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

Ezra Taft Benson

Our Constitution and Bill of Rights guarantee to all our people the greatest freedom ever enjoyed by the public of any great nation. This system guarantees freedom of individual enterprise, freedom to own property, freedom to start oneÂ’s own business and to operate it according to oneÂ’s own judgment so long as the enterprise is honorable. The individual has power to produce beyond his needs, to provide savings for the future protection of himself and family. He can live where he wishes and pick any job he wants and select any educational opportunity.

Man |

Ezra Taft Benson

One of the marks of an educated man today is to know what not to read--what not to see or what not to listen to.

Attention | Cause | Family | Man | Problems | Self | Woman |

Ezra Taft Benson

That government is best which governs the least, so taught the courageous founders of this nation. This simple declaration is diametrically opposed to the all too common philosophy that the government should protect and support one from the cradle to the grave. The policy of the Founding Fathers has made our people and our nation strong. The opposite leads inevitably to moral decay.

Accident | Cost | Danger | Debt | Defense | Despot | Enjoyment | Eternal | Faith | God | Government | Inspiration | Life | Life | Man | Means | Need | Nothing | People | Principles | Prophecy | Receive | Responsibility | Rights | Theories | Trust | Vigilance | Weakness | Will | Wise | Words | Government | Danger | God | Privilege | Understand |

Ezra Taft Benson

When we put God first, all other things fall into their proper place or drop out of our lives. Our love of the Lord will govern the claims for our affection, the demands on our time, the interests we pursue, and the order of our priorities.

God | Man | Obedience | Will | God |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

You damn sadist! said mr. cummings, you try to make people think.

Man | Reading |

Fannie Hurst

Any writer worth the name is always getting into one thing or getting out of another thing.

Good | Man | Woman |

Feisal Abdul Rauf

The ultimate vision is to instate in the Muslim world the notion of multiculturalism, which is part of our heritage and history, part of the fundamental, mainstream ideals of Islam.

Argument | Earth | Faith | People | Religion | Tradition | Truth | Wrong |

Felix Adler

But the purified gladness of which I speak is not dependent on these accidents. It is the mark of the ripest wisdom, and is based on the conviction, gained through experience, that life is worth living, that the victory is assured, and that the ends we pursue are of such excellence as to be incapable of ultimate defeat.

Duty | Light |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness.

Balance | Civilization | Man | Will |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

A nation which neglects the perceptions of its artists declines. After a while it ceases to act, and merely survives. There is probably no use in telling this to people who can't see it without being told.

Genius | Man | Right |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

There is natural ignorance and there is artificial ignorance. I should say at the present moment the artificial ignorance is about eighty-five per cent.

Man | Merit | Tragedy | Work |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

When the head of state of family thinks first of gouging out an income, he must perforce do it through small men; and even if they are clever at their job, if one employ such inferior characters in state and family business the tilled fields will go rack swamp and ruin and edged calamities will mount up to the full.... This is the meaning of: A state does not profit by profits.

Man |

Felipe Fernández-Armesto

Historians today are priests of a cult of truth, called to the service of a god whose existence they are doomed to doubt.

Excess | Fear | Individual | Modernity | People | Sense | Society | Terror | World | Society |

Felix Adler

Let us found religion upon a basis of perfect intellectual honesty. Religion, if it is to mean anything at all, must stand for the highest truth. How then can the cause of truth be served by the sacrifice, more or less disguised, of one's intellectual convictions?

Man | Nature |

Ezra Taft Benson

God help us to be grateful for our blessings, never to be guilty of the sin of ingratitude, and to instill this same gratitude into the lives of our children. Someone has said that an ungrateful man is like a hog under a tree eating apples and never looking up to see where they come from.

Church | Comfort | God | Government | Humility | Man | Men | Need | Peace | Prayer | Question | Will | Government | God |

Ezra Taft Benson

I believe that God has endowed men with certain inalienable rights as set forth in the Declaration of Independence and that no legislature and no majority, however great, may morally limit or destroy these; that the sole function of government is to protect life, liberty, and property, and anything more than this is usurpation and oppression. I believe that the Constitution of the United States was prepared and adopted by men acting under inspiration from Almighty God; that it is a solemn compact between the peoples of the states of this nation that all officers of government are under duty to obey; that the eternal moral laws expressed therein must be adhered to or individual liberty will perish. . . I am hereby resolved that under no circumstances shall the freedoms guaranteed by the Bill of Rights be infringed. In particular I am opposed to any attempt on the part of the federal government to deny the people their right to bear arms, to worship, and to pray when and where they choose, or to own and control private property.

Day | Study | Time | Will |

Ezra Taft Benson

Men and women who turn their lives over to God will discover that He can make a lot more out of their lives than they can. He will deepen their joys, expand their vision, quicken their minds, strengthen their muscles, lift their spirits, multiply their blessings, increase their opportunities, comfort their souls, raise up friends, and pour out peace. Whoever will lose his life in the service of God will find eternal life.

Better | Individual | Principles | Will | Work | Govern |

Ezra Taft Benson

What are these fundamental principles which have allowed the United States to progress so rapidly and yet remain free? First, a written Constitution clearly defining the limits of government so that government will not become more powerful than the people.

Agony | Earth | Force | Freedom | Government | Harm | Improvement | Individual | People | Power | World | Zeal | Government |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

Mass ought to be in Latin, unless you could do it in Greek or Chinese. In fact, any abracadabra that no bloody member of the public or half-educated ape of a clargimint could think he understood.

Light | Man | Reading |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

The modern artist must live by craft and violence. His gods are violent gods. Those artists, so called, whose work does not show this strife, are uninteresting.

Good | Impression | Literature | Man | Quiet | Understanding | Child |