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 Berry

To a large extent our difficulties are a difficulty of language. People fail to realize that language is multivalent and also, particularly, that when a person uses a word like ‘rights’, for the non-human world, they think ‘rights’ is a single continuum… ‘Rights’ is an analogous term. It is an analogous term. It is alike and different. Like a person says – “A tree has rights” – the tree doesn’t have human rights because human rights would be no good for a tree. A tree needs tree rights. Birds need bird rights. Plants need plant rights. This whole question of law and rights needs to recognize what we call the diversity within the continuity. It is a difference of quality, not of quantity. So, it is not that the humans have more or less. Humans don’t have more rights than birds do. They have different rights. So that it’s this capacity to recognize difference that pervades just an enormous amount of human affairs.

Attention | Life | Life | Little | Mission | Past | Reconciliation | Redemption | Relationship | Time |

Thomas Jefferson

If virtuous, the government need not fear the fair operation of attack and defense. Nature has given to man no other means of sifting the truth, either in religion, law, or politics.

Credit | Patriotism | Preference | Public | Redemption |

Thomas Jefferson

The tax which will be paid for [the] purpose [of education] is not more than the thousandth part of what will be paid to kings, priests and nobles who will rise up among us if we leave the people in ignorance.

Debt | Earth | Majority | Progress | Redemption | System | Will |

Thomas Paine

The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.

Church | Consolation | Debt | Doctrine | Man | Means | Money | Redemption | System | Truth | Think |

Thomas Paine

The story of the whale swallowing Jonah, though a whale is large enough to do it, borders greatly on the marvelous; but it would have approached nearer to the idea of a miracle if Jonah had swallowed the whale.

Man | Murder | Redemption | Religion | Sin | Story | System | Will | Murder |

Waldemar Argow, fully Wendelin Waldemar Wieland Argow

The ideal religion is to establish the proper balance between mind and emotion.

Consecration | Law | Life | Life | Nobility | Present | Redemption | Religion | Sense | Vicissitudes |

W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy

The most important initiations occur in dreams. The most important interactions with other's are not verbal but energetic. When somebody expresses too much love for somebody else: there are denied destructive impulses. To engage the unconscious you need to sacrifice reactivity to discover the energies that are really present. We’re conditioned not to wound, but conscious death and resurrection are necessary to evolve – death of innocence must occur in order to evolve.

Life | Life | Redemption | Understanding |

William Shakespeare

Are you good men and true? Much Ado about Nothing. Act iii. Sc. 3.

Death | Evidence | Hope | Men | Redemption | World |

William Shakespeare

O villain, thou hast stol'n both mine office and my name! The one ne'er got me credit, the other mickle blame. The Comedy of Errors (Dromio of Ephesus at III, i)

Redemption |