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

Hope is not the conviction that something will turn out well but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

Ends | Hope | Life | Life | Work |

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

Hope is definitely not the same thing as optimism. It is not the conviction that something will turn out well, but the certainty that something makes sense, regardless of how it turns out.

Life | Life | Work | World |

Václav Havel

There is only one thing I will not concede: that it might be meaningless to strive in a good cause.

Courage | Ideas | Work | Worth |

Vannevar Bush

Thus science may implement the ways in which man produces, stores, and consults the record of the race. It might be striking to outline the instrumentalities of the future more spectacularly, rather than to stick closely to the methods and elements now known and undergoing rapid development, as has been done here. Technical difficulties of all sorts have been ignored, certainly, but also ignored are means as yet unknown which may come any day to accelerate technical progress as violently as did the advent of the thermionic tube.

Competition | War | Work | Old |

Tommaso Campanella, baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella

But the accusation and witnesses are produced in the presence of the judge and Power; the accused person makes his defense, and he is immediately acquitted or condemned by the judge; and if he appeals to the triumvirate, on the following day he is acquitted or condemned.

Duty | Learning | Mind | Work |

Vannevar Bush

The impulses which flow in the arm nerves of a typist convey to her fingers the translated information which reaches her eye or ear, in order that the fingers may be caused to strike the proper keys. Might not these currents be intercepted, either in the original form in which information is conveyed to the brain, or in the marvelously metamorphosed form in which they then proceed to the hand?

Association | Memory | Mind | Work | Association |

Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

It is not true that equality is a law of nature. Nature has no equality. Its sovereign law is subordination and dependence.

Heart | Mind | Need | Work |

Tryon Edwards

The mortality of mankind is but a part of the process of living - a step on the way to immortality. - Dying, to the good man, is but a brief sleep, from which he wakes to a perfection and fullness of life in eternity.

Change | God | Life | Life | Service | Surrender | Work | God |

Hsuan Hua, aka An Tzu and Tu Lun

We fellow Buddhists should not stir up trouble among ourselves and try to hurt each other.

Practice | Work |

Hsuan Hua, aka An Tzu and Tu Lun

You should all remember: After you take the precepts, never be deceived by such states of confused belief. Even if a Dharma-speaker displays mighty spiritual powers, you should look him over carefully and see if he is greedy. If he is out for money or if he has lust, then he's not genuine. He's a phony.

Body | Work |

Tom Lehrer, fully Thomas Andrew Lehrer

I didn't feel the need for anonymous affection, for people in the dark applauding. To me, it would be like writing a novel and then getting up every night and reading your novel. Everything I did is on the record and, if you want to hear it, just listen to the record.

Day | Good | Lord | Success | Work |

Tryon Edwards

God is infinitely great in himself; we should recognize it in humble adoration: always good; we should acknowledge it by grateful thanksgiving: we have constant need of his blessings; it becomes us to ask them at his hand.

Alms | Work |

Tryon Edwards

Our censure of our fellowmen, which we are prone to think a proof of our superior wisdom, is too often only the evidence of the conceit that would magnify self, or of the malignity or envy that would detract from others.

God | Work | God |

Turkish Proverbs

An Englishman will burn his bed to catch a flea.

Heart | Work |

Turkish Proverbs

The devil tempts all, but the idle tempt the devil.

Devil | Hurry | Will | Work |

Turkish Proverbs

Allah gave hunger to one and hunger to another.

Work |

Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman

The first rule of holes is when you’re in one, stop digging. When you’re in three, bring a lot of shovels.

Fighting | Force | Power | Safe | System | War | Will | Work | World |

Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman

When Muslim radicals and fundamentalists look at the West, they see only the openness that makes us, in their eyes, decadent and promiscuous. They see only the openness that has produced Britney Spears and Janet Jackson. They do not see, and do not want to see, the openness - the freedom of thought and inquiry - that has made us powerful, the openness that has produced Bill Gates and Sally Ride. They deliberately define it all as decadence. Because if openness, women's empowerment, and freedom of thought and inquiry are the real sources of the West's economic strength, then the Arab-Muslim world would have to change. And the fundamentalists and extremists do not want to change.

Competition | Force | Knowledge | Work |

Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

America was established not to create wealth but to realize a vision, to realize an ideal - to discover and maintain liberty among men.

Destiny | Heart | Man | Will | Wishes | Work |