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

Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

The meaning of our existence is not invented by ourselves, but rather detected.

Balance | Day | Life | Life | Past | Friends | Happiness |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

Make the Beloved Lord your friend. Keep Him constantly in your mind; He is the Support of the breath of life.

Relationship | Friends |

Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

I intend to do what little one man can do to awaken the public conscience, and in the meantime I am not frightened by your menaces. I am not a giant physically; I shrink from pain and filth and vermin and foul air, like any other man of refinement; also, I freely admit, when I see a line of a hundred policeman with drawn revolvers flung across a street to keep anyone from coming onto private property to hear my feeble voice, I am somewhat disturbed in my nerves. But I have a conscience and a religious faith, and I know that our liberties were not won without suffering, and may be lost again through our cowardice. I intend to do my duty to my country.

Defects | Defense | Force | Ideals | Language | Question | Slavery | Spirit | Study | War | Friends |

Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

An event of colossal and overwhelming significance may happen all at once, but the words which describe it have to come one by one in a long chain.

Capitalism | Change | Democracy | Nothing | People | Play | Politics | Will | World | Friends |

Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

There’s no excuse for poverty in a state as rich as California. We can produce so much food that we have to dump it into our bay.

Distinguish | Dreams | Men | Music | Poetry | Sacred | Words | Friends |

Václav Havel

I think that it is my duty today to remind you as well of the good things that have happened, accomplishments that a year ago we could scarcely have imagined.

Joy | Friends | Think |

Valmiki NULL

The efforts of one who is unenthusiastic, weak and immersed in sorrow cannot bring out any good and he comes to grief.

Character | Integrity | Wealth | Wife | Friends |

Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

We are too inattentive or too much occupied with ourselves to understand each other. Whoever has seen masks at a ball dance amicably together, and hold hands without knowing each other, to part the moment after to see each other no more, nor to regret each other, can form some idea of society.

Good | Qualities | Respect | Respect | Friends |

Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

Reason and emotion counsel and supplement each other. Whoever heeds only the one, and puts aside the other, recklessly deprives himself of a portion of the aid granted us for the regulation of our conduct.

Friends |

Vannevar Bush

With machines for advanced analysis no such situation existed; for there was and is no extensive market; the users of advanced methods of manipulating data are a very small part of the population.

Experience | Literature | Organic | Will | Following | Friends |

Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

If passion sometimes counsels greater boldness than does reflection, it gives more strength to execute it.

Title | Friends | Think |

Turkish Proverbs

Empty words will not fill an empty stomach. (Used to make a point that one is using empty promises without any real action.)

Friends |

Turkish Proverbs

A woman has advice only for another woman.

Man | Need | Wise | Friends |

Turkish Proverbs

A thousand regrets do not cancel one debt.

Enemy | Friends |

Thomas J. Watson, fully Thomas John Watson, Sr.

Every time we've moved ahead in IBM, it was because someone was willing to take a chance, put his head on the block, and try something new.

Force | Will | Friends |

Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

Generally young men are regarded as radicals. This is a popular misconception. The most conservative persons I ever met are college undergraduates. The radicals are the men past middle life.

Friends |

Thucydides NULL

Fix your eyes on the greatness of Athens as you have it before you day by day, fall in love with her, and when you feel her great, remember that this greatness was won by men with courage, with knowledge of their duty, and with a sense of honor in action... So they gave their bodies to the commonwealth and received, each for his own memory, praise that will never die, and with it the grandest of all sepulchers, not that in which their mortal bones are laid, but a home in the minds of men, where their glory remains fresh to stir to speech or action as the occasion comes by. For the whole earth is the sepulcher of famous men; and their story is not graven only on stone over their native earth, but lives on far away, without visible symbol, woven into the stuff of other men's lives. For you now it remains to rival what they have done and, knowing the secret of happiness to be freedom and the secret of freedom a brave heart, not idly to stand aside from the enemy's onset.

Aid | Good | Order | Friends |

Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

Sometimes people call me an idealist. Well, that is the way I know I am an American. America, my fellow citizens — I do not say it in disparagement of any other great people—America is the only idealistic Nation in the world. When I speak practical judgments about business affairs, I can only guess whether I am speaking the voice of America or not, but when I speak the ideal purposes of history I know that I am speaking the voice of America, because I have saturated myself since I was a boy in the records of that spirit, and everywhere in them there is this authentic tone of the love of justice and the service of humanity. If by any mysterious influence of error America should not take the leading part in this new enterprise of concerted power, the world would experience one of those reversals of sentiment, one of those penetrating chills of reaction, which would lead to a universal cynicism, for if America goes back upon mankind, mankind has no other place to turn. It is the hope of nations all over the world that America will do this great thing.

People | Friends |

Thucydides NULL

An Athenian citizen does not neglect the state because he takes care of his own household; and even those of us who are engaged in business have a very fair idea of politics. We alone regard a man who takes no interest in public affairs, not as a harmless, but as a useless character, and if few of us are originators, we are all sound judges of a policy.

Courage | Daring | Decision | Generosity | Pleasure | Present | Will | Hardship | Friends |