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

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

It takes time for a fruit to mature and acquire sweetness and become eatable; time is a prime factor for most good fortunes.

Cultivation | Delusion | Hypothesis | Means | People | Present | Wealth | Happiness |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

A person, whose heart is pure, remains untouched by 'pain' just as an assiduous person remains aloof from sinful deeds.

Ignorance |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

It is the duty of the husband to earn money and fulfill the needs of his wife. It is also his duty to keep her happy and satisfied. He should protect her and fulfill all her demands.

Duty | Guidance | Means | People | Guidance |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

There is none to question Me if I do not act; there is nothing I would lose if I do not engage in activity. Nor have I any great urge to be active. But yet, you see Me very active. The reason is, I must be doing something all the time, for your sake, as an example, as an inspiration, as a piece of training.

Force | Ignorance | Life | Life | Man | Tragedy | Wrong |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

The sun showers light to one and all without any discrimination. Similarly, humans should also engage himself in doing works for the benefit of the society.

Birth | Conquest | Eternal | Grief | Learning | Little | Means | Pleasure | Study |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

Those, who indulge excessively in material and sensual pleasures approach death with fear and inevitably fall prey to the wrath of death.

Ends | Ignorance |

Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

When Mr. John P. Gavit, managing editor of the New York Evening Post, wrote to Mr. Melville E. Stone, general manager of the Associated Press, that I had a reputation as an insatiable hunter of personal publicity, what Mr. Gavit meant was that I was accustomed to demand and obtain more space in newspapers than the amount of my worldly possessions entitled me to.

Enough | Life | Life | Man | Means | Time | Will |

Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

The shriek was followed by another, louder and yet more agonizing… for once started upon that journey, the hog never came back. One by one the men hooked up the hogs and slit their throats. There was a line of hogs with squeals and lifeblood ebbing away… until at last each vanished into a huge vat of boiling water (some still alive). The hogs were so innocent. They came so very trustingly. They were so very human in their protests. They had done nothing to deserve it.

Depression | Means |

Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.

Daughter | Means | Mother | Will | Woman | Afraid |

Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

Public speaking is done in the public tongue, the national or tribal language; and the language of our tribe is the men's language. Of course women learn it. We're not dumb. If you can tell Margaret Thatcher from Ronald Reagan, or Indira Gandhi from General Somoza, by anything they say, tell me how. This is a man's world, so it talks a man's language.

Means | Nothing |

Vannevar Bush

The Encyclopoedia Britannica could be reduced to the volume of a matchbox. A library of a million volumes could be compressed into one end of a desk. If the human race has produced since the invention of movable type a total record, in the form of magazines, newspapers, books, tracts, advertising blurbs, correspondence, having a volume corresponding to a billion books, the whole affair, assembled and compressed, could be lugged off in a moving van. Mere compression, of course, is not enough; one needs not only to make and store a record but also to be able to consult it, and this aspect of the matter comes later. Even the modern great library is not generally consulted; it is nibbled by a few.

Ability | Difficulty | Experience | Important | Means | Present |

Vannevar Bush

All our steps in creating or absorbing material of the record proceed through one of the senses— the tactile when we touch keys, the oral when we speak or listen, the visual when we read. Is it not possible that someday the path may be established more directly?

Conservation | Defense | Knowledge | Learning | Leisure | Man | Means | Objectives | Position | Science | Will | World | Leadership |

Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

The unread story is not a story; it is little black marks on wood pulp. The reader, reading it, makes it live: a live thing, a story.

God | Ignorance | Inevitable | Life | Life | God |

Václav Havel

Why do I say this? It would be very unreasonable to understand the sad legacy of the last forty years as something alien, which some distant relative bequeathed to us. On the contrary, we have to accept this legacy as a sin we committed against ourselves. If we accept it as such, we will understand that it is up to us all, and up to us alone to do something about it. We cannot blame the previous rulers for everything, not only because it would be untrue, but also because it would blunt the duty that each of us faces today: namely, the obligation to act independently, freely, reasonably and quickly. Let us not be mistaken: the best government in the world, the best parliament and the best president, cannot achieve much on their own. And it would be wrong to expect a general remedy from them alone. Freedom and democracy include participation and therefore responsibility from us all.

Freedom | Language | Means | People | System | Crisis | Learn |

Vannevar Bush

To be able to key one sheet of a million before an operator in a second or two, with the possibility of then adding notes thereto, is suggestive in many ways. It might even be of use in libraries, but that is another story. At any rate, there are now some interesting combinations possible. One might, for example, speak to a microphone, in the manner described in connection with the speech-controlled typewriter, and thus make his selections. It would certainly beat the usual file clerk.

Day | Future | Man | Means | Progress | Science |

Tommaso Campanella, baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella

And when the play is over, it shall be that God will judge with justice and with grace.— aping this art divine, the human race plans for itself on earth a comedy:

Means | Opinion | Practice | War |

Tommaso Campanella, baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella

If we know not its love, its intellect, neither the worm within my belly seeks to know me, but his petty mischief wreaks:— thus it behooves us to be circumspect.

Ignorance | Pride |

Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

Neither the gifts nor the blows of fortune equal those of nature.

Ignorance | Knowledge | Spirit |