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

Tom Butler-Bowdon

The first step on the road to success is good character. The second is openness to new perspectives. The third is ensuring that daily action is shaped by higher aims, with the knowledge that you always reap what you sow.

Action | Aims | Character | Good | Knowledge | Openness | Success |

Andrew Carnegie

No kind action is ever lost.

Action |

Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter

In order to live we must decide on one course of action rather than another, moment by moment. We declare our values and take our stands in both small ways and large. Were we to admit that we are never certain that we have chosen correctly, and never reassured that this chosen course was the correct course of action, then we would be open to the unending exploration and revision in our way of living. We would have learned to put our prejudices and assumptions, our convictions and beliefs at risk.

Action | Convictions | Order | Risk |

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

Communism and Fascism or Nazism although poles apart in their intellectual content are similar in this, that both have emotional appeal to the type of personality that takes pleasure in being submerged in a mass movement and submitting to superior authority.

Authority | Personality | Pleasure |

Fidel Castro, fully Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz

Whoever hesitates while waiting for ideas to triumph among the masses before initiating revolutionary action will never be a revolutionary. Humanity will, of course, change. Human society will, of course, continue to develop – in spite of men and the errors of men. But that is not a revolutionary attitude.

Action | Change | Humanity | Ideas | Men | Society | Waiting | Will | Society |

Jacques Ellul

Action makes propaganda’s effect irreversible. He who acts in obedience to propaganda can never go back. He is not obliged to believe in that propaganda because of his past action. He is obliged to receive from it his justification and authority, without which his action will seem to him absurd or unjust, which would be intolerable.

Absurd | Action | Authority | Justification | Obedience | Past | Receive | Will | Propaganda |

Dhammapada NULL

From pleasure comes grief, from pleasure comes fear; he who is free from pleasure knows neither grief nor fear.

Fear | Grief | Pleasure |

Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm

Every action of the enemy is judged by one standard – every action of oneself by another.

Action | Enemy |

Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm

The pleasure in the complete domination over another person (or other animate objects) is the very essence of the sadistic drive.

Pleasure |

Charles de Gaulle, fully Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle

Every man of action has a strong dose of egotism, pride, hardness, and cunning. But all those things will be forgiven him, indeed, they will be regarded as high qualities, if he can make of them the means to achieve great ends.

Action | Cunning | Ends | Man | Means | Pride | Qualities | Will |

J. W. Fulbright, fully James William Fulbright

We must dare to think 'unthinkable' thoughts. We must learn to explore all the options and possibilities that confront us in a complex and rapidly changing world. We must learn to welcome and not to fear the voices of dissent. We must dare to think about the 'unthinkable things' because when things become unthinkable, thinking stops and action becomes mindless.

Action | Dissent | Fear | Thinking | World | Learn | Think |

Benjamin Franklin

One’s true happiness depends more upon one’s own judgment of one’s self, or a consciousness of rectitude in action and intention, and the approbation of those few, who judge impartially, than upon the applause of the unthinking, undiscerning multitude, who are apt to cry Hosanna today, and tomorrow, Crucify him.

Action | Applause | Consciousness | Intention | Judgment | Self | Tomorrow | Happiness |

Farmer’s Almanac NULL

In youth the absence of pleasure is pain; in old age the absence of pain is pleasure.

Absence | Age | Old age | Pain | Pleasure | Youth | Youth | Old |

Romano Guardini

My being known by God is my reality, and I become real in the measure that my life and action are in harmony with the knowledge of God.

Action | God | Harmony | Knowledge | Life | Life | Reality | God |

B. H. Liddell Hart, fully Captain B. H. Liddell

For collective action it suffices if the mass can be managed; collective growth is only possible through the freedom and enlargement of individual minds.

Action | Freedom | Growth | Individual |

Abraham Joshua Heschel

A Jew is asked to take a leap of action rather than a leap of thought: to surpass his needs, to do more than he understands in order to understand more than he does… Through the ecstasy of deeds he learns to be certain of the presence of God.

Action | Deeds | Ecstasy | God | Order | Thought | Deeds | Understand |