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

Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley

Sooner or later, false thinking brings wrong conduct.

Conduct | Thinking | Wrong |

Peter W. Jedlicka

There are only three things to teach: Simplicity, patience, and compassion. Simplicity in action and thoughts, will return you to the source of your being. Patience with friends and enemies alike, will give you harmony with the way things are. Compassion with yourself, will settle all the differences between you and other beings in the world.

Action | Compassion | Harmony | Patience | Simplicity | Teach | Will | World | Friends |

Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

It is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and happier to be sometimes cheated than not to trust.

Better | Trust | Wrong |

David Hockey

Purpose directs decision making. We look for leaders with vision, people who can imagine possible futures, describe desirable ideals, then tell us how they might be achieved. Our willingness to accept direction in almost all walks of life suggest that many, if not most, may actually prefer to be told what to think, how to behave, and what to buy. Being told simplifies life.

Decision | Ideals | Life | Life | People | Purpose | Purpose | Vision |

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Nonviolent direct action seeks to create such a crisis and foster such a tension that a community which has consistently refused to negotiate is forced to confront the issue. It seeks to dramatize the issue so that it can no longer be ignored.

Action | Crisis |

Ronald Knox, fully Ronald Arbuthnott Knox

The real tragedy of our prayers is not that God so often refuses to grant them. The tragedy is we so often ask for the wrong thing.

God | Tragedy | Wrong | God |

Jacques Leclercq

Marriage is the only sacrament which transforms a human action into an instrument of the divine action, using a human act which up to then had been used for a natural end.

Action | Marriage |

Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller

Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.

Fidelity | Purpose | Purpose | Self | Wrong |

Martin Luther King, Jr.

I have tried to make it clear that it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends. But now I must affirm that it is just as wrong, or even more so, to use moral means to preserve immoral ends.

Ends | Means | Wrong |

Barbara Kingsolver

The friend who holds your hand and says the wrong thing is made of dearer stuff than the one who stays away.

Friend | Wrong |

Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli

Where the willingness is great, the difficulties cannot be great.

Ho Chi Minh

Military action without politics is like a tree without a root.

Action | Politics |

Thomas Merton

A holy person is one who is sanctified by the presence and action of God within him.

Action | God | God |

Cleland Boyd McAfee

The average man who goes wrong in belief does it when he forgets that there are other truths besides his favorite one.

Belief | Man | Wrong | Truths |

Wayne Muller

Right action is its own reward.

Action | Reward | Right |