“Hating people is like burning down your own home to get rid of a rat.”
Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878–1969) American pastor
As I See Religion (1932)
Variant: Hating people is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat.
Said in reference to those who wished to abolish all religious teaching, rather than freeing state education from Church controls, in Critiques and Addresses (1873) p. 90
1870s
“Hating people is like burning down your own home to get rid of a rat.”
Harry Emerson Fosdick (1878–1969) American pastor
As I See Religion (1932)
Variant: Hating people is like burning down your own house to get rid of a rat.
Jan van Riebeeck (1619–1677) Dutch colonial governor
Precis of the Archives of the Cape of Good Hope, January 1656 - December 1658, Riebeeck's Journal, H. C. V. Leibrandt, Cape Town 1897, p. 117
On the 3rd of May 1658 Jan van Riebeeck gave further instructions to the men on Robben Island;
“I do not think you should get rid of your sin until you have learned what it has to teach you.”
Richard Rohr (1943) American spiritual writer, speaker, teacher, Catholic Franciscan priest
Variant: Do not get rid of your hurts until you have learned all that they have to teach you.
Source: Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life
“I got a new shadow. I had to get rid of the other one – it wasn’t doing what I was doing.”
Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author
“When you get rid of a turd, you do a good job.”
Edward I of England (1239–1307) King of England
Remark upon appointing John de Warenne, 6th Earl of Surrey as Guardian of Scotland (1296), attributed to Edward in the Scalacronica, quoted in Michael Prestwich, Edward I (Yale University Press, 1997), p. 477
Vernon Howard (1918–1992) American writer
Your Power of Natural Knowing
“It's obvious that the number one thing we have to do is to get rid of war.”
Benjamin Creme (1922–2016) artist, author, esotericist
Source: The State of the World 2010, public lecture in New York City, USA, (July 2010)