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

Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

Death is not the end: it is temporary emancipation... the land to which souls go at death - they enjoy a freedom such as they never knew during their earthly life. So don’t pity the person who is passing through the delusion of death, for in a little while he will be free. Once he gets out of that delusion, he sees that death was not so bad after all. He realizes that his mortality was only a dream and rejoices that now no fire can burn him, no water can drown him; he is free and safe.

Death | Delusion | Freedom | Land | Life | Life | Little | Pity | Safe | Will |

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

If there is any principle of the Constitution that more imperatively calls for attachment than any other it is the principle of free thought - not free thought for those who agree with us but freedom for the thought that we hate.

Freedom | Hate | Thought | Thought |

Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh

Evil was made sweet to delude you. You have to use your discrimination to distinguish between poisoned honey and that which is in your best interest. Avoid those things that will ultimately hurt you, and choose those that will give you freedom and happiness.

Distinguish | Evil | Freedom | Will |

Plato NULL

Democracy comes into being after the poor have conquered their opponents, slaughtering some and banishing some, while to the remainder they give an equal share of freedom and power; and this is the form of government in which the magistrates are commonly elected by lot.

Democracy | Freedom | Government | Power | Government |

Phyllis McGinley

The human animal needs a freedom seldom mentioned, freedom from intrusion. He needs a little privacy quite as much as he wants understanding or vitamins or exercise or praise.

Freedom | Little | Praise | Understanding | Wants |

Peyton Conway March

There is a wonderful mythical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life - happiness, freedom and peace of mind - are always attained by giving them to someone else.

Freedom | Giving | Law | Life | Life | Mind | Nature | Peace |

Ralph Nader

It’s about whether we’re going to be able to look forward to our descendants and hand this world over to them in much better shape, so they will look back on us with kindness and with praise – rather than cursing us for our apathy, or our narcissism, or our refusal to stand up tall for justice and freedom in the world.

Apathy | Better | Freedom | Justice | Kindness | Praise | Will | World |

R. G. Collingwood, fully Robert George Collingwood

There is no truer and more abiding happiness than the knowledge that one is free to go on doing, day by day, the best work one can do, in the kind one likes best, and that this work is absorbed by a steady market and thus supports one's own life. Perfect freedom is reserved for the man who lives by his own work and in that work does what he wants to do.

Day | Freedom | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Wants | Work | Happiness |

Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL

When freedom does not have a purpose, when it does not wish to know anything about the rule of law engraved in the hearts of men and women, when it does not listen to the voice of conscience, it turns against humanity and society.

Conscience | Freedom | Humanity | Law | Men | Purpose | Purpose | Rule | Society |

Ralph Nader

Our flag stands for "liberty and justice for all." Our flag must never be misused or defiled as a bandana for war crimes, as a gag against the people's freedom of speech and conscience or as a fig leaf to hide the shame of charlatans in high public office, who violate our Constitution, our laws and our founding fathers' framework for accountable, responsive government.

Conscience | Freedom of speech | Freedom | Government | Justice | Liberty | Office | People | Public | Shame | Speech | War |

R. G. Collingwood, fully Robert George Collingwood

Perfect freedom is reserved for the person who lives by their own work and in that work does what they want to do.

Freedom | Work |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

To hazard a contradiction - freedom is necessary.

Contradiction | Freedom | Hazard |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Let us learn the meaning of economy. Economy is a high human office, a sacrament when its aim is grand, when it is the prudence of simple tastes, when it is practiced for freedom or for love or devotion.

Devotion | Freedom | Love | Meaning | Office | Prudence | Prudence | Learn |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nothing is more disgusting than the crowing about liberty by slaves, as most men are, and the flippant mistaking for freedom of some paper preamble like a Declaration of Independence, of the statue right to vote, by those who never dared to think or to act.

Freedom | Liberty | Men | Nothing | Right | Think |

René Descartes

As to the freedom of the will, a very different account must be given of it as it exists in God and as its exists for us... That idea of good impelled God to choose one thing rather than another... Thus that supreme indifference in God is the supreme proof of his omnipotence. But as to man, since he finds the nature of all goodness and truth already determined by God, and his will cannot bear upon anything else, it is evident that he embraces the true and the good the more willingly and hence the more freely in proportion as he sees the true and the good more clearly, and that he is never indifferent save when he does not know what is the more true or the better, or at least when he does not see clearly enough to prevent him from doubting about it. Thus the indifference which attaches to human liberty is very different from that which belongs to the divine.

Better | Enough | Freedom | God | Good | Indifference | Liberty | Man | Nature | Omnipotence | Truth | Will | God |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Man is conscious of a universal soul within or behind his individual life, wherein, as in a firmament, the natures of Justice, Truth, Love, Freedom arise and shine. This universal soul he calls Reason: it is not mine, or thing, or his, but we are its; we are its property and men.

Freedom | Individual | Justice | Life | Life | Love | Man | Men | Property | Reason | Soul | Truth |