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

David Hume

Morality is determined by sentiment. It defines virtue to be whatever mental action or quality gives to a spectator the pleasing sentiment of approbation; and vice the contrary.

Action | Character | Morality | Sentiment | Virtue | Virtue | Vice |

Thomas Jefferson

Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.

Chance | Character | Conscience | Freedom | Good | Health | Life | Life | Occupation | Happiness |

James Joll

The tragedy of all political action is that some problems have no solution; none of the alternatives are intellectually consistent or morally uncompromising; and whatever decision is taken will harm somebody.

Action | Character | Decision | Harm | Problems | Tragedy | Will |

Krishna, also Kreeshna, Krsna, Lord Krishna NULL

Let the motive be in the deed and not in the event. Be not one whose motive for action is the hope of reward.

Action | Character | Hope | Reward |

John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

Political action is the highest responsibility of a citizen.

Action | Character | Responsibility |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Happiness is not pleasure, it is order. With order come freedom, and with freedom there is responsibility.

Character | Freedom | Order | Pleasure | Responsibility |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Love comes into being only when there is total harmony in oneself, in whatever action one is doing, and so there is no conflict between the outer and the inner.

Action | Character | Harmony | Love |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

What is important is to free ourselves from ideas, from nationalism, from all religious beliefs and dogmas, so that we can act, not according to a pattern or an ideology, but as needs demand... It is only when the mind is free of idea and belief that it can act rightly... and freedom from ideas can take place only through self-awareness and self-knowledge.

Awareness | Belief | Character | Freedom | Ideas | Important | Knowledge | Mind | Self | Self-awareness | Self-knowledge | Wisdom |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

Personality is the supreme realization of the innate individuality of a particular living being. Personality is an act of the greatest courage in the face of life, the absolute affirmation of all that constitutes the individual, and the most successful adaptation to the universal conditions of existence coupled with the greatest possible freedom of personal decision.

Absolute | Character | Courage | Decision | Existence | Freedom | Individual | Individuality | Life | Life | Personality |

John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.

Character | Conformity | Enemy | Freedom | Growth |

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Man is man because he is free to operate within the framework of his destiny. He is free to deliberate, to make decisions, and to choose between alternatives. He is distinguished from animals by his freedom to do evil or to do good and to walk the high road of beauty or tread the low road of ugly degeneracy.

Beauty | Character | Degeneracy | Destiny | Evil | Freedom | Good | Man | Ugly | Beauty |

Louis Kronenberger

Humor simultaneously wounds and heals, indicts and pardons, diminishes and enlarges; it constitutes inner growth at the expense of outer gain, and those who possess and honestly practice it make themselves more through a willingness to make themselves less.

Character | Growth | Humor | Practice | Wisdom |

Otto Kahn, fully Otto Hermann Kahn

The path we have chosen for the present is full of hazards, as all paths are... The cost of freedom is always high, but Americans have always paid it. And one path we shall never choose, and that is the path of surrender, or submission.

Character | Cost | Freedom | Present | Submission | Surrender |

John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you - ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what America can do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.

Character | Freedom | Man | World |

Gloria D. Karpinski

Nonresistance isn’t passive. Passivity suggests powerlessness. But non-resistance is extremely powerful. It means we’re consciously choosing what we wish to empower. Nonresistance is the action of wisdom that assesses a situation and realizes there is nothing to be gained from fighting it.

Action | Character | Fighting | Means | Nothing | Wisdom |

Louis Kronenberger

With intellectuals, moral thought is often less a tonic that quickens ethical action than a narcotic that deadens it.

Action | Character | Thought | Thought |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Reality comes into being only when the mind is still, not made still. Therefore, there must be no disciplining of the mind to be still. When you discipline yourself, it is merely a projected desire to be in a particular state. Such a state is not the state of passivity... Liberation is from moment to moment in the understanding of what is, when the mind is free, not made free. It is only a free mind that can discover, not a mind molded by a belief or shaped according to a hypothesis. Such a mind cannot discover. There can be no freedom is there is conflict, for conflict is the fixing of the self in relationship.

Belief | Character | Desire | Discipline | Freedom | Hypothesis | Mind | Reality | Relationship | Self | Understanding |