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 Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus

The moon is not kept in her orbit round the earth, nor the earth in her orbit round the sun, by a force that varies merely in the inverse ratio of the squares of the distances.

Man | Means | Peculiarity | Power |

Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus

The power of population is so superior to the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man, that premature death must in some shape or other visit the human race.

Earth | Power |

Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus

But, fortunately for mankind, the neat rents of the land, under a system of private property, can never be diminished by the progress of cultivation.

Comfort | Duty | Object | Power | Wealth | Will |

Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus

The tendency to a virtuous attachment is so strong that there is a constant effort towards an increase of population.

Power |

Thomas R. Kelly, fully Thomas Raymond Kelly

The deepest need of men is not food and clothing and shelter, important as they are. It is God. We have mistaken the nature of poverty, and thought it was economic poverty. No, it is poverty of soul, deprivation of God's recreating, loving peace. Peer into poverty and see if we are really getting down to the deepest needs, in our economic salvation schemes. These are important. But they lie farther along the road, secondary steps toward world reconstruction. The primary step is a holy life, transformed and radiant in the glory of God.

Experience | Joy | Men | Mystical | Obedience | Peace | Power | Self | Soul | Old |

Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus

Few persons will leave their families, connections, friends, and native land, to seek a settlement in untried foreign climes, without some strong subsisting causes of uneasiness where they are, or the hope of some great advantages in the place to which they are going.

Death | Earth | Inevitable | Man | Mankind | Power | Success | War | Work |

Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus

I think it will be found that experience, the true source and foundation of all knowledge, invariably confirms its truth.

Existence | Knowledge | Passion | Power | Present | Right | System | Will | Think |

Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman

Two things are going on at the same time with the flattening of the world: The relentless quest for efficiency is squeezing some of the fat out of life.

Better | Change | Energy | Example | Power | System | Wants | Old |

Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman

Yes, the world is now flat for publishing as well.

Power | Reward | Time | War | Will |

Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus

The proposition of Mr. Ricardo, which states that a rise in the price of labor lowers the price of a large class of commodities, has undoubtedly a very paradoxical air; but it is, nevertheless, true, and the appearance of paradox would vanish, if it were stated more naturally and correctly.

Habit | Life | Life | Power | Struggle | Waste |

Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus

Thirty or forty proprietors, with incomes answering to between one thousand and five thousand a year, would create a much more effectual demand for the necessaries, conveniences, and luxuries of life, than a single proprietor possessing a hundred thousand a year.

Inquiry | Means | Power | Progress | Wealth |

Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus

The prodigious waste of human life occasioned by this perpetual struggle for room and food, was more than supplied by the mighty power of population, acting, in some degree, unshackled, from the constant habit of emigration.

Death | Earth | Power |

Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus

Whether the law of marriage be instituted or not, the dictate of nature and virtue seems to be an early attachment to one woman.

Power |

Thomas Wentworth Higginson

I saw before me, sitting on the counter, a handsome, burly man, heavily built, and not looking, to my gymnasium-trained eye, in really good condition for athletic work. I perhaps felt a little prejudiced against him from having read ‘‘Leaves of Grass’’ on a voyage, in the early stages of seasickness,—a fact which doubtless increased for me the intrinsic unsavoriness of certain passages. But the personal impression made on me by the poet was not so much of manliness as of Boweriness, if I may coin the phrase. . . . This passing impression did not hinder me from thinking of Whitman with hope and satisfaction at a later day when regiments were to be raised for the war, when the Bowery seemed the very place to enlist them. . . . When, however, after waiting a year or more, Whitman decided that the proper post for him was hospital service, I confess to feeling a reaction, which was rather increased than diminished by his profuse celebration of his own labors in that direction. Hospital attendance is a fine thing, no doubt, yet if all men, South and North, had taken the same view of their duty that Whitman held, there would have been no occasion for hospitals on either side.

Better | Character | Important | Life | Life | Man | Men | Mission | Power | Risk | Parting |

Turkish Proverbs

Who has seen death will be content with illness.

Need | Power |

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

The way to succeed is to double your error rate.

Power | Trust |

Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman

There is no future in vanilla for most companies in a flat world. A lot of vanilla making in software and other areas is going to shift to open-source communities.

Balance | Business | Global | Good | Growth | History | Past | People | Poverty | Power | Price | Size | Time | Will | World | Business | Think |

Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman

But the Indias and Chinas are increasingly adding one more thing to low-cost labor and high-power technology: unfettered imagination–that is, high innovative and creative capabilities. They will focus first on solving their own problems with cheap labor, high technology, and high creativity–re-imagining their own futures… So, for the last time, you have been warned. This is not a test.

People | Power | Strength | War | Will | Think |

Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman

Can Iraqis get this government together? If they do, I think the American public will continue to want to support the effort there to try to produce a decent, stable Iraq. But if they don't, then I think the bottom is going to fall out of public support here for the whole Iraq endeavor. So one way or another, I think we're in the end game in the sense it's going to be decided in the next weeks or months whether there's an Iraq there worth investing in. And that is something only Iraqis can tell us.

Care | Office | People | Power | Work | World |

Thomas Szasz, fully Thomas Stephen Szasz

The fundamental error of psychiatry is that it regards life as a problem to be solved, instead of as a purpose to be fulfilled.

Ideas | Life | Life | Power |