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

Joseph Jaworski

I discovered that people are not really afraid of dying; they’re afraid of not ever having lived, not every having deeply considered their life’s higher purpose, and not ever having stepped into that purpose and at least tried to make a difference in this world.

Life | Life | People | Purpose | Purpose | World | Afraid |

Thomas Jefferson

Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.

Opinion |

Barbara Kingsolver

The most assiduous task of parenting is to divine the difference between boundaries and bondage.

Martin Luther King, Jr.

True peace is not merely the absence of tension; it is the presence of justice.

Absence | Justice | Peace |

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki

The artist justifies his existence only when he can transform his imagination into truth.

Existence | Imagination | Truth |

Glenn W. Lehrer

Crystals are like concentrated knowledge pressed into crystalline form. They are the culmination of life force coming together in time and space. The crystal shows nature’s urge for symmetry and perfection. Our life purpose is like that – purposeful curiosity and imagination yearning for balance and beauty.

Balance | Beauty | Curiosity | Force | Imagination | Knowledge | Life | Life | Nature | Perfection | Purpose | Purpose | Space | Time |

Michael Kane

Anarchism is [not] synonymous with chaos. Translated from the Greek, anarchism means the absence of rulers, or orders – not of rules or order. Order emanates naturally from the free cooperation of persons in a community.

Absence | Cooperation | Means | Order |

Jun'ichirō Tanizaki

The artist's imagination may wander far from nature. But as long as it is a living, moving power in his brain, isn't it just as real as any other natural phenomenon? The artist justifies his existence only when he can transform his imagination into truth.

Existence | Imagination | Nature | Power |

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Peace is not merely the absence of war, but the presence of justice.

Absence | Justice | Peace | War |

Golda Meir, originally named Goldie Mabovitch, later Goldie Myerson

There’s no difference between one’s killing and making decisions that will send others to kill. It’s exactly the same thing, or even worse.

Kill | Will |

Thomas Merton

Do not look for any pleasure, because you were not created for pleasure: you were created for joy. And if you do not know the difference between pleasure and spiritual joy you have not yet begun to live.

Joy | Pleasure |

Vince Lombardi, fully Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi

The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.

Knowledge | Strength | Will |

Robert Nozick

A significant life is, in some sense, permanent; it makes a permanent difference to the world – it leaves traces.

Life | Life | Sense | World |

Thomas Paine

The animosity which Nations reciprocally entertain is nothing more than what the policy of their Governments excites to keep up the spirit of the system. Each Government accuses the other of perfidy, intrigue, and ambition, as a means of heating the imagination of their respective Nations, and incensing them to hostilities. Man is not the enemy of Man, but through the medium of a false system of Government.

Ambition | Enemy | Government | Imagination | Intrigue | Man | Means | Nations | Nothing | Perfidy | Policy | Spirit | System | Government |

William Penn

They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it. Death cannot kill what never dies. Nor can spirits ever be divided, that love and live in the same divine principle, the root and record of their friendship. If absence be not death, neither is theirs. Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass they see face to face; and their converse is free, as well as pure. This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.

Absence | Comfort | Death | Kill | Love | Society | World | Friendship | Society | Friends |

Pope Paul VI, born Giovanni Battista Enrico Antonio Maria Montini NULL

Peace cannot be limited to a mere absence of war, the result of an ever precarious balance of forces. No, peace is something built up day after day, in the pursuit of an order intended by God, which implies a more perfect form of justice among men and women.

Absence | Balance | Day | God | Justice | Men | Order | Peace | War |