Great Throughts Treasury

"With respect to God and truth, one has not the right to choose according to his own whim any path whatsoever, he must choose the true path, in so far as it is in his power to know." - Jacques Maritain

"Waste not your strength trying to push shut doors which God is opening. Neither wear yourself out in keeping open doors which ought to be forever sealed. Some episode in your life, over which you are anxious, is closed. it is in the past. Whatever its memory, you cannot change it. But you can shut the door. Go into some silent place of thought. Test your self-respect. Ask your soul, "Have I emerged from this experience with honor, or if not, can honor be retrieved?" And if your soul answers, "Yes," close then the door to that Past; hang a garland over the portal if you will, but come away without tarrying. The east is aflame with the radiance of the morning, and before you stands many another door, held open by the hand of God." - Oscar Edward Maurer

"It is, indeed, one of the capital tragedies of youth - and youth is the time of real tragedy - that the young are thrown mainly with adults they do not quite respect." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"Respect the children of the poor! From them come most poets." - Mendele Mokher Sforim or Sfarim, pseudonymn of Shalom Jacob Abramowitsch

"I respect faith, but doubt is what gets you an education." - Wilson Mizner

"The meaning of life is to be found in our surroundings and in our relationships... Life is meaningful when we respect the best of tradition while still loving innovation... Life is fulfilling when we marry pride with tolerance, when our deeds and our words are nourished by hope and by realism, when the wisdom of the ages catches the passionate eye of youth. Life on this earth in our time is, above all, a parade of interdependent peoples, interdependent ideas, interdependent solutions. We are all artists of the possible - and dreamers of that which is just now beyond our reach, but may not be tomorrow." - Youssou N’Dour

"In disrespecting, we show that we still maintain a sense of respect." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

"Let us respect gray hairs, but, above all, our own." - Jean-Antoine Petit-Senn

"Our responsibility as educators is to teach youth to have respect for those who differ from the customary ways as well as for those who conform. In simpler words, we have a profound obligation both to education and to society itself to support and strengthen the right to be different, and to create a sound respect for intellectual superiority." - Robert C. Pooley, fully Robert Cecil Pooley

"It is good to respect old thoughts in the newest books, because the old works in which they stand are not read. New translations of many truths, as of foreign standard works, must be given forth every half-century." -

"My life is full of meaning to me. The life around me must be full of significance to itself. If I am to expect others to respect my life, then I must respect the other life I see, however strange it may be to mine... Ethics in our Western world has hitherto been largely limited to the relations of man to man. But that is limited ethics. We need a boundless ethics which will include the animals also." - Albert Schweitzer

"Thought wit be very useful, yet unless a wise man has the keeping of it, that knows when, where, and how to apply it, it is like wild-fire, that flies at rovers, runs hissing about, and blows up everything that comes in its way. Without any respect or discrimination." -

"We shall never learn to feel and respect our real calling and destiny, unless we have taught ourselves to consider everything as moonshine, compared with the education of the heart." -

"Those things on which philosophy has set its seal are beyond the reach of injury; no age will discard them or lessen their force, each succeeding century will add somewhat to the respect in which they are held; for we look upon what is near us with jealous eyes, but we admire what is further off with less prejudice. The wise man’s life, therefore, includes much; he is not hedged in by the same limits which confine others; he alone is exempt from the laws by which mankind is governed; all ages serve him like a god. If any time be past he recalls it by his memory, if it be present he uses it, if it be future he anticipates it; his life is a long one because he concentrates all times into it." -

"It is one proof of a good education, and of true refinement of feeling, to respect antiquity." - Lydia Sigourney, fully Lydia Huntley Sigourney, née Lydia Howard Huntley

"The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music; they should be taught to love it instead." - Igor Feodorovitch Stravinsky, or Fyodorovich

"It is just because no event can be past with respect to an eternal entity that an eternal entity cannot alter a past event. An omnipotent, omniscient, eternal entity can affect temporal events, but it can affect events only as they are actually occurring." - Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann

"Constitutions are checks upon the hasty action of the majority. They are the self-imposed restraints of a whole people upon a majority of them to secure sober action and a respect for the rights of the minority." - William Howard Taft

"It is better to bind your children to you by respect and gentleness than by fear." - Terence, full Latin name Publius Terentius Afer NULL

"Forms become more necessary as the government becomes more active and powerful, and private persons become more indolent and feeble. By their nature, democratic nations stand more in need of forms than other nations, and respect them less." - Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville

"When a people lose respect for one bad law, it is but a short step before they include the good laws with the bad and are shortly in rebellion against all law." - Oscar W. Underwood, fully Oscar Wilder Underwood

"To act without rapacity, to use knowledge with wisdom, to respect interdependence, to operate without hubris and greed are not simply moral operatives. They are an accurate scientific description of the means of survival." - Barbara Mary Ward, Baroness Jackson of Lodsworth, Lady Robert Jackson

"The home... is the lens through which we get our first look at marriage and all civic duties; it is the clinic where, by conversation and attitude, impressions are created with respect to sobriety and reverence; it is the school where lessons of truth or falsehood, honesty or deceit are learned; it is the mold which ultimately determines the structure of society." - Perry F. Webb, fully Perry Flynt Webb or Perry Flint Webb

"If man's religion is of any importance, it is not just a garment of expression of unity with and security in the professed beliefs of a special group. It is rather an attitude of respect for himself, his God, his fellowman, which underwrites all his activity, which is allowed freedom of expression within the limitations of that respect." - Grace Helen Yerbury, fully Grace Helen Davies Yerbury

"Civilization is a method of living, an attitude of equal respect for all men." -

"Reverence for superiors, respect for equals, regard for inferiors - these form the supreme trinity of virtues." -

"When people feel separated, they try to make things work by concentrating only on their own willpower and trying to control everything. When you remember to align yourself with your own nature and your life purpose, you naturally are in touch with your natural power. When you align yourself with even a single value, like compassion, trust, self-respect, or following through on synchronicities – life becomes more meaningful, often more fun, more hopeful, and you feel resourceful." - Carol Adrienne

"What is threatened today is moral liberty, conscience, respect for the soul, the very nobility of man. To defend the soul, its interests, its rights, its dignity, is the most pressing duty for whoever sees the danger." - Henri Frédéric Amiel

"Never esteem anything as of advantage to thee that shall make thee break thy word or lose thy self-respect." -

"- Surround yourself with people who respect you and treat you well." -

"That you may retain your self-respect, it is better to displease the people by doing what you know is right, than to temporarily please them by doing what you know is wrong." - William J. H. Boetcker, fully William John Henry Boetcker

"Do not believe what your teacher tells you merely out of respect for the teacher. But whatsoever, after due examination and analysis, you find to be conducive to the good, the benefit, the welfare of all beings – that doctrine believe and cling to, and take it as your guide." -

"The attraction of one creature for another, even when condemned by reason for its passionate origin, is always worthy of respect, because it reveals to us something of the order of creation." - Albert Carré

"Whether or not you decide to emulate that which you have come to understand through empathetic identification, you will never be quite the same again. In learning to think and to feel, to understand and to value more like another you will have grown in your own self-understanding and in your capacity to speak and interact with others. You, and that which you are now able to embrace, may well find in one another nurture, respect, protection, and enrichment. It is in such qualities of living that true meaning will be encountered, however tentative and fluctuating that meaning may be. It is in the very midst of the flux of the meaningful that its perpetuation and its renewal is to be found." - Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter

"In nothing is the uniformity of human nature more conspicuous than in its respect for virtue." -

"Tolerance implies a respect for another person, not because he is wrong or even because he is right, but because he is human." - John Cogley

"If you want to be respected by others, the great thing is to respect yourself." -

"In your daily life, you can treat people you meet in a way that strengthens them in spirit through genuine interest or respect… not a patronizing or false sense of sincerity… but rather a genuine curiosity and respect for each individual you meet… Your actions do make a lasting impact on each person you encounter. It’s an enormous responsibility to take seriously how you treat the people in your life, and a great joy to know you have acted with caring, warmth, and love." - Leonard Felder

"Men wiser and more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following upon another as wave follows upon wave, only one great fact with respect to which, since it is unique, there can be no generalizations, only one safe rule for the historian: that they should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen." - H.A.L. Fisher, fully Herbert Albert Laurens Fisher

"I believe that our choice between two models of psychiatry is really a choice between two competing sets of moral values that will ultimately determine the kind of society we live in. One is the Psychotherapeutic Model’s ideal of healing the soul with its values of self-awareness, autonomy, personal growth, an I-Thou spirit of love, respect, and compassion for others, and an acceptance of moral responsibility for our own egoistic impulses and emotions. The other is the Medical Model’s ideal of quick fix, with its swimming-pool values of stability and conformity, and an I-It orientation toward material success and other superficial addictive pleasures" - Elio Frattaroli

"Responsibility could easily deteriorate into domination and possessiveness were it not for respect… respect means the concern that the other person should grow and unfold as he is." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm

"The respect due the authority carries with it the taboo on questioning it." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm

"Whatever complaints the neurotic patient may have, whatever symptoms he may present are rooted in his inability to love, if we mean by love a capacity for the experience of concern, responsibility, respect, and understanding of another person and the intense desire for that other person’s growth." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm

"They can’t take away our self-respect if we do not give it to them." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

"Hungry men have no respect for law, authority, or human life." - Marcus Garvey

"Love is the highest form of energy… Love is much more than just a feeling of affection or of passion. Love is making choices in ways that can help others (and ourself) to have a more joyful and creative journey. Love is a way of life. It is the path of compassion, respect and kindness for all people and living things. Love is honoring the connection to each other." - Tom Gregory

"I believe that, for the rest of the world, contemporary America is an almost symbolic concentration of all the best and the worst of our civilization. On the one hand, there are its profound commitment to enhancing civil liberty and to maintaining the strength of its democratic institutions, and the fantastic developments in science and technology which have contributed so much to our well-being; on the other, there is the blind worship of perpetual economic growth and consumption, regardless of their destructive impact on the environment, or how subject they are to the dictates of materialism and consumerism, or how they, through the omnipresence of television and advertising, promote uniformity, and banality instead of a respect for human uniqueness." - Václav Havel

"He must summon his people to be with him – yet stand above, not squat beside them. He must question his own wisdom and judgment – but not too severely. He must hear the opinions and heed the powers of others – but not too abjectly. He must appease the doubts of his critic and assuage the hurts of the adversary – sometimes. He must ignore their views and achieve their defeat – sometimes… He must respect action – without becoming intoxicated with his own. He must have a sense of purpose inspiring him to magnify the trivial event to serve his distant aim – and to grasp the thorniest crisis as if it were the merest nettle. He must be pragmatic, calculating, and earthbound – and still know when to spurn the arithmetic of expediency for the act of brave imagination, the sublime gamble with no hope other than the boldness of his vision" - Emmet John Hughes

"Any conflict which prevents the personality from attaining wholeness is a hindrance: all taboos against considering any part of the universe in relation to man and his destiny are hindrances; so, too, are all restrictions upon the free use of reason, or the free appeal of conscience. In other words, any religion which is not an affirmation of the ultimate value of truth and knowledge, beauty and its expression, and goodness and moral action, which ever sets itself up against these, is in that respect a false, low and incomplete religion." - Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley

"Any religion which is not an affirmation of the ultimate value of truth and knowledge, beauty and its expression, and goodness and moral action, which ever sets itself up against these, is in that respect a false, low and incomplete religion." - Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley