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

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

In the history of modern socialism this is a phenomenon, that the strife of the various trends within the socialist movement has from national become international.

Power | World |

Vimala Thakar

In the dimension of dhyan (meditation) you have let the activities of the mind come to an end

Darkness | Human race | People | Race | Spirit | Survival | Time |

Virginia Satir

A growing body of clinical observation has pointed to the conclusion that the family therapy must be oriented to the family as a whole.

Aesthetic | Argument | Better | Existence | Luxury | Meaning | Pleasure |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

Those, who get attracted by ignorance and superficial worldly pleasures meet their ends early.

Good | Respect | Success | Wealth | Respect |

Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman

I think [the invasion of Iraq] was unquestionably worth doing, Charlie. I think that, looking back, I now certainly feel I understand more what the war was about... We needed to go over there basically, and take out a very big stick, right in the heart of that world, and burst that bubble… And what they needed to see was American boys and girls going from house to house, from Basra to Baghdad, and basically saying: which part of this sentence do you understand?

Better | Existence | Future | Government | Majority | People | Poverty | Statistics | World | Government | Think |

Thomas J. Watson, Jr., fully Thomas John Watson, Jr.

The secret I learned early on from my father was to run scared and never think I had it made. I never felt I was completely adequate to the job and always ran scared. The fundamental for our success was running scared.

Attention | Enthusiasm | Important | Means | Perfection |

Thomas R. Kelly, fully Thomas Raymond Kelly

But self-renunciation means God-possession, the being possessed by God. Out of utter humility and self-forgetfulness comes the thunder of the prophets, "Thus saith the Lord." High station and low are leveled before Him. Be not fooled by the world's power. Imposing institutions of war and imperialism and greed are wholly vulnerable for they, and we, are forever in the hands of a conquering God. These are not cheap and hasty words. The high and noble adventures of faith can in our truest moments be seen as no adventures at all, but certainties. And if we live in complete humility in God we can smile in patient assurance as we work. Will you be wise enough and humble enough to be little fools of God? For who can finally stay His power? Who can resist His persuading love? Truly says Saint Augustine, "There is something in humility which raiseth the heart upward."

Business | Competition | Desire | Discernment | God | Growth | Habit | Humility | Important | Life | Life | Little | Looks | Meekness | Money | Nothing | Obedience | Poverty | Pride | Self | Soul | Superiority | Trifles | Will | Business | God |

Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

The business of government is to organize the common interest against the special interests.

Neutrality | Sympathy |

Thorstein Veblen, fully Thorstein Bunde Veblen, born Torsten Bunde Veblen

The changing styles are the expression of a restless search for something which shall commend itself to our aesthetic sense; but as each innovation is subject to the selective action of the norm of conspicuous waste, the range within which innovation can take place is somewhat restricted. The innovation must not only be more beautiful, or perhaps oftener less offensive, than that which it displaces, but it must also come up to the accepted standard of expensiveness.

Birth | Body | Consequences | Culture | Deference | Distinction | Example | Force | Indulgence | Leisure | Lesson | Men | Office | Practice | Regard | Regulation | Respect | Speech | Respect | Vice |

Drew Curtis

In theory, Equal Time for Nutjobs should be harmless. The people being interviewed are obviously out of their gourds. The problem is that a Mass Media mention gives them instant credibility. The media audience automatically assumes that the Mass Media wouldn’t give coverage to anything they knew was patently false.

Cause | Internet | Neutrality | People | Warning | Think |

Egyptian Proverbs

Not the greatest Master can go even one step for his disciple; in himself he must experience each stage of developing consciousness. Therefore he will know nothing for which he is not ripe.

Elif Safak

When you see a hand from afar, Kimya, can you do that there is only one school. But you dive into the water, you realize that there is more than a river. The river is hidden inside various currents and they all run in harmony, yet are completely separate from one another.

Belief | Books | Destroy | Force | God | Good | Insanity | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Need | People | Philosophy | Religion | Taste | Time | Words | God | Understand |

Elizabeth Gould Davis

Man is by nature a pragmatic materialist, a mechanic, a lover of gadgets and gadgetry; and these are the qualities that characterize the "establishment" which regulates modern society: pragmatism, materialism, mechanization, and gadgetry. Woman, on the other hand, is a practical idealist, a humanitarian with a strong sense of noblesse oblige, an altruist rather than a capitalist.

Defense | Men | Woman | Worry |

Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste

Friends are "annuals" that need seasonal nurturing to bear blossoms. Family is a "perennial" that comes up year after year, enduring the droughts of absence and neglect. There's a place in the garden for both of them.

Husband | Time |

Evgeny Morozov

To reject solutionism is to transcend the narrow-minded rationalistic mindset that recasts every instance of an efficiency deficit... as an obstacle that needs to be overcome.

Eugene Peterson

Song and dance are the result of an excess energy. When we are normal we talk, when we are dying we whisper, but when there is more in us than we contain we sing. When we are healthy we walk, when we are decrepit we shuffle, but when we are beyond ourselves with vitality we dance.

Death | Neutrality | Will |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

Foolish and vain indeed is the workingman who makes the color of his skin the stepping-stone to his imaginary superiority. The trouble is with his head, and if he can get that right he will find that what ails him is not superiority but inferiority, and that he, as well as the Negro he despises, is the victim of wage-slavery, which robs him of what he produces and keeps both him and the Negro tied down to the dead level of ignorance and degradation.

Struggle | Friends |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Nothing human is finally calculable; even to ourselves we are strange.

Bible | Religion | Bible |

Italian Proverbs

No woman ever speaks the naked truth.

Neutrality |