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

Adam Smith

Servants, laborers, and workmen of different kinds, make up the far greater part of every great political society. But what improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable. IT is but equity, besides, that they who feed, clothe, and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labor as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed and lodged.

Body | Circumstances | Equity | Happy | Labor | People | Society | Society |

Aeschylus NULL

How rare, men with the character to praise a friend’s success without a trace of envy.

Character | Envy | Friend | Men | Praise | Success |

Adrienne Rich, fully Adrienne Cecil Rich

[Responsibility to yourself] means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short, simply to avoid conflict and confrontation. And this, in turn, means resisting the forces in society which say that women should be nice, play safe, have low professional expectations, drown in love and forget about work, live through others, and stay in places assigned to us. It means that we insist on a life of meaningful work, insist that work be as meaningful as love and friendship in our lives. It means, therefore, the courage to be “different”; not to be continuously available to others when we need time for ourselves and our work; to be able to demand of others – parents, friends, roommates, teachers, lovers, husbands, children – that they respect our sense of purpose and our integrity as persons.

Children | Courage | Integrity | Life | Life | Love | Means | Need | Parents | Play | Purpose | Purpose | Respect | Responsibility | Safe | Sense | Society | Time | Work | Friendship | Society | Respect |

Alfred North Whitehead

Your character is developed according to your faith. This is the primary religious truth from which no one can escape.

Character | Faith | Truth |

Alvin Toffler

All social and political problems are interwoven – that energy, for example, affects economics, which in turn affects health, which in turn, affects education, work, family life, and a thousand other things. The attempt to deal with neatly defined problems in isolation from one another… creates only confusion and disaster.

Economics | Education | Energy | Example | Family | Health | Isolation | Life | Life | Problems | Work |

Alexander Hamilton

The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precaution for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust... The most effectual one is such a limitation of the term of appointments as will maintain a proper responsibility to the people.

Good | Men | People | Public | Responsibility | Society | Trust | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Wisdom |

Ambrose Gwinett Bierce

Boundary, n. In political geography, an imaginary line between two nations, separating the imaginary rights of one from the imaginary rights of the other.

Nations | Rights |

Alexis Carrel

Success in marriage requires continence as well as potency. In other words, character is indispensable in well-ordered sexual life.

Character | Indispensable | Life | Life | Marriage | Success | Words |