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

Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman

No matter what your profession – doctor, lawyer, architect, accountant – if you are an American, you better be good at the touchy-feely service stuff, because anything that can be digitized can be outsourced to either the smartest or the cheapest producer.

Important | Order | People | World |

Thomas Wentworth Higginson

In ancient Boeotia brides were carried home in vehicles whose wheels were burned at the door, in token, that they would never again be needed.

People | Sentiment | War |

Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

I believe in Democracy because it releases the energies of every human being.

Friend | Peace | War | Will |

Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus

Few persons will leave their families, connections, friends, and native land, to seek a settlement in untried foreign climes, without some strong subsisting causes of uneasiness where they are, or the hope of some great advantages in the place to which they are going.

Death | Earth | Inevitable | Man | Mankind | Power | Success | War | Work |

Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman

No policy is sustainable without a public that broadly understands why it's necessary and sees the world the way you do...

Absence | Better | Children | Global | Hate | Humanity | Kill | Knowledge | Men | Murder | News | Order | Peace | Religion | Self-realization | Terrorism | Thought | War | Murder | Thought |

Thomas Szasz, fully Thomas Stephen Szasz

What the psychiatrist calls a “delusion of persecution” is one of the most dramatic human defenses against the feeling of personal insignificance and worthlessness. In fact, no one cares a hoot about Jones. He is an extra on the stage of life. But he wants to be a star.

Evil | Order |

Thomas R. Kelly, fully Thomas Raymond Kelly

But whatever the earthly history of this moment of charm, this vision of an absolutely holy life is, I am convinced, the invading, urging, inviting, persuading work of the Eternal One. It is curious that modern psychology cannot account wholly for flashes of insight of any kind, sacred or secular. It is as if a fountain of creative Mind were welling up, bubbling to expression within prepared spirits. There is an infinite fountain of lifting power, pressing within us, luring us by dazzling visions, and we can only say, The creative God comes into our souls. An increment of infinity is about us. Holy is imagination, the gateway of Reality into our hearts. The Hound of Heaven is on our track, the God of Love is wooing us to His Holy Life. Once having the vision, the second step to holy obedience is this: Begin where you are. Obey now. Use what little obedience you are capable of, even if it be like a grain of mustard seed. Begin where you are. Live this present moment, this present hour as you now sit in your seats, in utter, utter submission and openness toward Him. Listen outwardly to these words, but within, behind the scenes, in the deeper levels of your lives where you are all alone with God the Loving Eternal One, keep up a silent prayer, "Open Thou my life. Guide my thoughts where I dare not let them go. But Thou darest. Thy will be done." Walk on the streets and chat with your friends. But every moment behind the scenes be in prayer, offering yourselves in continuous obedience. I find this internal continuous prayer life absolutely essential. It can be carried on day and night, in the thick of business, in home and school. Such prayer of submission can be so simple. It is well to use a single sentence, repeated over and over and over again, such as this: "Be Thou my will. Be Thou my will," or "I open all before Thee. I open all before Thee," or "See earth through heaven, See earth through heaven." This hidden prayer life can pass, in time, beyond words and phrases into mere ejaculations, "My God, my God, my Holy One, my Love," or into the adoration of the Upanishad, "O Wonderful, O Wonderful, O Wonderful." Words may cease and one stands and walks and sits and lies in wordless attitudes of adoration and submission and rejoicing and exultation and glory.

Enough | Faith | God | Greed | Heart | Humility | Imperialism | Little | Means | Smile | War | Will | Wise | God |

Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

I fancy that it is just as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shooting at you.

Fighting | War | Will |

Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman

We reward risk taking. Our university system is competitive and experimental.

Boys | Care | Heart | Right | War | World | Think |

Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman

Yes, the world is now flat for publishing as well.

Power | Reward | Time | War | Will |

Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman

I think that we're going to know after six to nine months whether this project has any chance of succeeding. In which case, I think the American people as a whole will want to play it out or whether it really is a fool's errand.

Boys | Heart | Right | War | Worth | Think | Understand |

Thomas J. Watson, fully Thomas John Watson, Sr.

Design must reflect the practical and aesthetic in business but above all... good design must primarily serve people.

Men | Order | Problems | Thinking | World | Trouble |

Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus

The germs of existence contained in this spot of earth, with ample food, and ample room to expand in, would fill millions of worlds in the course of a few thousand years.

Friend | Order | Present |

Thomas Wentworth Higginson

We need to become national, not by any conscious effort, such as implies attitudinizing and constraint, but by simply accepting our own life. It is not desirable to go out of one’s way to be original, but it is to be hoped that it may lie in one’s way. Originality is simply a fresh pair of eyes. If you want to astonish the whole world, said Rahel, tell the simple truth. It is easier to excuse a thousand defects in the literary man who proceeds on this faith, than to forgive the one great defect of imitation in the purist who seeks only to be English. As Wasson has said, “The Englishman is undoubtedly a wholesome figure to the mental eye; but will not twenty million copies of him do, for the present?” We must pardon something to the spirit of liberty. We must run some risks, as all immature creatures do, in the effort to use our own limbs. Professor Edward Channing used to say that it was a bad sing for a college boy to write too well; there should be exuberances and inequalities. A nation which has but just begun to create a literature must sow some wild oats. The most tiresome vaingloriousness may be more hopeful than hypercriticism and spleen. The follies of the absurdest spread-eagle orator may be far more promising, because they smack more of the soil, than the neat Londonism of the city editor who dissects him.

Culture | Faith | Little | Need | People | Pride | Slavery | War | Will |

Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman

But the Indias and Chinas are increasingly adding one more thing to low-cost labor and high-power technology: unfettered imagination–that is, high innovative and creative capabilities. They will focus first on solving their own problems with cheap labor, high technology, and high creativity–re-imagining their own futures… So, for the last time, you have been warned. This is not a test.

People | Power | Strength | War | Will | Think |

Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder

The condition of leadership adds new degrees of solitariness to the basic solitude of mankind. Every order that we issue increases the extent to which we are alone, and every show of deference which is extended to us separates us from our fellows.

Order | Spirit |

Thucydides NULL

The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest, but if it is judged worthy by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the understanding of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content.

Evil | War |

Thucydides NULL

The Nation that makes a great distinction between its scholars and its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting done by fools.

Growth | Power | War |

Thucydides NULL

The freaks of chance are not determinable by calculation.

Adversity | Decision | Fate | Fortune | Good | Lesson | Mankind | People | Power | Prosperity | Reason | Success | Truth | War | Fate |

Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now.

Better | Change | Distrust | Heart | Man | Nations | Reason | Thought | Trust | War | Will | World | Afraid | Child | Thought |