in order to maintain all the servants and vagabonds it creates, it brings oppression and ruin on the citizen and the laborer; it is like those scorching winds, which, covering the trees and plants with their devouring insects, deprive useful animals of their subsistence and spread famine and death wherever they blow.

Character | Death | Disease | Greatness | Luxury | Oppression | Order |

William Ewart Gladstone

The oppression of a majority is detestable and odious: the oppression of a minority is only by one degree less detestable and odious.

Majority | Oppression | Wisdom |

Louis Kossuth, also Lajos Kossuth, fully Lajos Kossuth de Udvard et Kossuthfalva

I am a man of peace, God knows how I love peace; but I hope I shall never be such a coward as to mistake oppression for peace.

God | Hope | Love | Man | Mistake | Oppression | Peace | Wisdom | God |

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

Aggression | Love | Mankind | Method | Need | Oppression | Retaliation | Revenge | Time |

Douglas Meeks, also M. Douglas Meeks

Economic oppression cannot exist without its religious justifications.

Oppression |

Eric Hoffer

Great evils befall the world when the powerful begin to copy the weak. The desperate devices which enable the weak to survive are unequaled instruments of oppression and extermination in the hands of the strong.

Oppression | World |

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 |

Robert Kennedy, fully Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy

Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of the rest or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance... Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change the world that yields most painfully to change.

Battle | Bravery | Censure | Change | Courage | Daring | Energy | Hope | Injustice | Injustice | Intelligence | Man | Oppression | Rest | Society | Time | World |

Robert Kennedy, fully Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy

It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.

Belief | Courage | Daring | Energy | History | Hope | Injustice | Injustice | Man | Oppression | Time |

Robert Kennedy, fully Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy

Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. n.

Belief | Change | Courage | Daring | Energy | Events | Greatness | History | Man | Oppression | Time | Will | Work |

Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir

All oppression creates a state of war. And this is no exception. The existent who is regarded as inessential cannot fail to demand the re-establishment of her sovereignty.

Oppression | War |

Tecumseh, aka Tecumtha or Tekamthi NULL

They have vanished before the avarice and oppression of the white man, as snow before the summer.

Avarice | Man | Oppression |

Edward John Phelps

If oppression and wrong should gain the ascendancy, and injustice stalk abroad in the land, and all else fail him; nevertheless his humblest roof, and all things that are sheltered beneath it, would find, somehow, someway, a final refuge and protection in the Supreme Court of the United States.

Injustice | Injustice | Oppression | Wrong |