Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Oscar S. Straus, fully Oscar Solomon Straus

German-born American U.S. Secretary of Commerce and Labor and first Jewish United States Cabinet Secretary

"There is a higher form of patriotism than nationalism, and that higher form is not limited by the boundaries of one's country; but by a duty to mankind to safeguard the trust of civilization."

"This is the first nation that organized government on the basis of universal liberty with a free Church and a free State. This meant much at the time; it means much now and will continue to be the beacon of light and guidance for ourselves and of other nations. All that is good and practical and wise in the new developments can best be worked out under our form of government without destroying any of the basic principles upon which it rests."

"In the cause of humanity and to put an end to the barbarities, bloodshed, starvation, and horrible miseries now existing there, and which the parties to the conflict are either unable or unwilling to stop or mitigate."

"The Jew is neither a newcomer nor an alien in this country or on this continent; his Americanism is as original and ancient as that of any race or people with the exception of the American Indian and other aborigines. He came in the caravels of Columbus, and he knocked at the gates of New Amsterdam only thirty-five years after the Pilgrim Fathers stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock."