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

Euripedes NULL

The state has no worse foe than a tyrant.

Wisdom |

Felix Frankfurter

Democracy is always a beckoning goal, not a safe harbor. For freedom is an unremitting endeavor, never a final achievement.

Achievement | Democracy | Freedom | Safe | Wisdom |

Epicharmus of Kos or Epicharmus Comicus or Epicharmus Comicus Syracusanus NULL

It is the understanding that sees and hears; it is the understanding that improves everything, that orders everything, and that acts, rules, and reigns.

Understanding | Wisdom |

Environment Pollution Panel NULL

The pervasive nature of pollution, its disregard of political boundaries including state lines, the national character of the technical, economic and political problems involved, and the recognized Federal responsibilities for administering vast public lands which can be changed by pollution, for carrying out large enterprises which can produce pollutants, for preserving and improving the nation’s natural resources, all make it mandatory that the Federal Government assume leadership and exert its influence in pollution abatement on a national scale.

Character | Government | Influence | Nature | Problems | Public | Wisdom | Government | Leadership |

A. H. R. Fairchild, fully Arthur Henry Rolph Fairchild

The most distinctive mark of a cultured mind is the ability to take another's point of view; to put one's self in another's place, and see life and its problems from a point of view different from one's own. To be willing to test a new idea; to be able to live on the edge of difference in all matters intellectually; to examine without heat the burning question of the day; to have imaginative sympathy, openness and flexibility of mind, steadiness and poise of feeling, cool calmness of judgment, is to have culture.

Ability | Calmness | Culture | Day | Flexibility | Judgment | Life | Life | Mind | Openness | Problems | Question | Self | Sympathy | Wisdom | Flexibility |

Benjamin Franklin

Life is rather a state of embryo, a preparation for life; a man is not completely born till he has passed through death.

Death | Life | Life | Man | Wisdom |

Benjamin Franklin

Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech; which is the right of every man as far as by it he does not hurt or control the right of another; and this is the only check it ought to suffer and the only bounds it ought to know... Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freedom of speech, a thing terrible to traitors.

Control | Freedom of speech | Freedom of thought | Freedom | Liberty | Man | Public | Right | Speech | Thought | Wisdom |

Henry George

The ideal social state is not that in which each gets an equal amount of wealth, but in which each gets in proportion to his contribution to the general stock.

Wealth | Wisdom |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

It is delightful to transport one’s self into the spirit of the past, to see how a wise man has thought before us, and to what a glorious height we have at last reached.

Man | Past | Self | Spirit | Thought | Wisdom | Wise | Thought |

J. G. Gallimore, fully Jerry G. Gallimore

Your self image is your pattern! Every thought has an activity visualized. Every activity belongs to a pattern. You identify with your pattern of thought. Your pattern leads your life.

Life | Life | Self | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Joseph Gerrald

Those who are versed in the history of their country, in the history of the human race, must know that rigorous state prosecutions have always preceded the era of convulsion; and this era, I fear, will be accelerated by the folly and madness of our rulers. If the people are discontented, the proper mode of quieting their discontent is, not by instituting rigorous and sanguinary prosecutions, but by redressing their wrongs and conciliating their affections. Courts of justice, indeed, may be called in to the aid of ministerial vengeance; but if once the purity of their proceedings is suspected, they will cease to be objects of reverence to the nation; they will degenerate into empty and expensive pageantry, and become the partial instruments of vexatious oppression. Whatever may become of me, my principles will last forever. Individuals may perish; but truth is eternal. The rude blasts of tyranny may blow from every quarter; but freedom is that hardy plant which will survive the tempest and strike an everlasting root into the most unfavorable soil.

Aid | Discontent | Era | Eternal | Folly | Freedom | History | Madness | People | Principles | Purity | Reverence | Truth | Tyranny | Will | Wisdom |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

We are so made, that we can only derive intense enjoyment from a contrast, and only very little from a state of things.

Contrast | Enjoyment | Little | Wisdom |