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

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

The study of the Vedas is the highest type of learning since it leads to the conquest of Death. All other studies deal with the means of living or the surroundings which you have to live; they deal with earning and spending, deriving a little pleasure by this trick, escaping a little grief by that trick. The Vedas show the path to the Realm of Eternal Bliss, where there is no Birth or Death.

Body | Day | Life | Life | Nothing |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

The Universe is seen; it can be learnt about; it can be experienced and enjoyed. But God is unseen. He has to be inferred through His handiwork. So too, Society to which social service is rendered, cannot be seen as such.

Day |

Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

If you deny any affinity with another person or kind of person, if you declare it to be wholly different from yourself

Body | Day | Earth | Fear | Life | Life | Love | Man | Need | Nothing | Right |

Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

And I speak of spiritual suffering! Of people seeing their talent, their work, their lives wasted. Of good minds submitting to stupid ones. Of strength and courage strangled by envy, greed for power, fear of change. Change is freedom, change is life

Day | Earth | Life | Life | Need |

Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

Wherever there was a group of people, and a treasure to be administered, there Peter knew was backbiting and scandal and intriguing and spying, and a chance for somebody whose brains were all there.

Day | Hero | Individual | Intelligence | Man | Mind | Science | Story | Think |

Upanishads or The Upanishads NULL

The Self is within all, and it is without all. – Isha Upanishad

Body | Consciousness | Day | Heaven | Light | Mortal | Self | World |

Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

If you want your writing to be taken seriously, don't marry and have kids, and above all, don't die. But if you have to die, commit suicide. They approve of that.

Day |

Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

The supreme crime of the church to-day is that everywhere and in all its operations and influences it is on the side of sloth of mind; that it banishes brains, it sanctifies stupidity, it canonizes incompetence.

Day | Hero | Science | Story |

Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

Ogion went on a halfmile or so, and said at last, 'To hear, one must be silent'.

Day | Man |

Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

All truly great art is optimistic. The individual artist is happy in his creative work. The fact that practically all great art is tragic does not in any way change the above thesis.

Day | Industry | Man | Purpose | Purpose |

Vance Havner

Many people are in a rut and a rut is nothing but a grave - with both ends kicked out.

Day |

Václav Havel

If I have accomplished anything good, then it's mainly because I've been driven by the need to know whether I can accomplish things I'm not sure I have the capacity for.

Day | Difficulty | Indifference | Man | Self | Sense | Silence | Sympathy |

Vannevar Bush

Our ineptitude in getting at the record is largely caused by the artificiality of systems of indexing. When data of any sort are placed in storage, they are filed alphabetically or numerically, and information is found (when it is) by tracing it down from subclass to subclass. It can be in only one place, unless duplicates are used; one has to have rules as to which path will locate it, and the rules are cumbersome. Having found one item, moreover, one has to emerge from the system and re-enter on a new path.

Day | Rest |

Václav Havel

It is as if many have again ignored the fact that an attack on the freedom of individuals threatens the freedom of all.

Day | Past | Problems |

Vannevar Bush

To be able to key one sheet of a million before an operator in a second or two, with the possibility of then adding notes thereto, is suggestive in many ways. It might even be of use in libraries, but that is another story. At any rate, there are now some interesting combinations possible. One might, for example, speak to a microphone, in the manner described in connection with the speech-controlled typewriter, and thus make his selections. It would certainly beat the usual file clerk.

Day | Future | Man | Means | Progress | Science |

Tommaso Campanella, baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella

But we embrace the loss, the lure alone love fools us with. That glimpse of heavenly light, that foretaste of eternal Good, we miss.

Day | Following |

Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

Nobility is a legacy, like gold and diamonds.

Care | Day | Death | Mercy | Time |

Tryon Edwards

Hell is truth seen too late—duty neglected in its season.

Anger | Day |

Tom Lehrer, fully Thomas Andrew Lehrer

For there is surely nothing more beautiful in this world than the sight of a lone man facing single-handedly a half a ton of angry pot roast!

Brotherhood | Day | Events | Hate | Love | People | World |