Famous Quotes & Sayings

Charles Dickens

I know nothing of philosophical philanthropy. But I know what I have seen, and what I have looked in the face in this world here, where I find myself. And I tell you this, my friend, that there are people (men and women both, unfortunately) who have no good in them-none. That there are people whom it is necessary to detest without compromise. That there are people who must be dealt with as enemies of the human race. That there are people who have no human heart, and who must be crushed like savage beasts and cleared out of the way.

David Mitchell

I'm not from a milieu where high-register language or philosophical ideas were welcome.

Carl Sagan

There is today-in a time when old beliefs are withering-a kind of philosophical hunger, a need to know who we are and how we got here. It is an on-going search, often unconscious, for a cosmic perspective for humanity

Bryce Dallas Howard

The greatest sci-fis, in my mind, are two things: They're what-ifs - what if this happened, and you get to see it - but they're also these philosophical cautionary tales. They deal with the underlying themes beneath the what-if.

Camille Paglia

Homeric mind is ingenuity, practical intelligence. There is no Rodin-like deep thinking, no mathematical or philosophical speculation. Odysseus thinks with his hands.

William Shakespeare

A great cause of the night is lack of the sun.

David Hume

Do you come to a philosopher as to a cunning man, to learn something by magic or witchcraft, beyond what can be known by common prudence and discretion?

David Hume

Scholastic learning and polemical divinity retarded the growth of all true knowledge.

David Hume

No advantages in this world are pure and unmixed.

Charles Caleb Colton

God is on the side of virtue; for whoever dreads punishment suffers it, and whoever deserves it, dreads it .

Charles Spurgeon

Death is no punishment to the believer: it is the gate of endless joy.

David Shore

The saying within the writer's room, which were my words of wisdom, if you will, was, "The punishment doesn't have to fit the crime, but there has to be a crime."

Bryan Stevenson

Embracing a certain quotient of racial bias and discrimination against the poor is an inexorable aspect of supporting capital punishment. This is an immoral condition that makes rejecting the death penalty on moral grounds not only defensible but necessary for those who refuse to accept unequal or unjust administration of punishment.

Cesare Beccaria

Crimes are more effectually prevented by the certainty than the severity of punishment

Catherine the Great

All punishments by which the human body might be maimed are barbarbarism.

Kurt Vonnegut

I had taught myself that a human being might as well look for diamond tiaras in the gutter as for rewards and punishments that were fair.

August Strindberg

Religion must be a punishment, because nobody gets religion who does not have a bad conscience.

Bertrand Russell

The twin conceptions of sin and vindictive punishment seem to be at the root of much that is most vigorous, both in religion and politics.

Charles Caleb Colton

It is seldom that statesmen have the option of choosing between a good and an evil.

Charles Caleb Colton

Life often presents us with a choice of evils, rather than of goods.

Charles Caleb Colton

Human foresight often leaves its proudest possessor only a choice of evils.

Charles Caleb Colton

No propagation or multiplication is more rapid that that of evil, unless it be checked; no growth more certain.

Charles Caleb Colton

Accustom yourself to submit on all and every occasion, and on the most minute, no less than on the most important circumstances of life, to a small present evil, to obtain a greater distant good. This will give decision, tone, and energy to the mind, which, thus disciplined, will often reap victory from defeat and honor from repulse.

Charles Dickens

Good never come of such evil, a happier end was not in nature to so unhappy a beginning.

Charles Dickens

It is known, to the force of a single pound weight, what the engine will do; but, not all the calculators of the National Debt can tell me the capacity for good or evil, for love or hatred, for patriotism or discontent, for the decomposition of virtue into vice, or the reverse.

Charles Simmons

It is a great evil, as well as a misfortune, to be unable to utter a prompt and decided 'no'.

Charles Stanley

We're living in a fearful time. Since 9/11 people have become more afraid than before, because of terrorism. There's a lot of confusion about evil, where it's all coming from.