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

Aaron Waldie

Of all things acquired through life, the one possession we hope to never attain is regret. For that is a possession which cannot be sold or traded for anything at any cost.

Cost | Hope | Life | Life | Regret |

Irving Singer

Human beings seek a prior meaning in everything as a defense against doubts about the importance of anything, including man's existence ... To affirm that there is a supreme meaning of life is to give the intellect an opportunity to escape the disquieting conclusion that nothing people do can possibly have more than slight importance.

Defense | Existence | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Nothing | Opportunity | People | Intellect |

Adlai Ewing Stevenson

We travel together, passengers on a little spaceship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil; all committed for our safety to its security and peace; preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft.

Care | Little | Love | Peace | Security | Will | Work |

Adam Smith

Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.

Defense | Government | Property | Reality | Security |

Adam Smith

The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter… seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education.

Custom | Education | Habit | Nature |

Alan Cohen

Our freedom depends on our willingness to see Perfection. The imperfection that we have been taught to see has led only to suffering... Perfection is not a standard to be achieved, but a truth to be acknowledged. It is not the difference between us and God, but the hallmark of our unity with Him. And the honoring of Perfection is not a sin of vanity, but the humble acceptance of our identity as offspring of the Eternal.

Acceptance | Eternal | Freedom | God | Imperfection | Perfection | Sin | Suffering | Truth | Unity |

Alan Cohen

The Whole Truth is fathomless, ever free of containment, confinement, or conformity... No teacher, religion, or cult can hold exclusive possession of the Truth. The hallmark of Truth is its inclusive nature; no one or no thing could ever be excluded from It.

Conformity | Cult | Nature | Religion | Truth |

Alfred North Whitehead

Religion is the vision of something that stands beyond, behind, and within, the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realized; something which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehensions, something whose possession is the final good, and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest.

Good | Meaning | Present | Religion | Vision | Waiting |

Alfred North Whitehead

The worship of God is not a rule of safety - it is an adventure of the spirit, a flight after the unattainable. The death of religion comes with the repression of the high hope of adventure.

Adventure | Death | God | Hope | Religion | Rule | Spirit | Worship | God |

Alfred North Whitehead

The worship of God is not a rule of safety - it is an adventure of the spirit, a flight after the unattainable.

Adventure | God | Rule | Spirit | Worship | God |