Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

John Powell, fully Sir John Powell

English Welsh Judge of the Court of Common Pleas and the Court of the King's Bench

"He who has no inclination to learn more will be very apt to think that he knows enough."

"Consider the reason of the case, for nothing is law that is not reason."

"A good listener truly wants to know the speaker."

"A sense of his or her own worth is no doubt the greatest gift we can offer another, the greatest contribution we can make to any life. We can give this gift and make this contribution only through love. However, it is essential that our love be liberating, not possessive. We must at all times give those we love the freedom to be themselves. Love affirms the other as "other". It does not possess and manipulate another as "mine"."

"Anytime we can take narcotics off the street it is significant because it takes them out of the hands of children. It certainly is not going to stop the drug problem, we have to work very, very hard."

"Communication works for those who work at it."

"In evaluating my love for you, I must then address myself to the question of whether my love is in fact possessive or manipulative or really affirming and freeing. It will help, in this evaluation, to ask myself these questions; Is it more important to me that you be pleased with yourself or that I be pleased with you? Is it more important that you attain the goals you have set for yourself, or that you attain the goals I want for you?"

"Let us consider the reason of the case. For nothing is law that is not reason."

"More than 90 percent of all the prisoners in our American prisons have been abused as children."

"The only love worthy of a name is unconditional."

"The only real mistake is the one from which we learn nothing."

"To love is to liberate. Love and friendship must empower those we love to become their best selves according to their own lights and visions. This means that wanting what is best for you and trying to be what you need me to be can be done only in a way that preserves your freedom to have your own feelings, think your own thoughts and make your own decisions . If your personhood is as dear to me as my own, which is the implication of love, I must respect it carefully and sensitively. When I affirm you, my affirmation is based on your unconditional value as a unique, unrepeatable and even sacred mystery of humanity."

"Human beings, like plants, grow in the soil of acceptance, not in the atmosphere of rejection."

"A person can grow only as much as his horizon allows."

"There is no fixed, true and real person inside of you or me, precisely because being a person necessarily implies becoming a person, being in process."