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

Dorothee Söelle

It is through a religious act that people set meaning over against meaninglessness, wholeness over against being fragmented, courage over against fear.

Courage | Fear | Meaning | People | Wholeness |

Baird T. Spalding

The greatest name is the word “God.” Why? We can show you today that word vibrates at the rate of one hundred and eighty-six billion beats a second and we know people capable of intoning that word. But the beauty of it is, the moment that you realize that vibration, you are that vibration every time.

Beauty | God | People | Time | Beauty |

Franz Schubert, fully Franz Peter Schubert

No one feels another's grief; no one understands another's joy. People imagine they can reach one another. In reality they only pass each other by.

Grief | Joy | People | Reality |

E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

The best aid to give is intellectual aid, a gift of useful knowledge… Nothing becomes truly “one’s own” except on the basis of some genuine effort or sacrifice… The gift of material goods makes people dependent, but the gift of knowledge makes them free.

Aid | Effort | Knowledge | Nothing | People | Sacrifice |

Eric Sevareid, fully Arnold Eric Sevareid

The five happiest people I have ever met all had this strange little quirk of referring to their jobs as a “calling.”

Little | People |

Dorothee Söelle

We are afraid of religion because it interprets rather than just observes. Religion does not confirm that there are hungry people in the world; it interprets the hungry to be our brethren whom we allow to starve.

People | Religion | World | Afraid |

Sitting Bull, aka Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake, born Hoka Psice NULL

What treaty that the white man ever made with us have they kept? Not one. When I was a boy, the Sioux owned the world; the sun rose and set on their land; they sent ten thousand men to battle. Where are the warriors today? Who slew them? Where are our lands? Who owns them? What white man can say I ever stole his land or a penny of his money? Yet they say I am a thief. What white woman, however lonely, was ever captive or insulted by me? Yet they say I am a bad Indian. What white man has ever seen me drunk? Who has come to me hungry and unfed? Who has ever seen me beat my wives or abuse my children? What law have I broken? Is it wrong for me to love my own? Is it wicked for me because my skin is red? Because I am a Sioux; because I was born where my father lived; because I would die for my people and my country?

Abuse | Battle | Children | Father | Land | Law | Love | Man | Men | Money | People | Woman | World | Wrong |

Richard “Rick” Stone

We pay a terrible price for not forgiving. Unfortunately, the people whom we hold responsible for these unfinished feelings usually don’t suffer because of our feelings.

Feelings | People | Price |

B. F. Skinner, fully Burrhus Frederic "B.F." Skinner

If there is any purpose or direction in the evolution of culture, it has to do with bringing people under the control of more and more of the consequences of behavior.

Behavior | Consequences | Control | Culture | Evolution | People | Purpose | Purpose |

Albert Schweitzer

When our wills are united with the will of God, we never take all the goodness and beauty and people and things in life for granted, but we accept them again and again as a gift from him – given that we may serve him with still greater joy and thank him for it.

Beauty | God | Joy | Life | Life | People | Will | Wills | Beauty |

Baird T. Spalding

A child has not yet been hypnotized by the world idea of limitation and lives naturally in harmony with its source. That is why most grown people love to be with children. They radiate the natural harmony of the Universe and that is the natural environment of man.

Children | Harmony | Love | Man | People | Universe | World | Child |

Robert H. Schuller, fully Robert Harold Schuller

Most people who succeed in the face of seemingly impossible conditions are people who simply don’t know how to quit. When unexpected damage wreaks havoc with your dreams, then what? Never dwell on what you have lost. If you do, you will be discouraged and defeated. Look not at what you have lost but at what you have left.

Dreams | People | Will |

Seneca the Younger, aka Seneca or Lucius Annaeus Seneca NULL

Most people are angry with the sinner, not the sin.

People | Sin |

Olaf Stapledon, fully William Olaf Stapledon

I should like to persuade religious people that some of us who reject their faith, nevertheless do have an experience which is at least very much like their essential religious experience. We feel, sometimes with remarkable intensity and clarity, our `at-oneness’ with something which might be the fundamental reality behind appearances.

Experience | Faith | Oneness | People | Reality |

Eckhart Tolle, born Ulrich Leonard Tolle

Most people don’t inhabit a living reality, but a conceptualized one.

People | Reality |

William Ashley “Billy” Sunday

More people succeed with great purpose rather than with great talent.

People | Purpose | Purpose |