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

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

The child’s grief throbs against the round of its little heart as heavily as the man’s sorrow; and the one finds as much delight in his kite or drum as the other in striking the springs of enterprise or soaring on the wings of fame.

Character | Fame | Grief | Heart | Little | Man | Sorrow |

Clarence Dykstra, fully Clarence Addison Dykstra

Men cannot long live hopefully unless they are embarked upon some great unifying enterprise - one for which they may pledge their lives, their fortunes and their honor.

Character | Honor | Men |

Abba Hillel Silver

When is a man free? Now when he is driftwood on the stream of life... free of all cares or worries or ambitions... He is not free at all... To be free in action, in struggle, in undiverted and purposeful achievement, to move forward towards a worthy objective across a fierce terrain of resistance, to be vital and allow in the exercise of a great enterprise - that is to be free, and to know the joy and exhilaration of true freedom. A man is free only when he has an errand on earth.

Achievement | Action | Character | Earth | Freedom | Joy | Life | Life | Man | Struggle |

Thorstein Veblen, fully Thorstein Bunde Veblen, born Torsten Bunde Veblen

Neither the tenuous things of the human spirit nor the gross material needs of human life can come in contact with this business enterprise [Big Business] in such a way as to deflect its course from the line of least resistance, which is the line of greatest present gain within the law.

Business | Character | Law | Life | Life | Present | Spirit | Business |

Calvin Coolidge, fully John Calvin Coolidge, Jr.

No enterprise can exist for itself alone.

Wisdom |

Calvin Coolidge, fully John Calvin Coolidge, Jr.

No enterprise can exist for itself alone. It ministers to some great need. It performs some great service, not for itself, but for others or failing therein, it ceases to be profitable and ceases to exist.

Need | Service | Wisdom |

William Ellis

Progress in industry depends very largely on the enterprise of deep-thinking men, who are ahead of the time in their ideas.

Ideas | Industry | Men | Progress | Thinking | Time | Wisdom |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

Nothing will give permanent success in any enterprise of life, except native capacity cultivated by honest and persevering effort. Genius is often but the capacity for receiving and improving by discipline.

Capacity | Discipline | Effort | Genius | Life | Life | Nothing | Success | Will | Wisdom |

Thomas Jefferson

A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks.

Body | Character | Mind | Wisdom |

Jacques Ellul

Propaganda by its very nature is an enterprise for perverting the significance of events and of insinuating false intentions… The propagandist must insist on the purity of his own intentions and, at the same time, hurl accusations at his enemy.

Enemy | Events | Nature | Purity | Time |

Kenneth Kaunda, fully Kenneth David Kaunda

Passive resistance is a sport for gentleman (and ladies) – just like the pursuit of war, a heroic enterprise for the ruling classes but a grievous burden for the rest.

Rest | War |

Massimo Pigliucci

Contrary to what many anti-intellectuals maintain, science is by nature a much more humble enterprise than any religion or other ideology. This must be so given the self-correcting mechanisms that are incorporated into the scientific process, regardless of the occasional failures of individual scientists.

Individual | Nature | Religion | Science | Self |

Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell

Man needs, for his happiness, not only the enjoyment of this or that, but hope and enterprise and change.

Change | Enjoyment | Hope | Man |

Charles Henry Parkhurst

Faith is the very heroism and enterprise of intellect. Faith is not a passivity but a faculty. Faith is a power, the material of effect. Faith is a kind of winged intellect. The great workmen of history have been men who believed like giants.

Faith | History | Men | Power |

Hosea Ballou

Embark in no enterprise which you cannot submit to the test of prayer.

Prayer |

John Kenneth Galbraith, aka "Ken"

The great dialectic in our time is not, as anciently and by some still supposed, between capital and labor; it is between economic enterprise and the state.

Labor | Time |