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

Jiddu Krishnamurti

What is important is to free ourselves from ideas, from nationalism, from all religious beliefs and dogmas, so that we can act, not according to a pattern or an ideology, but as needs demand... It is only when the mind is free of idea and belief that it can act rightly... and freedom from ideas can take place only through self-awareness and self-knowledge.

Awareness | Belief | Character | Freedom | Ideas | Important | Knowledge | Mind | Self | Self-awareness | Self-knowledge | Wisdom |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

As far as we can discern, the sole purpose of human existence is to kindle a light in the darkness of mere being.

Character | Darkness | Existence | Light | Purpose | Purpose |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

Personality is the supreme realization of the innate individuality of a particular living being. Personality is an act of the greatest courage in the face of life, the absolute affirmation of all that constitutes the individual, and the most successful adaptation to the universal conditions of existence coupled with the greatest possible freedom of personal decision.

Absolute | Character | Courage | Decision | Existence | Freedom | Individual | Individuality | Life | Life | Personality |

John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.

Character | Conformity | Enemy | Freedom | Growth |

Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

To stand on one leg and prove God's existence is a very different thing from going down on one's knees and thanking him.

Character | Existence | God |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

In every adult there lurks a child - an eternal child, something that is always becoming, is never completed, and calls for unceasing care, attention, and education. That is the part of the human personality which wants to develop and become whole.

Attention | Care | Character | Education | Eternal | Personality | Wants | Child |

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Man is man because he is free to operate within the framework of his destiny. He is free to deliberate, to make decisions, and to choose between alternatives. He is distinguished from animals by his freedom to do evil or to do good and to walk the high road of beauty or tread the low road of ugly degeneracy.

Beauty | Character | Degeneracy | Destiny | Evil | Freedom | Good | Man | Ugly | Beauty |

Gloria D. Karpinski

In surrender we can both give and receive. Relationships take on a different meaning. We learn to be in someone’s life without being in their dance. A relationship becomes important not because it satisfies personality needs but because it’s the pathway to wholeness.

Character | Important | Life | Life | Meaning | Personality | Receive | Relationship | Surrender | Wholeness | Learn |

Ya’akov Dov "Katzele" Katz

We are constantly repeating messages in our minds. If they are negative: “I’m a failure,” “The world is an awful place,” “Nothing ever goes right,” we make our lives miserable. We have the ability to consciously make an effort to repeat to our selves positive messages: “I have the ability to keep improving,” “The world contains many wonderful opportunities,” “Everything that happens to me can be used for growth”... Little by little they will have a positive effect on your personality and emotions.

Ability | Character | Effort | Emotions | Failure | Growth | Little | Nothing | Personality | Right | Will | World |

Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

It requires moral courage to grieve; it requires religious courage to rejoice.

Character | Courage |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

Our unconscious existence is the real one and our conscious world a kind of illusion, an apparent reality constructed for a specific purpose like a dream which seems a reality as long as we are in it.

Character | Existence | Illusion | Purpose | Purpose | Reality | World |

Otto Kahn, fully Otto Hermann Kahn

The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are... The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.

Character | Cost | Freedom | Present | Submission | Surrender |

John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America can do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

Character | Freedom | Man | World |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Reality comes into being only when the mind is still, not made still. Therefore, there must be no disciplining of the mind to be still. When you discipline yourself, it is merely a projected desire to be in a particular state. Such a state is not the state of passivity... Liberation is from moment to moment in the understanding of what is, when the mind is free, not made free. It is only a free mind that can discover, not a mind molded by a belief or shaped according to a hypothesis. Such a mind cannot discover. There can be no freedom is there is conflict, for conflict is the fixing of the self in relationship.

Belief | Character | Desire | Discipline | Freedom | Hypothesis | Mind | Reality | Relationship | Self | Understanding |

John L. Lewis, fully John Llewellyn Lewis

Often those who seek only license for their plundering, cry “liberty.” In the guise of this Old American ideal, men of vast economic domain would destroy what little liberty remains to those who toil. The liberty we seek is different. It is liberty fro common people - freedom from economic bondage, freedom from the oppressions of the vast bureaucracies of great corporations; freedom to regain again some human initiative, freedom that arises from economic security and human self-respect.

Character | Destroy | Freedom | Initiative | Liberty | Little | Men | People | Respect | Security | Self | Old |

Gaius Lucilius

Man is loved mainly because of two virtue: courage first, loyalty second.

Character | Courage | Loyalty | Loyalty | Man | Virtue | Virtue |

Jacques Maritain

A coward flees backward, away from new things. A man of courage flees forward, in the midst of new things.

Character | Courage | Man |

Rosa Luxemburg, aka Rosalia Luxemburg, "Bloody Rosa"

Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently.

Character | Freedom | Wisdom |