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

Benjamin Franklin

Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech; which is the right of every man as far as by it he does not hurt or control the right of another; and this is the only check it ought to suffer and the only bounds it ought to know... Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freedom of speech, a thing terrible to traitors.

Control | Freedom of speech | Freedom of thought | Freedom | Liberty | Man | Public | Right | Speech | Thought | Wisdom |

Ellen Goodman

Public smoking, like public spitting, is becoming a socially unacceptable habit.

Habit | Public | Wisdom |

Philip G. Hamerton, fully Philip Gilbert Hamerton

Of all intellectual friendships, none are so beautiful as those which subsist between old and ripe men and their younger brethren in science or literature or art. It is by; these private friendships, even more than by public performance, that the tradition of sound thinking and great doing is perpetuated from age to age.

Age | Art | Literature | Men | Public | Science | Sound | Thinking | Tradition | Wisdom | Old |

Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare

A statesman should follow public opinion as a coachman follows his horses; having firm hold on the reins, and guiding them.

Opinion | Public | Wisdom |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

The aging man of the middle twentieth century lives, not in the public world of atomic physics and conflicting ideologies, of welfare states and supersonic speed, but in his strictly private universe of physical weakness and mental decay.

Man | Public | Universe | Weakness | Wisdom | World |

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

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Confidence | Government | Public | Wisdom | Government |

Irving Robert Kaufman

The [Supreme] Court’s only armor is the cloak of public trust; its sole ammunition, the collective hopes of our society.

Public | Society | Trust | Wisdom |

Jeane Kirkpatrick

We are making the price of power much too high in this society. I worry that we are making the conditions of public life so tough that nobody except people really obsessed with power will be willing finally to pay that price. That would be tragic from the point of view of public well-being.

Life | Life | People | Power | Price | Public | Society | Will | Wisdom | Worry |

Walter Lippmann

Politicians tend to live "in character," and many a public figure has come to imitate the journalism which describes him.

Character | Public | Wisdom |

Walter Lippmann

Successful democratic politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle, or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies. The decisive consideration is not whether the proposition is good but whether it is popular -- not whether it will work well and prove itself but whether the active talking constituents like it immediately. Politicians rationalize this servitude by saying that in a democracy public men are the servants of the people.

Consideration | Democracy | Good | Men | Public | Servitude | Talking | Will | Wisdom | Work |

Arne Dekke Eide Naess

Extensive moralizing within the ecological movement has given the public the false impression that they are being asked to make a sacrifice - to show more responsibility, more concern, and a nicer moral standard. But all of that would flow naturally and easily if the self were widened and deepened so that the protection of nature was felt and perceived as protection of our very selves.

Impression | Nature | Public | Responsibility | Sacrifice | Self | Wisdom |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Those who give the first shock to a state are naturally the first to be overwhelmed in its ruin. The fruits of public commotion are seldom enjoyed by the man who was the first to set it a going; he only troubles the water for another’s net.

Man | Public | Troubles | Wisdom |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

It takes a lot of self-love and presumption to have such esteem for one’s own opinions that to establish them one must overthrow the public peace and introduce so many inevitable evils, and such a horrible corruption of morals, as civil wars and political changes bring with them in a matter of such weight - and introduce them into one’s own country.

Corruption | Esteem | Inevitable | Love | Peace | Presumption | Public | Self | Self-love | Wisdom |

Donn Piatt

There is no tyranny so despotic as that of public opinion among a free people.

Opinion | People | Public | Tyranny | Wisdom |

Babe Paley, fully Barbara Cushing "Babe" Mortimer Paley

What is public history but a register of the successes and disappointments, the vices, the follies and the quarrels of those who engage in contention for power.

Contention | History | Power | Public | Wisdom |