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

Adlai Ewing Stevenson

Our first, our greatest, our most relentless purpose is peace, for without peace there is nothing.

Nothing | Peace | Purpose | Purpose |

Adrienne Rich, fully Adrienne Cecil Rich

[Responsibility to yourself] means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short, simply to avoid conflict and confrontation. And this, in turn, means resisting the forces in society which say that women should be nice, play safe, have low professional expectations, drown in love and forget about work, live through others, and stay in places assigned to us. It means that we insist on a life of meaningful work, insist that work be as meaningful as love and friendship in our lives. It means, therefore, the courage to be “different”; not to be continuously available to others when we need time for ourselves and our work; to be able to demand of others – parents, friends, roommates, teachers, lovers, husbands, children – that they respect our sense of purpose and our integrity as persons.

Children | Courage | Integrity | Life | Life | Love | Means | Need | Parents | Play | Purpose | Purpose | Respect | Responsibility | Safe | Sense | Society | Time | Work | Friendship | Society | Respect |

Alan Cohen

Words may point the way to Truth, but actions demonstrate it. Live in accordance with the highest awareness of the Truth that you know. There is no greater purpose in life than this one.

Awareness | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Truth | Words | Awareness |

Alan Cohen

It is time for you to understand the purpose of your life. You are a chalice for God’s Love and a vehicle for Him to bless the world. Realize your Divine purpose and your will is aligned with His. Goodness is the theme of all life. See the Perfection in your life and you recapture your Childhood Vision. As you give up patterns of evaluation and cynicism, you accept the benevolence of God. Pain is born of resistance, and joy is a function of the acceptance of God’s whole and Holy Love for you. Find purpose in your joy, and you find purpose in God.

Acceptance | Benevolence | Childhood | Cynicism | God | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Pain | Perfection | Purpose | Purpose | Time | Vision | Will | World | Understand |

Alan Cohen

This sharpening of skills is the real value of competition. Many have lost sight of the purpose of healthy competition, which helps us to draw forth inner strength and encourages us to transcend our ideas of personal limitation. The real competition, however, is within the person, and not between people... In essence, competition is cooperation.

Competition | Cooperation | Ideas | People | Purpose | Purpose | Strength | Value |

Alexis Carrel

The development of human personality is the ultimate purpose of civilization.

Civilization | Personality | Purpose | Purpose |

Allan Bloom, fully Allan David Bloom

The family requires the most delicate mixture of nature and convention, of human and divine, to subsist and perform its function. Its base is merely bodily reproduction, but its purpose is the formation of civilized human beings.

Convention | Family | Nature | Purpose | Purpose |