Great Throughts Treasury

"The art of putting the right people in the right places is first the science of government; but that of finding places for the discontented is the most difficult." -

"Sometimes things can go right only by first going very wrong." - Edward Tenner

"Justice is that side of love which affirms the independent right of person within the love relation." -

"I have never considered that when men have gained their liberty they have the right to live in idleness and create disorder." - François Dominique Toussaint-L’Ouverture

"Article 18 - Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others, and in public or in private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance." - United Nations NULL

"All peoples have the right of self-determination." - United Nations NULL

"Human beings are perhaps never more frightened than when they are convinced beyond doubt that they are right." - Laurens van der Post, fully Sir Laurens Jan van der Post

"Since nothing is settled until it is settled right, no matter how unlimited power a person may have, unless they exercises it fairly and justly their actions will return to plague them." - Frank A. Vanderlip

"A right is not effectual by itself, but only in relation to the obligation to which it corresponds... An obligation which goes unrecognized by anybody loses none of the full force of its existence. A right which goes unrecognized by anybody is not worth very much." - Simone Weil

"Beauty captivates the flesh in order to obtain permission to pass right through to the soul... When the feeling for beauty happens to be associated with the sight of some human being, the transference of love is made possible, at any rate in an illusory manner. But it is all the beauty of the world, it is universal beauty, for which we yearn." - Simone Weil

"Religion in so far as it is a source of consolation is a hindrance to true faith; and in this sense atheism is a purification. I have to be an atheist with that part of myself which is not made for God. Among those in whom the supernatural part of themselves has not been awakened, the atheists are right and the believers wrong." - Simone Weil

"Democracy is the recurrent suspicion that more than half of the people are right more than half of the time." -

"[Groupthink] is rationalized conformity – an open, articulate philosophy which holds that group values are not only expedient but right as and good as well." - William H. Whyte, Jr., fully William Hollingsworth "Holly" Whyte

"Religious liberty includes freedom to change one’ religion or belief without consequent social, economic and political disabilities. Implicit in this right is the right freely to maintain one’s belief or disbelief without external coercion or disability." - World Council of Churches NULL

"What we do not understand we have no right to judge." -

"Every man has a right to his opinion, but no man has a right to be wrong in his facts." -

"Pride is concerned with who is right. Humility is concerned with what is right." - Ezra Taft Benson

"The reality of life is that your perceptions -- right or wrong -- influence everything else you do. When you get a proper perspective of your perceptions, you may be surprised how many other things fall into place." - Roger Birkman

"Doing the right thing, for the right reasons, is the right way to live a successful life. Doing the wrong thing, for the wrong reasons, is the wrong way to go about the business of life." - Gary Ryan Blair

"Trials, temptations, disappointments -- all these are helps instead of hindrances, if one uses them rightly. They not only test the fibre of a character, but strengthen it. Every conquered temptation represents a new fund of moral energy. Every trial endured and weathered in the right spirit makes a soul nobler and stronger than it was before." - James Buckham

"Choose being kind over being right, and you'll be right every time." - Richard Carlson

"Do you remember the things you were worrying about a year ago? How did they work out? Didn't you waste a lot of fruitless energy on account of most of them? Didn't most of them turn out all right after all?" -

"We habitually erect a barrier called blame that keeps us from communicating genuinely with others, and we fortify it with our concepts of who's right and who's wrong." -

"Men's manners have improved markedly since Genghis Khan's day. Harems went out of style centuries ago and even despots now disavow pillage and oppression as ideals. At heart, though, we're the same animals we were 800 years ago. Which is to say we are status seekers. We may talk of equality and fraternity. We may strive for classless societies. But we go right on building hierarchies and jockeying for status within them. Can we abandon the tendency? Probably not. For as scientists are now discovering, status seeking is not just a habit or cultural tradition. It's a design of the male psyche - a biological drive that is rooted in the nervous system and regulated by hormones and brain chemicals." -

"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved, as a rule, the majority are wrong, the minority are right." -

"In deciding what course of action is moral, you should act as if there were no God. You should act as if there were no threat of earthly punishment or reward. You should be a person of good character because it is right to be such a person." - Alan Morton Dershowitz

"The truly moral person is the one who does the right thing without any promise of reward or threat of punishment - without engaging in a cost-benefit analysis." - Alan Morton Dershowitz

"Being Those who are driven by a burning desire or higher purpose usually achieve great deeds. This purpose transcends money, security, or status. It is the knowledge that they are part of something worthy, right, and valuable." - David Dibble

"If you cannot find the truth right there where you are, where else do you expect to find it?" -

"The right to search for the truth implies also a duty; one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be the truth." - Albert Einstein

"Whenever two good people argue over principles, they are both right." -

"[Plato's ideal society] guarantees to all people the right to an education that diagnoses and perfects their unique talents, plus a work role that conveys a sense of self-esteem, saving them from the neuroses of megalomania and the lust for power. It forbids privilege and sexism and all other criteria irrelevant to merit. It eliminates conflict of interest from those who hold office and gives the masses a potent checklist they can use to hold their rulers to account. Best of all, it eliminates all traces of "might makes right" and serves as a pattern laid up in heaven to rank actual societies in terms of what corrupts them. Society becomes more corrupt as the struggle for power becomes more brutal." - James R. Flynn, aka Jim Flynn

"Whether you believe you can do a thing or not, you are right." - Henry Ford

"There are many more wrong answers than right ones, and they are easier to find." - Michael Friedlander

"It seems to be a constant throughout history: In every period, people believed things that were just ridiculous, and believed them so strongly that you would have gotten in terrible trouble for saying otherwise. Is our time any different? To anyone who has read any amount of history, the answer is almost certainly no. It would be a remarkable coincidence if ours were the first era to get everything just right. It's tantalizing to think we believe things that people in the future will find ridiculous. What would someone coming back to visit us in a time machine have to be careful not to say?" - Paul Graham

"The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously." -

"There is but one rule of conduct for a man - to do the right thing. The cost may be dear in money, in friends, in influence, in labor, in a prolonged and painful sacrifice, but the cost not to do right is far more dear: You pay in the integrity of your manhood, in your honor, in strength of character; and, for a timely gain, you barter the infinite." - Archer G. Jones

"In our modern society, in which knightly virtues are for the most part lacking, romanticizing the folklore heralding the virtues of friendship, trust, and heroism is understandable. I firmly believe that if the values held by the mythical knight in shining armor who stood up for right and good were followed or embodied today, they could in fact change the world." - H. Roy Kim

"Learn to do things right and then do them right every time." - Bobby Knight

"Each generation leaves its own mark on the sands of time. It is always a tragedy when a new generation accepts as final what has been done in the past, thus denying itself the right to explore and develop new paths, new insights, and new responses to life and living." - Gerald Alexander Larue

"The truth is that right actions done for the wrong reasons do not help to build the internal quality or character that is called "virtue," and it is this quality or character that really matters." -

"I am not bound to win, but I am bound to be true. I am not bound to succeed, but I am bound to live by the light that I have. I must stand with anybody that stands right, and stand with him while he is right, and part with him when he goes wrong." - Abraham Lincoln

"It often requires more courage to dare to do right than to fear to do wrong." - Abraham Lincoln

"Winning is not a sometime thing; it's an all time thing. You don't win once in a while, you don't do things right once in a while, you do them right all the time. Winning is habit. Unfortunately, so is losing." - Vince Lombardi, fully Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi

"Integrity is one of several paths - it distinguishes itself from the others because it is the right path... and the only one upon which you will never get lost." - M. H. McKee

"When I speak to people about creating a life, they often speak of what they want to "do" – as opposed to what they want to "feel." My recommendation to someone facing your decision is to write down a list of feelings that you're trying to create in your life and use that as the measuring stick to determine whether you're achieving your goals. I post my list right above my desk every day." - Luke O’Neill

"We are all capable of believing things which we know to be untrue... and then, when we are finally proved wrong, impudently twisting the facts so as to show that we were right. Intellectually, it is possible to carry on this process for a long time, until sooner or later these false beliefs bump up against reality - often on a battlefield." -

"Remember always that you have not only the right to be an individual, you have an obligation to be one." - Ambrose Redmoon, pen name for James Neil Hollingsworth

"Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there." -

"Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway. You'll be "damned if you do, and damned if you don't."" - Eleanor Roosevelt, fully Anna Eleanor Roosevelt