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

Salman Rushdie, fully Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie

Shame is like everything else; live with it for long enough and it becomes part of the furniture.

Defense | Freedom | Music | People |

Samuel Adams

Christian men, who had come together for solemn deliberation in the hour of their extremity, to say there was so wide a difference in their religious belief that they could not, as one man, bow the knee in prayer to the Almighty, whose advice and assistance they hoped to obtain.

Defense | Liberty | People | Rights |

Samuel Adams

A general dissolution of the principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy.... While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader.... If virtue and knowledge are diffused among the people, they will never be enslaved. This will be their great security.

Defense | Generosity | Property | Reward | Surrender | Will | Value |

Sam Keen

Soul grows in communion. Word by word, story by story, for better or worse, we build our world. From true conversation - speaking and listening - communication deepens into compassion and creates community.

Defense | Enough | Nothing | Personality | Play | Risk | Old |

Samuel Gompers

The European war has demonstrated the dependence of the governments upon the cooperation of the masses of people. Since the masses perform indispensable service, it follows that they should have a voice in determining the conditions upon which they give service.

Defense | Justice | Life | Life |

Samuel Gompers

Of course the children of immigrants go to school, and after a few years they become Americanized. But how about the grown-up persons, the adults? Who makes an effort to Americanize them? The labor organization. . . . We have done more to help establish somewhat of a conception of Americanism amongst the emigrants to our country than any other agency of which I know.

Avarice | Children | Defense | Hope | Mankind | Opportunity | Recreation | Wealth | Will |

Samuel Gompers

The 14th and 15th amendments, no matter what we thought of them, are part of the Constitution. Negroes are now equal with the white man.

Battle | Crime | Defense | Hope | Justice | Principles | Sacrifice | War | Will |

Samuel Gompers

We recognize the poverty, we know the sweatshop, we can play on every string of the harp, and touch the tenderest chords of human sympathy; but while we recognize the evil and would apply the remedy, our Socialist friends would look forward to the promised land, and wait for the sweet by-and-by. Their statements as to economic ills are right; their conclusions and their philosophy are all askew.

Defense | Effort | Important | Prudence | Prudence | Rights |

Samuel I. Prime, fully Samuel Irenaeus Prime

Staying where you now are, you must perish; coming to Christ, you can but perish; coming to Christ, no one ever did perish; while you sit still and starve, there is bread enough and to spare in your Father's house. Will you return?

Art | Attention | Children | Day | Good | Hate | Important | Little | Man | Need | Order | Practice | Question | Talking | Will | Words | Instruction | Art |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

No doubt fate would find it easier than I do to relieve you of your illness. But you will be able to convince yourself that much will be gained if we succeed in transforming your hysterical misery into common unhappiness.

Talking | Will |

Simon Wiesenthal

We thought we were going mad, ... Perhaps we feared (or hoped) we were mad already.

Need | People | Talking |

Simon Wiesenthal

The National Socialist (Nazi) party had 10 million members, of whom at most 150,000 were criminals. It would be grotesque to stick the label of criminal on every former member of the party.

Defense | History | Man |

Simon Wiesenthal

For your benefit, learn from our tragedy. It is not a written law that the next victims must be Jews. It can also be other people. We saw it begin in Germany with Jews, but people from more than twenty other nations were also murdered. When I started this work, I said to myself, 'I will look for the murderers of all the victims, not only the Jewish victims. I will fight for justice.'

Talking | Tragedy |

Simone Weil

One of the most exquisite pleasures of human love — to serve the loved one without his knowing it — is only possible, as regards the love of God, through atheism.

Talking |

Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir

She was not to look beyond herself for the meaning of her life.

Beauty | Envy | Love | Talking | Beauty |

Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir

I should like to be the landscape which I am contemplating, I should like this sky, this quiet water to think themselves within me, that it might be I whom they express in flesh and bone, and I remain at a distance. But it is also by this distance that the sky and the water exist before me. My contemplation is an excruciation only because it is also a joy. I cannot appropriate the snow field where i slide. It remains foreign, forbidden, but I take delight in this very effort toward an impossible possession. I experience it as a triumph, not as a defeat.

Judgment | Talking | Time |

Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl of Bewdley

So it has always been with tyrants among our own people: when the King was tyrant, let him look out. And it has always been the same, and will be the same, whether the tyrant be the Barons, whether the tyrant be the Church, whether he be demagogue or dictator — let them look out.

Day | Defense | Old | Think |

Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl of Bewdley

I would rather be an opportunist and float than go to the bottom with my principles round my neck.

Children | Defense | Earth | Enemy | Kill | Man | Means | People | Power | Will | Think |

Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl of Bewdley

The Holy Bible is not only great but high explosive literature. It works in strange ways and no living man can tell or know how that book in its journeyings through the world has started an individual soul 10,000 different places into a new life, a new belief, a new conception and a new faith.

Crime | Defense | People | Truth | Afraid | Old | Think |

Stanley Kunitz, fully Stanley Jasspon Kunitz

Old myths, old gods, old heroes have never died. They are only sleeping at the bottom of our mind, waiting for our call. We have need for them. They represent the wisdom of our race.

Need | Talking | Worth |