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

Samuel Gompers

In America, the labor movement stands behind the government, and behind President Wilson. We stand behind him not because he is president, but because he is right and because he is a spokesman for freedom and democracy for all the nations of the world.

Civilization | Cultivation | Man | Opportunity | Service | Soul | Wealth | Woman | Work |

Shrimad Bhagavatam, or the Bhâgavata Purâna, Śrīmad Bhāgavatam, or Bhāgavata NULL

That complete freedom is achieved when he meets the complete spirit, the Personality of Godhead. There is a dormant affection for God within everyone; spiritual existence is manifested through the gross body and mind in the form of perverted affection for gross and subtle matter.

Father | Service |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

A man who has been the indisputable favorite of his mother keeps for life the feeling of conqueror, that confidence of success that often induces real success.

Man | Passion | Service | Words |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

Civilized society is perpetually menaced with disintegration through this primary hostility of men towards one another.

Purpose | Purpose | Service | Unity | Work |

Simone Weil

Petroleum is a more likely cause of international conflict than wheat.

Affliction | Better | Day | Effort | Right | Service |

Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl of Bewdley

Power without responsibility -- the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages.

Belief | Business | Father | Heart | Life | Life | Little | Man | People | Service | Words | Business |

Ignatius Loyola, aka Saint Ignatius of Loyola

God gives each one of us sufficient grace ever to know His holy will, and to do it fully.

Happy | Life | Life | Love | Purpose | Purpose | Service | Happiness |

Ignatius Loyola, aka Saint Ignatius of Loyola

As the devil showed great skill in tempting men to perdition., equal skill ought to be shown in saving them. The devil studied the nature of each man, seized upon the traits of his soul, adjusted himself to them and insinuated himself gradually into his victims's confidence -- suggesting splendors to the ambitious, gain to the covetous, delight to the sensuous, and a false appearance of piety to the pious -- and a winner of souls ought to act in the same cautious and skillful way.

God | Progress | Service | God |

Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl of Bewdley

Then comes Winston with his hundred horsepower mind and what can I do?

Day | Nations | Need | Order | Service | Spirit |

Stephan Jay Gould

Later evolutionary theorists of linear progress had to advance the overtly physical and historical claim that an ancestral lineage of arthropods actually turned over to become the first vertebrates (for the classical statement of the inversion theory, see William Patten, The Grand Strategy of Evolution, 1920).

Service | Space | Thought | Wonder | Thought |

Stephan Jay Gould

Lernaeodiscus porcellanae turns control of the host into a fine art. After castration by the parasite, male crabs develop female characteristics in both anatomy and behavior, while females become even more feminized. The emerging externa then takes the same form and position as the crab's own egg mass... The crabs then treat the externa as their own brood. In other words, the parasite usurps all the complex care normally invested in the crab's own progeny.

Hope | Passion | Reason | Right | Salvation | Service | World | Wrong |

Stephen Charnock

Men have naturally such slight thoughts of the majesty and law of God, that they think any service is good enough for him, and conformable to his law. The dullest and deadest time we think fittest to pay God a service in: when sleep is ready to close our eyes, and we are unfit to serve ourselves, we think it a fit time to open our hearts to God. How few morning sacrifices hath God from many persons and families! Men leap out of their beds to their carnal pleasures or worldly employments, without any thought of their Creator and Preserver, or any reflection upon his will as the rule of our daily obedience.

Conscience | God | Government | Lust | Service | Soul | Will | Government | God | Afraid |

Stephen Charnock

Many times we serve God as languishingly as if we were afraid he should accept us, and pray as coldly as if we were unwilling he should hear us, and take away that lust by which we are governed, and which conscience forces us to pray against; as if we were afraid God should set up his own throne and government in our hearts. How fleeting are we in divine meditation, how sleepy in spiritual exercises! but in other exercises active. The soul doth not awaken itself, and excite those animal and vital spirits, which it will in bodily recreations and sports; much less the powers of the soul: whereby it is evident we prefer the latter before any service to God.

Duty | Force | Lord | Men | Obedience | Prayer | Service | Space | Truth | Friends |

Stephen Charnock

Works make not the heart good, but a good heart makes the works good.

Faith | God | Good | Heart | Man | Nothing | Service | Wants | Worship | God |

Stephen Charnock

Man in the first instant of the use of reason, finds natural principles within himself; directing and choosing them, he finds a distinction between good and evil; how could this be if there were not some rule in him to try and distinguish good and evil? If there were not such a law and rule in man, he could not sin; for where there is no law there is no transgression. If man were a law to himself, and his own will his law, there could be no such thing as evil; whatsoever he willed would be good and agreeable to the law, and no action could be accounted sinful; the worst act would be as commendable as the best. Everything at man’s appointment would be good or evil. If there were no such law, how should men that are naturally inclined to evil disapprove of that which is unlovely, and approve of that good which they practice not? No man but inwardly thinks well of that which is good, while he neglects it; and thinks ill of that which is evil, while he commits it. Those that are vicious, do praise those that practice the contrary virtues. Those that are evil would seem to be good, and those that are blameworthy yet will rebuke evil in others. This is really to distinguish between good and evil; whence doth this arise, by what rule do we measure this, but by some innate principle?

Duty | God | Neglect | Service | World | God |

Stephen Charnock

Motions from Satan will thrust themselves in with our most raised and angelical frames; he loves to take off the edge of our spirits from God; he acts but after the old rate; he from the first envied God an obedience from man, and envied man the felicity of communion with God; he is unwilling God should have the honor of worship, and that we should have the fruit of it; he hath himself lost it, and therefore is unwilling we should enjoy it; and being subtle, he knows how to make impressions upon us suitable to our inbred corruptions, and assault us in the weakest part. He knows all the avenues to get within us (as he did in the temptation of Eve), and being a spirit, he wants not a power to dart them immediately upon our fancy; and being a spirit, and therefore active and nimble, he can shoot those darts faster than our weakness can beat them off.

Enough | God | Good | Law | Men | Reflection | Rule | Service | Thought | Time | Will | God | Think | Thought |

Theodor W. Adorno, born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund

The enraged man always appears as the gang-leader of his own self, giving his unconscious the order to pull no punches, his eyes shining with the satisfaction of speaking for the many that he himself is. The more someone has espoused the cause of his own aggression, the more perfectly he represents the repressive principle of society. In this sense more than in any other, perhaps, the proposition is true that the most individual is the most general.

Character | Ego | Kindness | Man | Self-preservation | Service |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

A perfectly stupid race can never rise to a very high plane; the negro, for instance, has been kept down as much by lack of intellectual development as by anything else; but the prime factor in the preservation of a race is its power to attain a high degree of social efficiency. Love of order, ability to fight well and breed well, capacity to subordinate the interests of the individual to the interests of the community, these and similar rather humdrum qualities go to make up the sum of social efficiency. The race that has them is sure to overturn the race whose members have brilliant intellects, but who are cold and selfish and timid, who do not breed well or fight well, and who are not capable of disinterested love of the community. In other words, character is far more important than intellect to the race as to the individual. We need intellect, and there is no reason why we should not have it together with character; but if we must choose between the two we choose character without a moment's hesitation.

Service |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

In life, as in a football game, the principle to follow is: hit the line hard.

Barbarism | Enlightenment | Equality | Liberty | Man | Men | Nations | People | Progress | Right | Service | Struggle | Wise |

Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

The process has aroused much antagonism, a great part of which is wholly without warrant. It is not true that as the rich have grown richer the poor have grown poorer. On the contrary, never before has the average man, the wage-worker, the farmer, the small trader, been so well off as in this country and at the present time. There have been abuses connected with the accumulation of wealth; yet it remains true that a fortune accumulated in legitimate business can be accumulated by the person specially benefited only on condition of conferring immense incidental benefits upon others. Successful enterprise, of the type which benefits all mankind, can only exist if the conditions are such as to offer great prizes as the rewards of success.

Blame | Conduct | Criticism | Efficiency | Good | Important | Liberty | Means | Nothing | Praise | Public | Right | Service | Truth | Wrong |