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

Winthrop Williams Aldrich

The price of power is responsibility for the public good.

Character | Good | Power | Price | Public | Responsibility | Wisdom |

Rabbi Avraham of Sochotchov NULL

Life is something you measure not in years but in precious moments - and in how you value those moments. The responsibility for making such moments meaningful is yours alone. There are no definitions of failure or success except the ones you specify for yourself. You are the meaning of your own life.

Character | Failure | Life | Life | Meaning | Responsibility | Success | Failure | Value |

Friedrich Engels

Freedom does not consist in the dream of independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives or systematically making them work towards definite ends. This holds good in relation both to the laws of external nature and to those which govern the bodily and mental existence of men themselves - two classes of laws which we can separate from each other at most only in thought but not in reality. Freedom of the will therefore means nothing but the capacity to make decisions with knowledge of the subject.

Capacity | Character | Ends | Existence | Freedom | Good | Knowledge | Means | Men | Nature | Nothing | Reality | Thought | Will | Work | Govern | Thought |

John Dewey

A primary responsibility of educators is that they not only be aware of the general principle of the shaping of actual experience by environing conditions, but that they also recognize in the concrete what surroundings, physical and social, that exist so as to extract from them all that they have to contribute to building up experiences that are worthwhile.

Character | Experience | Responsibility |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

The responsibility of tolerance lies with those who have the wider vision.

Character | Responsibility | Vision |

Harry Emerson Fosdick

On its highest level man's contemporary desire to escape responsibility expresses itself not in emphasis on luck, or in emotional submission to fate, but in a thoroughgoing deterministic theory, ascribing all personal qualities to heredity and environment.

Character | Desire | Fate | Heredity | Luck | Man | Qualities | Responsibility | Submission |

Armand Hammer

I believe we are here to do good. It is the responsibility of every human being to aspire to do something worthwhile, to make this world a better place than the one he found. Life is a gift, and if we agree to accept it, we must contribute in return. When we fail to contribute, we fail to adequately answer why we are here.

Better | Character | Good | Life | Life | Responsibility | World |

Lynn Hill, aka Lynn Hill-Raffa

The purpose of my existence as I climb is to adapt my personal dimensions to the environment around me at each moment. I become an active player sharing some of the responsibility for my own destiny, achieving a heightened sense of awareness and seeing the direct result of my efforts; either I fall or I reach the top. But the meaning does not come from conquering the rock. Purpose comes from moving in harmony with nature, rather than destroying it or altering it for my immediate satisfaction. What gives life meaning is the fulfillment of directing energy in a way that brings a higher order to, and harmony with, the environment I live in... The ultimate meaning of our lives is relative to how much we have given to others. The ultimate meaning of our lives is connected with death... I would like to know that I have inspired people to go beyond self-limiting stereotypes to experience and nurture the true richness of their passions.

Awareness | Character | Death | Destiny | Energy | Existence | Experience | Fulfillment | Harmony | Life | Life | Meaning | Nature | Order | People | Purpose | Purpose | Responsibility | Self | Sense | Awareness |

William James

A new position of responsibility will usually show a man to be a far stronger creature than was supposed.

Character | Man | Position | Responsibility | Will |

Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla

It is the responsibility of the conscious, rational mind to decide what it accepts, retains, and dwells upon. It’s an immense responsibility.

Character | Mind | Responsibility |

Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos

So long as we are on a search for pain-free human relationships, or shifting responsibility for all our hurt and all our fears of abandonment, or seeking ourselves in others, we have not yet found the thread that will lead us toward God, or ourselves. When we learn to accept ourselves - not just our public achievements and private successes, not just the divine being we are evolving into, but also our failures, inadequacies, cowardices and fears - then we will be able to embrace the strangers among us, because we will, finally, have embraced the stranger inside ourselves.

Character | God | Pain | Public | Responsibility | Search | Will | Learn |

Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla

We all have a gift. Each of us is born with something unique to express, to do, to become. It is your responsibility to discover your unique gift... Once having been discovered, the gift is developed and nurtured and then it is given back... Real joy comes from giving back, from being authentically you and sharing that authenticity with those around you.

Authenticity | Character | Giving | Joy | Responsibility | Unique |

Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla

Knowing the truth carries with it an extraordinary responsibility. Meeting that responsibility can be your most rewarding experience.

Character | Experience | Knowing | Responsibility | Truth |

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

Political action is the highest responsibility of a citizen.

Action | Character | Responsibility |

Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

A crowd... in its very concept is the untruth, by reason of the fact that it renders the individual completely impenitent and irresponsible, or at least weakens his sense of responsibility by reducing it to a fraction.

Character | Individual | Reason | Responsibility | Sense |