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

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

The first essential of civilization is law. Anarchy is simply the handmaiden and forerunner of tyranny and despotism. Law and order enforced with justice and by strength lie at the foundations of civilization. Law must be based upon justice, else it cannot stand, and it must be enforced with resolute firmness, because weakness in enforcing it means in the end that there is no justice and no law, nothing but the rule of disorderly and unscrupulous strength. Without the habit of orderly obedience to the law, without the stern enforcement of the laws at the expense of those who defiantly resist them, there can be no possible progress, moral or material, in civilization. There can be no weakening of the law-abiding spirit here at home, if we are permanently to succeed; and just as little can we afford to show weakness abroad.

Existence | Government | Knowledge | Law | Public | Right | Government |

Thich Nhất Hanh

Do not say that I'll depart tomorrow because even today I still arrive.

Awareness | Existence | Life | Life | People | Reality | Suffering | Awareness |

Thomas Berry

Wave on wave of life expansion took place for 65 million years. What we are doing when we extinguish the species of trees, extinguish the animals, extinguish the rainforest, we are negating 65 million years of effort. It's not that we are changing human history, we are changing Earth history; we're not just changing human life, we are bringing about a disastrous change in the total life development of the planet Earth.

Achievement | Earth | Energy | Existence | Nothing | Story | Will |

Thomas Berry

There is no inner world without the outer world.

Arrogance | Beginning | Existence | Mystery | Reverence | Will | Wisdom | World |

Thich Nhất Hanh

You can practice deep listening in order to relieve the suffering in us, and in the other person. That kind of listening is described as compassionate listening. You listen only for the purpose of relieving suffering in the other person.

Existence | Nothing | Search | Universe |

Thomas Berry

The Universe story is the quintessence of reality. We perceive the story. We put it in our language, the birds put it in theirs, and the trees put it in theirs. We can read the story of the Universe in the trees. Everything tells the story of the Universe. The winds tell the story, literally, not just imaginatively. The story has its imprint everywhere, and that is why it is so important to know the story. If you do not know the story, in a sense you do not know yourself; you do not know anything.

Alienation | Energy | Existence | Experience | Individual | Self | Universe |

Thomas Arnold

Our first impressions are to consider the Ascension of our Lord as the very greatest event connected with His appearance on earth. To our own mind, undoubtedly, nothing could be so solemn, so exalting, as the changing this life for another; the putting off mortality and putting on immortality; and all this we connect with the thought of the removal from earth to heaven.

Age | Childhood | Existence | Labor | Men | Work |

Thomas Arnold

If there be one thing on earth which is truly admirable, it is to see God's wisdom blessing an inferiority of natural powers, where they have been honestly, truly, and zealously cultivated.

Absurd | Existence | Ideas | Insanity | Mind |

Thomas Berry

The universe itself is the primary sacred community. All human religion should be considered as participation in the religious aspect of the universe itself. It is false to say that humanity is the most excellent being in the universe. The most excellent being in the universe is the universe itself.

Existence | Universe |

Thomas Berry

We need merely understand that the evolutionary process is neither random nor determined but creative. It follows the general pattern of all creativity. While there is no way of fully understanding the origin moment of the universe we can appreciate the direction of evolution in its larger arc of development as moving from lesser to great complexity in structure and from lesser to greater modes of consciousness. We can also understand the governing principles of evolution in terms of its three movements toward differentiation, inner spontaneity, and comprehensive bonding.

Balance | Existence | Law | Reality |

Thomas Berry

The great work facing humanity, he says, is to move from mindlessly extracting and consuming the earth's resources to establishing a mutually beneficial relationship with nature.

Excitement | Existence | Experience | Life | Life |

Thomas Carlyle

How does the poet speak to men with power, but by being still more a man than they?

Majority | People | Youth | Youth |

Thomas Carlyle

Cant is itself properly a double-distilled lie, the materia prima of the devil, from which all falsehoods, imbecilities, and abominations body themselves, and from which no true thing can come.

Existence | Man | Object |

Thomas Carlyle

A fair day's wage for a fair day's work: it is as just a demand as governed men ever made of governing. It is the everlasting right of man.

Existence | Man |

Thomas Carlyle

Humour has justly been regarded as the finest perfection of poetic genius.

Existence | Humor | Light | Man | Nature | Perfection | Wants |

Thomas Chalmers

The public! The public! How many fools does it require to make the public?

Existence | Man | Nothing | Popularity | Worth |

Thomas Carlyle

Of all God's creatures, Man alone is poor.

Existence |

Thomas Hobbes

Whosoever persuadeth by reasoning from principles written, maketh him to whom he speaketh judge, both of the meaning of those principles and also of the force of his inferences upon them.

Existence | Men | Providence | Will |

Thomas Jefferson

Almighty God hath created the mind free. All attempts to influence it by temporal punishments or burthens are a departure from the plan of the holy author of our religion No man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship or ministry or shall otherwise suffer on account of his religious opinions or belief, but all men shall be free to profess and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion. I know but one code of morality for men whether acting singly or collectively.

Harmony | Heart | Law | Liberty | Life | Life | Majority | Mind | Sacred | Will |

Thomas Jefferson

Dispositions of the mind, like limbs of the body, acquire strength by exercise.

Censor | Error | Majority | Office | Opinion | Persuasion | Reason | Uniformity | World |