Great Throughts Treasury

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

Related Quotes

James Fenimore Cooper

It is a terrible thought, that nothing is ever forgotten; that not an oath is ever uttered that does not continue to vibrate through all time, in the wide-spreading current of sound; that not a prayer is lisped, that its record is not to be found stamped on the laws of nature by the indelible seal of the Almighty's will.

Nature | Nothing | Prayer | Sound | Thought | Time | Will | Wisdom |

John Dewey

The fundamental defect in the present state of democracy is the assumption that political and economic freedom can be achieved without first freeing the mind. Freedom of mind is not something that spontaneously happens. It is not achieved by mere absence of obvious restraints. It is a product of constant unremitting nurture of right habits of observation and reflection.

Absence | Democracy | Freedom | Mind | Observation | Present | Reflection | Right | Wisdom |

William Cowper

It is a terrible thought, that nothing is ever forgotten; that not an oath is ever uttered that does not continue to vibrate through all times, in the wide spreading current of sound; that not a prayer is lisped, that its record is not to be found stamped on the laws of nature by the indelible seal of the Almighty's will.

Nature | Nothing | Prayer | Sound | Thought | Will | Wisdom |

Auguste Comte, formally Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte

When a regular division of employments has spread through any society, the social state begins to acquire a consistency and stability which place it out of danger from particular divergencies.

Consistency | Danger | Society | Wisdom | Danger |

George William Curtis

The sure foundations of the State are laid in knowledge, not in ignorance; and every sneer at education, at culture, at book learning, which is the recorded wisdom of the experience of mankind, is the demagogue’s sneer at intelligent liberty, inviting national degeneracy and ruin.

Culture | Degeneracy | Education | Experience | Ignorance | Knowledge | Learning | Liberty | Mankind | Wisdom |

Charles W. Eliot

Nobody has any right to find life uninteresting or unrewarded who sees within the sphere of his own activity a wrong he can help to remedy, or within himself an evil he can hope to overcome.

Evil | Hope | Life | Life | Right | Wisdom | Wrong |

Orville Dewey

The dead carry our thoughts to another and a nobler existence. They teach us, and especially buy all the strange and seemingly untoward circumstances of their departure from this life, that they and we shall live in a future state forever.

Circumstances | Existence | Future | Life | Life | Teach | Wisdom |

Albert Einstein

The State is made for man, not man for the State.

Man | Wisdom |

Albert Einstein

Those who rage today against the ideals of reason and of individual freedom, and seek to impose an insensate state of slavery by means of brutal force, rightly see in the Jews irreconcilable opponents.

Force | Freedom | Ideals | Individual | Means | Rage | Reason | Slavery | Wisdom |

Euripedes NULL

The state has no worse foe than a tyrant.

Wisdom |

François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

Accustom yourself gradually to carry prayer into all your daily occupations. Speak, move, work, in peace, as if you were in prayer, as indeed you ought to be. Do everything with excitement, by the spirit of grace.

Excitement | Grace | Peace | Prayer | Spirit | Wisdom | Work |

Environment Pollution Panel NULL

The pervasive nature of pollution, its disregard of political boundaries including state lines, the national character of the technical, economic and political problems involved, and the recognized Federal responsibilities for administering vast public lands which can be changed by pollution, for carrying out large enterprises which can produce pollutants, for preserving and improving the nation’s natural resources, all make it mandatory that the Federal Government assume leadership and exert its influence in pollution abatement on a national scale.

Character | Government | Influence | Nature | Problems | Public | Wisdom | Government | Leadership |

François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

True prayer is only another name for the love of God. Its excellence does not consist in the multitude of our words; for our Father knoweth what things we have need of before we ask Him. The true prayer is that of the heart, and the heart prays only for what it desires. To pray, then, is to desire - but to desire what God would have us desire.

Desire | Excellence | Father | God | Heart | Love | Need | Prayer | Wisdom | Words | Excellence | God |

Benjamin Franklin

Life is rather a state of embryo, a preparation for life; a man is not completely born till he has passed through death.

Death | Life | Life | Man | Wisdom |

Henry George

The ideal social state is not that in which each gets an equal amount of wealth, but in which each gets in proportion to his contribution to the general stock.

Wealth | Wisdom |

J. G. Gallimore, fully Jerry G. Gallimore

Your self image is your pattern! Every thought has an activity visualized. Every activity belongs to a pattern. You identify with your pattern of thought. Your pattern leads your life.

Life | Life | Self | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Joseph Gerrald

Those who are versed in the history of their country, in the history of the human race, must know that rigorous state prosecutions have always preceded the era of convulsion; and this era, I fear, will be accelerated by the folly and madness of our rulers. If the people are discontented, the proper mode of quieting their discontent is, not by instituting rigorous and sanguinary prosecutions, but by redressing their wrongs and conciliating their affections. Courts of justice, indeed, may be called in to the aid of ministerial vengeance; but if once the purity of their proceedings is suspected, they will cease to be objects of reverence to the nation; they will degenerate into empty and expensive pageantry, and become the partial instruments of vexatious oppression. Whatever may become of me, my principles will last forever. Individuals may perish; but truth is eternal. The rude blasts of tyranny may blow from every quarter; but freedom is that hardy plant which will survive the tempest and strike an everlasting root into the most unfavorable soil.

Aid | Discontent | Era | Eternal | Folly | Freedom | History | Madness | People | Principles | Purity | Reverence | Truth | Tyranny | Will | Wisdom |