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

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

Happiness is yours in the here and now. The painful states of anxiety and loneliness are abolished permanently. Financial affairs are not financial problems. You are at ease with yourself. You are not at the mercy of unfulfilled cravings. Confusion is replaced with clarity. There is a relieving answer to every tormenting question. You possess a True Self. Something can be done about every unhappy condition. While living in the world you can be inwardly detached from its sorrows to live with personal peace and sanity.

Understanding |

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

A confused mind calls itself a clear mind, and that explains the entire human horror story.

Emotions | Understanding |

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

A man’s day is purposeless when he spends it in unconscious nourishment of neurosis.

Life | Life | Man | Understanding |

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

Man’s major social illusion is that he can build a society which is higher than his own psychological level.

Earth | Life | Life | Understanding |

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

Staying home (spiritually) is where a true spiritual hero is. Don’t go into thought.

Need | Understanding |

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

When we associate with others we really associate with ourselves. We like or dislike in others whatever we like or dislike in ourselves.

Choice | Comfort | Time | Understanding |

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

What a dawning appears to the man or woman who earnestly inquires, 'Who is living my life for me?' Am I really thinking for myself or am I unknowingly projecting acquired ideas which may be all wrong?

Time | Understanding | Will |

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

'There is something wrong inside of me.' Stop right there. Stop right there until the responsibility is so fixed there is no way you can get out of it. You've trapped yourself and that is a marvelous thing to do because when you do that you have taken a certain amount of the right responsibility for facing a problem where it exists, inside yourself.

Understanding |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

For the body to perform to the optimum level it is necessary that all the doors work perfectly.

Day | Happy | Husband | Trust | Understanding | Wife |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

Upon the firm, broad earth, the all-begetting mother of the plants, that is supported by (divine) law, upon her, propitious and kind, may we ever pass-our lives.

Better | Ideals | Understanding |

Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

If we are the greatest nation the sun ever shone upon, it would seem to be mainly because we have been able to goad our wage-earners to this pitch of frenzy.

Man | Understanding | Understand |

Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

I wrote with tears and anguish, pouring into the pages all that pain which life had meant to me. Externally the story had to do with a family of stockyard workers, but internally it was the story of my own family. Did I wish to know how the poor suffered in winter time in Chicago? I only had to recall the previous winter in the cabin, when we had only cotton blankets, and had rags on top of us. It was the same with hunger, with illness, with fear. Our little boy was down with pneumonia that winter, and nearly died, and the grief of that went into the book.

Man | Understanding | Understand |

Václav Havel

It is the beginning of the worst moment. All of the flood barriers are at their maximum level.

Good | Manners | People | Principles | Sense | Understanding | Politeness |

Václav Havel

What I am about to say may sound provocative, but I feel more and more strongly that even these ideas are not enough, that we must go farther and deeper.

Authority | Morality | Order | Responsibility | Science | Understanding | Will |

Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

The wise needn't ask, the fool asks in vain.

Understanding |

Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

We're in the world, not against it. It doesn't work to try to stand

Books | Understanding | Think |

Václav Havel

It has become clear that the legacy of the past decades we have to cope with is even worse than we anticipated or could anticipate in the joyful atmosphere of those first weeks of freedom. New problems are emerging day by day, and we can see how interconnected they are, how long it takes to solve them, and how difficult it is to establish priorities.

Change | Global | Purpose | Purpose | Spirit | Understanding | Will |

Vannevar Bush

In my opinion such a thing is impossible for many years... People have been talking about a 3000 miles high-angle rocket shot from one continent to another, carrying an atomic bomb and so directed as to be a precise weapon... I think we can leave that out of our thinking.

Mathematics | Rest | Understanding |

Václav Havel

When a man has his heart in the right place and good taste, he can not only do well in politics but is even predetermined for it. If someone is modest and does not yearn for power, he is certainly not ill-equipped to engage in politics; on the contrary, he belongs there. What is needed in politics is not the ability to lie but rather the sensibility to know when, where, how and to whom to say things.

Awareness | Earth | Hypothesis | Understanding | World | Awareness |

Václav Havel

Today's world, as we all know, is faced with multiple threats. From whichever angle I look at this menace, I always come to the conclusion that salvation can only come through a profound awakening of man to his own personal responsibility, which is at the same time a global responsibility. Thus, the only way to save our world, as I see it, lies in a democracy that recalls its ancient Greek roots: democracy based on an integral human personality personally answering for the fate of the community.

Authority | Awareness | Heart | Office | Opposition | Position | Understanding | Awareness |