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

Victor Hugo

This soul is full of darkness, sin committed there. The culprit is not the one who has committed the sin, but the fact is that the shade.

Authority | Evil | Exaggeration | Good | Man | Respect | Respect |

Victor Hugo

Sorrow is a fruit. God does not make it grow on limbs too weak to bear it.

Absolute | Authority | Education | Position | Question | Will |

Rig Veda, or The Rigveda

Man attains name and fame by his good deeds.

Authority |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

Every moving thing I have held fast. Eye and breath I have held fast. I have held fast all limbs in the deep gloom of the night.

Authority | Desire | Fame | Man | Order |

Václav Havel

My only school was life itself.

Authority | Happy | Love | Nations |

Václav Havel

You can't spend your whole life criticizing something and then, when you have the chance to do it better, refuse to go near it.

Authority | Awareness | Capacity | Earth | Honor | Hope | Nothing | Order | People | Respect | Right | Rights | Will | World | Respect | Awareness | Value |

Václav Havel

Poles are able to reflect their history, they respect it. Who knows if anybody will remember when we commemorate our 25 years [since the 1989 Velvet Revolution].

Authority | History | Meaning | Space | Time | World | Value |

Václav Havel

What I am about to say may sound provocative, but I feel more and more strongly that even these ideas are not enough, that we must go farther and deeper.

Authority | Morality | Order | Responsibility | Science | Understanding | Will |

Václav Havel

Modern man must descend the spiral of his own absurdity to the lowest point; only then can he look beyond it. It is obviously impossible to get around it, jump over it, or simply avoid it.

Authority | Existence | Man | Public | Rights | Science |

Vannevar Bush

As long as scientists are free to pursue the truth wherever it may lead, there will be a flow of new scientific knowledge to those who can apply it to practical problems.

Authority | Belief | Duty | Faith | Men | Mission | Necessity | Science | Silence | Story | Will | World | Think |

Vannevar Bush

If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability. The abacus, with its beads strung on parallel wires, led the Arabs to positional numeration and the concept of zero many centuries before the rest of the world; and it was a useful tool— so useful that it still exists.

Authority | Duty | Men | Mission | Story | World | Think |

Václav Havel

Today's world, as we all know, is faced with multiple threats. From whichever angle I look at this menace, I always come to the conclusion that salvation can only come through a profound awakening of man to his own personal responsibility, which is at the same time a global responsibility. Thus, the only way to save our world, as I see it, lies in a democracy that recalls its ancient Greek roots: democracy based on an integral human personality personally answering for the fate of the community.

Authority | Awareness | Heart | Office | Opposition | Position | Understanding | Awareness |

Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

By 'radical,' I understand one who goes too far; by 'conservative,' one who does not go far enough; by 'reactionary,' one who won't go at all.

Authority | Nations | Peace | Right | Rights | World |

Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

It is easier to change the location of a cemetery, than to change the school curriculum.

Authority | Civilization | Nations | Peace | People | Right | Rights | World |

Timothy Leary, fully Timothy Francis Leary

To describe externals, you become a scientist. To describe experience, you become an artist. The old distinction between artists and scientists must vanish. Every time we teach a child correct usage of an external symbol, we must spend as much time teaching him how to fission and reassemble external grammar to communicate the internal. The training of artists and creative performers can be a straightforward, almost mechanical process. When you teach someone how to perform creatively (ie, associate dead symbols in new combinations), you expand his potential for experiencing more widely and richly.

Authority | Comfort | Giving | Question | Learn | Think |

Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins

In referring to her earlier statement that he had was not her type because he was a dollar short when it came to maturity and a day late when it came to peace.

Authority | Order |

William Godwin

For there is such a thing as a broken spirit.

Authority | Censure | Energy | Indulgence | Man | Nothing | Quiet | Reality | Reason | Silence | Virtue | Virtue | Will |

William James

There are no differences but differences of degree between different degrees of difference and no difference.

Authority | Enough | Experience | Life | Life | Mystical | Rest | Sense | Will |

William James

Take the happiest man, the one most envied by the world, and in nine cases out of ten his inmost consciousness is one of failure. Either his ideals in the line of his achievements are pitched far higher than the achievements themselves, or else he has secret ideals of which the world knows nothing, and in regard to which he inwardly knows himself to be found wanting.

Authority | Civilization | Cruelty | Discipline | Doubt | Duty | Force | Little | Manliness | Men | Opinion | Public | Question | War | Work | Cruelty | Afraid |

William Shakespeare

Nothing routs us but the villainy of our fears.

Authority | Noise | Terror |