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

J. A. C. Brown, fully James Alexander Campbell Brown

All propaganda messages tend to occur in three stages: the stage of drawing attention and arousing interest, the stage of emotional stimulation, and the stage of showing how tension thus created can be relieved (i.e., by accepting the speaker’s advice).

Advice | Attention | Propaganda |

Winston Churchill, fully Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill

When great causes are on the move in the world, stirring all men’s souls, drawing them from their firesides, casting aside comfort, wealth and the pursuit of happiness in response to impulses at once awe-striking and irresistible, we learn that we are spirits, not animals.

Awe | Comfort | Men | Wealth | World | Happiness | Learn |

Rachel Carson, fully Rachel Louise Carson

The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.

Attention | Focus | Taste | Universe |

Gregg Braden

The possibilities of our future are actually determined by collective choices in the present. The evidence simply states that the choice of many people, focused in a specific manner, has a direct and measurable effect on our quality of life. Quantum physics suggests that by redirecting our focus – where we place our attention – we bring a new course of events into focus while at the same time releasing an existing course of events that may no longer serve us.

Attention | Choice | Events | Evidence | Focus | Future | Life | Life | People | Present | Time |

William Bridges, fully Sir William Throsby Bridges

Genuine beginnings begin within us, even when they are brought to our attention by external opportunities.

Attention |

Christopher Henry Dawson

The great fault of modern democracy - a fault that is common to the capitalist and the socialist - is that it accepts economic wealth as the end of society and the standard of personal happiness.

Democracy | Fault | Society | Wealth | Society | Fault |

Charles Fillmore

It is not a crime to be rich, nor a virtue to be poor… The sin lies in hoarding wealth and keeping it from circulating freely to all who need it.

Crime | Need | Sin | Virtue | Virtue | Wealth |

Emmet Fox

When you give your attention to anything, you are building that thing into your consciousness, for good or evil. When you are faced with some negative condition in your own life, the scientific way to handle it is to withdraw your attention form it by building the opposite into your subconscious, and when you have done this the undesirable thing falls away like an overripe fruit... Don’t tear away people’s crutches (or your own). When they are no longer needed they will fall away. Dissolve the need.

Attention | Consciousness | Evil | Good | Life | Life | Need | People | Will |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

It is not attention that the child is seeking but love.

Attention | Love | Child |

Emmet Fox

The present moment is never intolerable. It is always what is coming in five minutes or five days that makes people despair. The Law of Life is to live in the present, and this applies to both time and place. Keep your attention to the present moment, and in the place where your body is now.

Attention | Body | Despair | Law | Life | Life | People | Present | Time |

Maracus Minucius Felix

But perhaps you are deceived by the fact that many who know not God possess wealth in abundance, are full of honors, and enjoy great authority. These unhappy men are uplifted the higher, that their fall may be greater.

Abundance | Authority | God | Men | Wealth | God |

Henry George

So long as all the increased wealth which modern progress brings goes but to build up great fortunes, to increase luxury and make sharper the contrast between the House of Have and the House of Want, progress is not real and cannot be permanent. The reaction must come. The tower leans from its foundation, and every new story but hastens the final catastrophe.

Contrast | Luxury | Progress | Story | Wealth |

Russell Green

The advantage of a classical education is that it enables you to despise the wealth that it prevents you from achieving.

Despise | Education | Wealth |

Os Guiness

Does your calculus of success include the bottom line of death, or are you mortgaging your future for the immediate and the short term? Have you been tranquilized by the trivial, or does your sense of life grow from a close attention to reality and time?

Attention | Death | Future | Life | Life | Reality | Sense | Success | Time |

Samuel Goldwyn

Don’t pay attention to the critics – don’t even ignore them!

Attention |

Georgia Harkness

The act of praying centers attention on the higher emotion, unifies the spirit, crystallizes emotions, clarifies the judgments, releases latent powers, reinforces confidence that what needs to be done can be done.

Attention | Confidence | Emotions | Spirit |

Henry of Langenstein NULL

He who has enough to satisfy what he wants, and nevertheless ceaselessly labors to acquire riches, either in order to obtain a higher social position, or that subsequently he may have enough to live without labor, or that his sons may become men of wealth and importance - all such are incited by a damnable avarice, sensuality and pride.

Avarice | Enough | Labor | Men | Order | Position | Pride | Riches | Sensuality | Wants | Wealth |

Abraham Joshua Heschel

What the world needs is a sense of ultimate embarrassment. Modern man has the power and the wealth to overcome poverty and disease, but he has no wisdom to overcome suspicion. We are guilty of misunderstanding the meaning of existence; we are guilty of distorting our goals and misrepresenting our souls. We are better than our assertions, more intricate, more profound than our theories maintain.

Better | Disease | Existence | Goals | Man | Meaning | Poverty | Power | Sense | Suspicion | Theories | Wealth | Wisdom | World | Guilty |