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

Wilhelm Reich

If "freedom" means, first of all, the responsibility of every individual for the rational determination of his own personal, professional and social existence, then there is no greater fear than that of the establishment of general freedom. Without a thoroughgoing solution of this problem there never will be a peace lasting longer than one or two generations. To solve this problem on a social scale, it will take more thinking, more honesty and decency, more conscientiousness, more economic, social and educational changes in social mass living than all the efforts made in previous and future wars and post-war reconstruction programs taken together.

Ability | Anger | Deviation | Education | Fighting | Health | Joy | Love | Pain | People | Pleasure | Truth | World |

Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney

People don't care what you know. They just want to know that you care.

Ability | Age | Dreams | Entertainment | Success | World |

Walter Bagehot

Poverty is an anomaly to rich people. It is very difficult to make out why people who want dinner do not ring the bell.

Ability | Education |

Walter Lippmann

The decay of decency in the modern age, the rebellion against law and good faith, the treatment of human beings as things, as the mere instruments of power and ambition, is without a doubt the consequence of the decay of the belief in man as something more than an animal animated by highly conditioned reflexes and chemical reactions. For, unless man is something more than that, he has no rights that anyone is bound to respect, and there are no limitations upon his conduct which he is bound to obey.

Ability | Art | Giving | People | Self-interest | Statesmanship | Will | Art | Learn |

Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha

The advice "you never go broke taking a profit" is foolish.

Ability |

Wang Yang-Ming or Yangming, aka Wang Shouren or Wang Shou-jen, courtesy name Bo'an

The human mind naturally finds pleasure in the principles of righteousness, just as the eyes take pleasure in color and the ears in sound.

Ability | Man | Virtue | Virtue |

Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha

In the 20th century, the United States endured two world wars, and other traumatic and expensive military conflicts, the depression, a dozen or so recessions, and financial panics, oil shocks, a flu epidemic, and the resignation of a disgraced president. Yet the Dow rose from 66 to 11,497.

Ability | Little | Society | Society |

Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha

That industry is in a state of flux right now. It's historically earned very good returns on invested capital, but it could well be that the world will unfold differently in the future than in the past. I'm not sure I can give you a good answer on that.

Ability | Society | Talent | Society |

Wang Yang-Ming or Yangming, aka Wang Shouren or Wang Shou-jen, courtesy name Bo'an

The Taoist talk about vacuity is motivated by a desire for nourishing everlasting life, and the Buddhist talk about non-being is motivated by the desire to escape from the sorrowful sea of life and death. In both cases, a certain selfish idea has been added to the original substance [of the mind], thereby losing the true character of vacuity and obstructing the original substance [of the mind]. The Confucian sage merely returns to the true condition of innate knowledge of the good and does not attach to it any selfish desire.

Ability | Man | Virtue | Virtue |

Warren Bennis, fully Warren Gamaliel Bennis

What makes a good follower? The single most important characteristic may well be a willingness to tell the truth. In a world of growing complexity leaders are increasingly dependent on their subordinates for good information, whether the leaders want to hear it or not. Followers who tell the truth and leaders who listen to it are an unbeatable combination.

Ability | Knowledge | Means | Society | Understanding | Society |

Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha

It’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.

Ability |

Washington Irving

The forests had put on their sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tenderer kind had been nipped by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet. Streaming files of wild ducks began to make their appearance high in the air; the back of the squirrel might be heard from the groves of beech and hickory-nuts, and the pensive whistle of the quail at intervals from the neighboring stubble field. The small birds were taking their farewell banquets. In the fullness of their revelry, they fluttered, chirping and frolicking from bush to bush, and tree to tree, capricious from the very profusion and variety around them. There was the honest cock robin, the favorite game of stripling sportsmen, with its loud querulous note; and the twittering blackbirds flying in sable clouds; and the golden-winged woodpecker with his crimson crest, his broad black gorget, and splendid plumage; and the cedar bird, with its red-tipt wings and yellow-tipt tail and its little monteiro cap of feathers; and the blue jay, that nosy coxcomb, in his gay light blue coat and white underclothes, screaming and chattering, nodding and bobbing and bowing, and pretending to be on good terms with every songster of the grove.

Ability |

Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

Anything that has been accomplished by any other human being in the physical realm is within the field of possibility.

Ability | Evidence | Talent |

Wayne Muller

Even in the middle of a hurricane, the bottom of the sea is calm. As the storm rages and the winds howl, the deep waters sway in gentle rhythm, a light movement of fish and plant life. Below there is no storm.

Ability | Courage | Equanimity | Experience | Feelings | Strength | Learn |

Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

Transformation literally means going beyond your form.

Ability |

Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

The activity of worrying keeps you immobilized.

Ability | Honor | Humanity | Intention | Relationship | World |

Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

The fact that you are willing to say, "I do not understand, and it is fine," is the greatest understanding you could exhibit.

Ability | Circumstances | Fulfillment | Greatness |

Wendell Berry

If we are looking for insurance against want and oppression, we will find it only in our neighbors' prosperity and goodwill and, beyond that, in the good health of our worldly places, our homelands. If we were sincerely looking for a place of safety, for real security and success, then we would begin to turn to our communities - and not the communities simply of our human neighbors but also of the water, earth, and air, the plants and animals, all the creatures with whom our local life is shared.

Ability | Beauty | Change | Freedom | Health | Mistrust | Oppression | Order | War | Will | Beauty | Think | Understand |

Wendell Berry

The language that reveals also obscures.

Ability | Capacity | Destroy | Health | People | Sense |

Wendell Berry

The care of the earth is our most ancient and most worthy and, after all, our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it, and to foster its renewal, is our only legitimate hope.

Ability | Abundance | Defeat | Desire | Evidence | Hope | Ignorance | Knowledge | Problems | Revelation | World |