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

Thomas Paine

I speak an open and disinterested language, dictated by no passion but that of humanity. To me, who have not only refused offers, because I thought them improper, but have declined rewards I might with reputation have accepted, it is no wonder that meanness and imposition appear disgustful. Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good.

Justice | Man | Opinion | Present | Right | Will | Work | Following |

Thomas Merton

To enter into the realm of contemplation, one must in a certain sense die: but this death is in fact the entrance into a higher life. It is a death for the sake of life, which leaves behind all that we can know or treasure as life, as thought, as experience as joy, as being. [Every form of intuition and experience] die to be born again on a higher level of life.

Desire | Evil | Justice | Mercy | Pity |

Thomas Merton

Though he now has the capacity to communicate anything, anywhere, instantly, man finds himself with nothing to say. Not that there are not many things he could communicate, or should attempt to communicate. He should, for instance, be able to meet with his fellow man and discuss ways of building a peaceful world. He is incapable of this kind of confrontation. Instead of this, he has intercontinental ballistic missiles, which can deliver nuclear death to tens of millions of people in a few moments. This is the most sophisticated message modern man has, apparently, to convey to his fellow man. It is, of course, a message about himself, his alienation from himself, and his inability to come to terms with life.

Injustice | Injustice | Justice | Love | Mercy | Regard |

Ze'ev Jabotinsky, born Vladimir Jabotinsky

The world must be a place of co-operation and mutual goodwill. If we are to live we should all live in the same way, and if we are to die we should all die in the same way.

Justice |

United Nations NULL

Article 8 - The United Nations shall place no restrictions on the eligibility of men and women to participate in any capacity and under conditions of equality in its principal and subsidiary organs.

Aggression | Attainment | Conformity | Distinction | Justice | Nations | Peace | Principles | Problems | Respect | Rights | Self-determination | Suppression | Respect |

United Nations NULL

Article 93 - All Members of the United Nations are ipso facto parties to the Statute of the International Court of Justice. A state which is not a Member of the United Nations may become a party to the Statute of the International Court of Justice on conditions to be determined in each case by the General Assembly upon the recommendation of the Security Council.

Justice | Present |

William Cohen, fully William Sebastian Cohen

We felt it was in our best interests to move out. We'll play this out in court.

Justice | Question | Will |

William Cowper

Man in society is like a flow'r, blown in its native bed. 'Tis there alone his faculties expanded in full bloom shine out, there only reach their proper use.

Hell | Justice | Receive |

William Cowper

Himself a wanderer from the narrow way, his silly sheep, what wonder if they stray?

Justice |

Wilkie Collins, fully William Wilkie Collins

It is one of my rules in life, never to notice what I don't understand.

Distrust | Freedom | Justice | Luxury | Man | Men | Self | Time | Wonder |

Wendell Phillips

When Marmontel was regretting the excesses of the period, Chamfort asked: “Do you think that revolutions are made with rose-water?”

Justice | Right | Rule | Wisdom |

Wendell Phillips

Government is a necessary evil, like other go-carts and crutches. Our need of it shows exactly how far we are still children. All governing over much kills the self-help and energy of the governed.

Bigotry | Fighting | Humanity | Ideas | Justice | Selfishness | Tyranny |

Wendell Phillips

Physical bravery is an animal instinct; moral bravery is a much higher and truer courage.

Justice |

Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

The Past -- the dark unfathomed retrospect! The teeming gulf --the sleepers and the shadows! The past! the infinite greatness of the past! For what is the present after all but a growth out of the past?

Equality | Justice | Love | Rule | Soul |

Walter Brueggemann

The only serious energising needed or offered is the discernment of God in all his freedom, the dismantling of structures of weariness and the dethronement of the powers of fatigue.

Cause | Father | God | Justice | Knowledge | Looks | Worship | God |

Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass, be not afraid of my body.

Better | Body | Fear | Imperfection | Justice | Love | Man | Nothing | Soul | Will | Woman | Understand |

Walter Lippmann

In government offices which are sensitive to the vehemence and passion of mass sentiment public men have no sure tenure. They are in effect perpetual office seekers, always on trial for their political lives, always required to court their restless constituents. They are deprived of their independence. Democratic politicians rarely feel they can afford the luxury of telling the whole truth to the people. And since not telling it, though prudent, is uncomfortable, they find it easier if they themselves do not have to hear too often too much of the sour truth. The men under them who report and collect the news come to realize in their turn that it is safer to be wrong before it has become fashionable to be right.

Conduct | Justice | Men | Society | Society |

Wendell Berry

I prayed like a man walking in a forest at night, feeling his way with his hands, at each step fearing to fall into pure bottomlessness forever. Prayer is like lying awake at night, afraid, with your head under the cover, hearing only the beating of your own heart.

Forgiveness | Hell | Justice | Light | Suffering | Forgiveness |

Wendell Berry

Reductionism (ultimately, the empirical explanability of everything and a cornerstone of science), has uses that are appropriate, and it also can be used inappropriately. It is appropriately used as a way (one way) of understanding what is empirically known or empirically knowable. When it becomes merely an intellectual "position" confronting what is not empirically known or knowable, then it becomes very quickly absurd, and also grossly desensitizing and false.

Competition | Justice | Privilege |