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

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Coercion created slavery, the cowardice of the slaves perpetuated it.

Coercion | Cowardice | Slavery | Wisdom |

Friedrich Schiller, fully Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller

Nature is for us nothing but existence in all its freedom; it is the constitution of things taken in themselves; it is existence itself according to its proper and immutable laws.

Existence | Freedom | Nature | Nothing | Wisdom |

Frank Scully

Since the beginning of civilization we have explained our existence in terms of what we could observe... Maybe we will discover that the only true reality is a state of mind, shaped by the information we can process and contexts in which we see it. Maybe the Supreme Being we call God can best be appreciated as the power of ultimate understanding. Maybe our destination has always been to learn and grow as we approach the light of ultimate understanding. Only the context of our ability to process information changes.

Ability | Beginning | Civilization | Existence | God | Light | Mind | Power | Reality | Understanding | Will | Wisdom | God | Learn |

Sa'di (or Saadi), pen name of Abū-Muḥammad Muṣliḥ al-Dīn bin Abdallāh Shīrāzī, born Muslih-uddin NULL

Life stands on the verge of a single breath; and this world is an existence between two nonentities.

Existence | Life | Life | Wisdom | World |

Albert Schweitzer

No ray of sunshine is ever lost, but the green which it wakes into existence needs time to sprout, and it is not always granted to the sower to live to see the harvest. All work that is worth anything is done in faith.

Existence | Faith | Time | Wisdom | Work | Worth |

Charles E. Silberman

The crucial thing about the melting pot was that it did not happen: American politics and American social life are still dominated by the existence of sharply-defined ethnic groups.

Existence | Life | Life | Politics | Wisdom |

Sydney Smith

Have the courage to be ignorant of a great number of things, in order to avoid the calamity of being ignorant of everything.

Calamity | Courage | Order | Wisdom | Calamity |

John B. Tabb, fully John Banister Tabb

Every year that I live I am more convinced that the waste of life lies in the love we have not given, the powers we have not given, the power we have not used, the selfish prudence which will risk nothing, and which, shirking pain, misses happiness as well.

Life | Life | Love | Nothing | Pain | Power | Prudence | Prudence | Risk | Waste | Will | Wisdom | Happiness |