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

Václav Havel

We must not be afraid of dreaming the seemingly impossible if we want the seemingly impossible to become a reality.

Experience | Order | Responsibility | Sense | Understanding | Will | Work | Understand |

Václav Havel

There are no exact directions. There are probably no directions at all. The only things that I am able to recommend at this moment are: a sense of humor; an ability to see the ridiculous and the absurd dimensions of things; an ability to laugh about others as well as about ourselves; a sense of irony; and, of everything that invites parody in this world. In other words: rising above things, or looking at them from a distance; sensibility to the hidden presence of all the more dangerous types of conceit in others, as well as in ourselves; good cheer; an unostentatious certainty of the meaning of things; gratitude for the gift of life and courage to assume responsibility for it; and, a vigilant mind.

Experience | Nothing | Phenomena | Understanding | World | Understand |

Turkish Proverbs

A friend is one soul in two bodies.

Pleasure | Understanding |

Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

A little group of willful men, representing no opinion but their own, have rendered the great Government of the United States helpless and contemptible.

Man | Meaning | Sound | Understanding |

Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder

It’s when you’re safe at home that you wish you were having an adventure. When you’re having an adventure you wish you were safe at home.

Giving | Pain | Understanding |

Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder

When you're safe at home you wish you were having an adventure; when you're having an adventure you wish you were safe at home.

God | Understanding | Wants | God | Happiness |

Thucydides NULL

The bravest are surely those who have the clearest vision of what is before them, glory and danger alike, and yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it.

Absence | Aid | Desire | History | Knowledge | Past | Romance | Understanding |

Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

Is there any man, is there any woman, let me say any child here that does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry?

Nations | Sympathy | Understanding |

Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

The most conservative persons I ever met are college undergraduates. The radicals are the men past middle life.

Method | Science | Understanding |

William Shakespeare

And when I love thee not, chaos is come again.

Understanding | Will |

William Godwin

It is absurd to expect the inclinations and wishes of two human beings to coincide, through any long period of time. To oblige them to act and live together is to subject them to some inevitable potion of thwarting, bickering, and unhappiness.

Absolute | Action | Feelings | Impression | Judgment | Man | Reason | Sacred | Sense | Understanding | Intellect |

Dalia Mogahed

Muslim women do not regard Islam as an obstacle to their progress; indeed, many may see it as a crucial component of that progress.

Appreciation | Cause | Diversity | Justice | Law | Question | Tradition | Understanding | Appreciation |

William Godwin

One of the prerogatives by which man is eminently distinguished from all other living beings inhabiting this globe of earth, consists in the gift of reason.

Enough | Understanding |

William James

Every man who possibly can should force himself to a holiday of a full month in a year, whether he feels like taking it or not.

Absolute | Eternal | Important | Insight | Little | Nature | Rest | Shame | Truth | Understanding | Truths |

William Godwin

Nor is there any reason to believe that sound conviction will be less permanent in its influence than sophistry and error.

Existence | Influence | Man | Men | Morality | Passion | Past | System | Teach | Thinking | Trust | Understanding | Will |

William Godwin

Once annihilate the quackery of government, and the most homebred understanding might be strong enough to detect the artifices of the state juggler that would mislead him.

Better | Conduct | Consideration | Family | Father | Improvement | Justice | Justify | Life | Life | Lying | Magic | Man | Sense | Truth | Understanding | Will | Work | Worth | Vice |

William Hamilton, fully Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet

I would employ the word noetic to express all those cognitions which originate in the mind itself.

Meaning | Understanding | Intellect |

William James

To suggest personal will and effort to one all sicklied o'er with the sense of irremediable impotence is to suggest the most impossible of things. What he craves is to be consoled in his very powerlessness, to feel that the spirit of the universe recognizes and secures him, all decaying and failing as he is.

Abnormal | Study | Understanding |

William Matthews

What matters it that a soldier has a sword of dazzling finish, of the keenest edge, and finest temper, if he has never learned the art of fence.

Progress | Understanding |