Despoil Quotes
In the early days our forefathers could cut down a forest or exhaust the fertility of a farm and then blithely move to a new forest or a new farm... The highest concept of statesmanship was to make it possible for the eager, aggressive pioneer to possess, to despoil and then repeat the process indefinitely. ...[Shortsided and unchecked greed resulted in] denuded forests, floods, droughts, a disappearing water table, erosion, a less stable and equable climate, a vanishing wildlife.
Harold L. Ickes
I defy the most scrupulous defender of property to contest these principles, short of declaring openly that he understands this word as the right to despoil and assassinate his fellows. So how have people been able to claim that any sort of restriction, or rather any regulation of the trade in wheat, was an attack on property, and disguise that barbaric system under the specious name of freedom of trade? Do the authors of this system not perceive that they are inevitably in contradiction with themselves?
Maximilien Robespierre
The Jewish question will always remain a difficult one. In this case also the State should not take up the role of prosecutor and should not tolerate attacks by Christians upon the Jews; but it should not give the Jews the kind of protection they demand in their newspapers. It would be the most effective way of combatting Jewish doctrine for Christians to worship the Golden Calf less and to become simpler in their habits and in their desires. We should not forget that many Christians are as bad as the Jews in their covetousness and that they despoil as pitilessly anyone who falls into their hands.
Alfred von Waldersee
It is utterly and irrevocably possible to empty all hurts and, therefore, to love, to have compassion. To have compassion means to have passion for all things, not just between two people, but for all human beings, for all things of the earth, the animals, the trees, everything the earth contains. When we have such compassion we will not despoil the earth as we are doing now, and we will have no wars.
Jiddu Krishnamurti
It has been the boast of our government that it seeks to do justice in all things without regard to the strength or weakness of those with whom it deals. I mistake the American people if they favor the odious doctrine that there is no such thing as international morality; that there is one law for a strong nation and another for a weak one, and that even by indirection a strong power may with impunity despoil a weak one of its territory.
Grover Cleveland
