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

Lyndon Johnson, fully Lyndon Baines Johnson, aka LBJ

In this age when there can be no losers in peace and no victors in war - we must recognize the obligation to match national strength with national restraint.

Age | Obligation | Peace | Restraint | Strength | War | Wisdom |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

All consciousness separates; but in dreams we put on the likeness of that more universal, truer, more eternal man dwelling in the darkness of primordial night. There he is still the whole, and the whole is in him, indistinguishable from nature and bare of all ego-hood. Out of these all-uniting depths arises the dream, be it never so childish, grotesque, and immoral... Death is psychologically as important as birth... Shrinking away from it is something unhealthy and abnormal which robs the second half of life of its purpose.

Abnormal | Birth | Consciousness | Darkness | Death | Dreams | Ego | Eternal | Important | Life | Life | Man | Nature | Purpose | Purpose | Wisdom |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

The function of religion is to protect us from an experience of God. [paraphrased]

Experience | God | Religion | Wisdom |

Juvenal, fully Decimus Junius Juvenalis NULL

Only death reveals what a nothing the body is for man.

Body | Death | Man | Nothing | Wisdom |

Holger Kalweit

Initiation always signifies death and resurrection. This is as true of the rites of passage marking the entry to a new phase of life as it is of shamanic initiation. The former life must be destroyed and erased.

Death | Life | Life | Rites | Wisdom |

William James

The world of our consciousness consists at all times of two parts, an objective and a subjective part, of which the former may be incalculably more extensive than the latter, and yet the latter can never be omitted or suppressed. The objective part is the sum total of whatsoever at any given time we may be thinking of, the subjective part is the inner ‘state’ in which the thinking comes to pass. What we think of may be enormous - the cosmic times and spaces, for example - whereas the inner state may be the most fugitive and paltry activity of the mind. Yet the cosmic objects, so far as the experience yields them, are but ideal pictures of something whose existence we do not inwardly possess but only point outwardly, while the inner state is our very experience itself; its reality and that of our experience are one.

Consciousness | Example | Existence | Experience | Mind | Reality | Thinking | Time | Wisdom | World | Think |

Thomas Jefferson

Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns, and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies; the preservation of General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad... freedom of religion, freedom of the press; freedom of person under the protection of habeas corpus; and trials by juries impartially selected, these principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.

Age | Commerce | Freedom of religion | Freedom | Government | Justice | Men | Nations | Peace | Persuasion | Principles | Religion | Revolution | Rights | Trials | Wisdom | Friendship | Government |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

I could not say I believe. I know! I have had the experience of being gripped by something that is stronger than myself, something that people call God.

Experience | God | People | Wisdom |

William James

‘The true’, to put it very briefly, is only expedient in the way of our thinking, just as ‘the right’ is only the expedient in the way of our behaving. Expedient in almost any fashion; and expedient in the long run and on the whole of course; for what meets expediently all the experience in sight won’t necessarily meet all farther experiences equally satisfactorily.

Experience | Right | Thinking | Wisdom |

William James

The same space of time seems shorter as we grow older - that is, the days, the months, and the years do so; whether the hours do so is doubtful, and the minutes and seconds to all appearance remain about the same... In youth we may have an absolutely new experience, subjective or objective, every hour of the day. Apprehension is vivid, retentiveness strong, and our recollection of that time, like those of a time spent in rapid and interesting travel, are of something intricate, multitudinous, and long-drawn-out. But as each passing year converts some of this experience into automatic routine which we hardly notice at all, the days and the weeks smooth themselves out in recollection to contentless units, and the years grow hollow and collapse.

Appearance | Day | Experience | Space | Time | Wisdom | Youth | Youth |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

[Paraphrase] The function of religion is to protect us from an experience of God.

Experience | God | Religion | Wisdom |

John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

We live in a hemisphere whose own revolution has given birth to the most powerful force of the modern age - the search for the freedom and self-fulfillment of man.

Age | Birth | Force | Freedom | Fulfillment | Man | Revolution | Search | Self | Wisdom |