Great Throughts Treasury

"Laws should be like clothes. They should be made to fit the people they are meant to serve." - Clarence Darrow, fully Clarence Seward Darrow

"You can't sweep other people off their feet, if you can't be swept off your own." - Clarence Shepard Day, Jr.

"People don't like the true and simple; they like fairy tales and humbug." -

"Calumny is like counterfeit money; many people who would not coin it circulate it without qualms." - Diane De Poitiers

"I noticed an almost universal trait among Super Achievers, and it was what I call Sensory Goal Vision. These people knew what they wanted out of life, and they could sense it multi-dimensionally before they ever had it.. They could not only see it, but also taste it, smell it, and imagine the sounds and emotions associated with it. They pre-lived it before they had it. And that sharp, sensory vision became a powerful driving force in their lives." -

"I hear much of people's calling out to punish the guilty, but very few are concerned to clear the innocent." - Daniel Defoe, born Daniel Foe

"Children are notoriously curious about everything - everything except - the things people want them to know. It then remains for us to refrain from forcing any kind of knowledge upon them, and they will be curious about everything." - Floyd Dell

"Where Indian People had had a reverence for the productiveness of the land, whites wanted to make the land support their way of life whether it was suited to do so or not." -

"People are commonly so employed in pointing out faults in those before them, as to forget that some behind may at the same time be descanting on their own." - Lewis Dilwyn, fully Monsignor Dilwyn W Lewis

"Life is not a static thing. The only people who do not change their minds are incompetents in asylums who can't and those in cemeteries." - Everett Dirksen, fully Everett McKinley Dirksen

"Some people, in working toward a goal, find themselves seized by inertia when it comes time for action. If this should happen to you, despite the small graduated steps, then it is time to reexamine your goal. Consider how important it actually is and then either discard the goal and replace it with a more suitable one or continue the steps with a renewed sense of the value of achieving it." - Fitzhugh Dodson

"Some people study all their life, and at their death they have learned everything except to think." - Faith Domergue

"Taking a new step, uttering a new word, is what people fear most." - Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski

"The doubts of an honest man contain more moral truth than the profession of faith of people under a worldly yoke." - Ximénès Doudan

"The great and invigorating influences in American life have been the unorthodox: the people who challenge an existing institution or way of life, or say and do things that make people think." -

"The sympathy of most people consists of a mixture of good-humor, curiosity, and self-importance." - Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach

"Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up." -

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." -

"The best test of the quality of a civilization is the quality of its leisure. Not what the citizens... do when they are obliged to do... but what they do when they can do anything by choice, is the criterion of a people's life." - Irwin Edman

"Persistent people begin their success where others end in failure." - Frederic Eggleston, fully Sir Frederic William Eggleston

"Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions." - Albert Einstein

"It is a nationalism whose aim is not power but dignity and health. If we did not have to live among intolerant, narrow-minded and violent people, I should be the first to throw over all nationalism in favor of universal humanity." - Albert Einstein

"There exists a passion for comprehension, just as there exists a passion for music. That passion is rather common in children but gets lost in most people later on. Without this passion, there would be neither mathematics nor natural science." - Albert Einstein

"It is certainly strange to observe... how many people seem to feel vain of their own unqualified optimism when the place where optimism most flourishes is the lunatic asylum." - Henry Havelock Ellis

"Some people are your relatives but others are your ancestors, and you choose the ones you want to have as ancestors. You create yourself out of those values." -

"Be short in all religious exercises. Better leave the people longing than loathing." - Nathaniel Emmons

"This I always religiously observed, as a rule, never to chide my husband before company nor to prattle abroad of miscarriages at home. What passes between two people is much easier made up than when once it has taken air." -

"Tracing the progress of mankind in the ascending path of civilization, and moral and intellectual culture, our fathers found that the divine ordinance of government, in every stage of ascent, was adjustable on principles of the common reason to the actual condition of a people, and always had for its objects, in the benevolent councils of the divine wisdom, the happiness, the expansion, the security, the elevation of society, and the redemption of man. They sought in vain for any title of authority of man over man, except of superior capacity and higher morality." - William Maxwell Evarts

"Beneath a free government there is nothing but the intelligence of the people to keep the people’s peace. Order must be preserved, not by a military police or regiments of horse-guards, but by the spontaneous concert of a well-informed population, resolved that the rights which have been rescued from despotism shall not be subverted by anarchy." - Edward Everett

"When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable." - Clifton Fadiman

"Most people like praise. Many people have an unreasonable fear of administering it; it is part of the puritanical dislike for anything that is agreeable - to others. When it is really deserved, most people expand under it into richer and better selves." - Joseph Farrell, fully Joseph Patrick Farrell

"It must be terrible to have to live among people and not like human beings." - William Feather

"The happiest people are those who are too busy to notice whether they are or not." - William Feather

"The magic of marriage is that it creates meaningful goals to work for, struggle for, sacrifice for. It is the joint struggle that gives the relationship its meaning, and keeps people alive." - Henry Gregor Felsen

"The more you say, the less people remember. The fewer the words, the greater the profit." - François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

"A man who experiences no genuine satisfaction in life does not want peace. People court war to escape meaninglessness and boredom, to be relieved of fear and frustration." -

"The doctrine of foods is of great ethical and political significance. Food becomes blood, blood becomes heart and brain, thought and mind stuff. Human fare is the foundation of human culture and thought. Would you improve the people? Give them, instead of declamations against sin, better food. Man is what he eats." -

"Formerly, people believed that the sugar cane alone yielded sugar; nowadays it is extracted from almost anything. It is the same with poetry. Let us draw it, no matter whence, for it lies everywhere, and in all things." - Gustave Flaubert

"Aristotle said that all creative people are dissatisfied because they are looking for happiness in perfection and seeking for things that do not exist. This is one of the hopes of the world. There is no progress where people are satisfied. Discontent is perhaps the most potent challenge to improvement." - Clarence Edwin Flynn

"Few people realize what a substantial thing faith is." - Henry Ford

"It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste." - Henry Ford

"The cure for "Materialism" is to have enough for everybody and to spare. When people are sure of having what they need they cease to think about it." - Henry Ford

"The great trouble today is that there are too many people looking for someone else to do something for them. The solution of most of our troubles is to be found in everyone doing something for himself." - Henry Ford

"The majority of people are naturally straddlers. They are not in the world to pioneer but to be as happy as possible. If pioneering in a cause brings discomfort, they would rather not be among the pioneers. they would rather stand on the sidelines and, in the combat between truth and error, wait and see which proves the stronger. Though they may have a lazy faith that truth at last will win, they do not wish to lend a premature support." - Henry Ford

"Democracy is based upon the conviction that there are extraordinary possibilities in ordinary people." - Harry Emerson Fosdick

"It is not marriage that fails: it is people that fail. All that marriage does is to show people up." - Harry Emerson Fosdick

"A people living under the... threat of war and invasion is very easy to govern. It demands no social reforms. It doesn't not haggle over armaments and military expenditures. It pays without discussion, it ruins itself, and that is a fine thing for the financiers and manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors are an abundant source of gain." - Anatole France, pen name of Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault

"If 50 million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing." - Anatole France, pen name of Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault

"There are very honest people who do not think that they have had a bargain unless they have cheated a merchant." - Anatole France, pen name of Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault

"The eyes of other people are the eyes that ruin us. If all but myself were blind, I should want neither fine clothes, fine houses, nor fine furniture." - Benjamin Franklin