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

Brooks Atkinson, fully Justin Brooks Atkinson

Materialism is decadent and degenerate only if the spirit of the nation has withered and if individual people are so unimaginative that they wallow in it.

Individual | Materialism | People | Spirit | Wisdom |

Hotzoas Chochmah Umassar

A wise man said, “Most people do not feel bad because they lack wisdom; they feel bad because people say they lack wisdom.”

Character | Man | People | Wisdom | Wise |

Theodore H. White, fully Theodore Harold White

Whether a man is burdened by power or enjoys power; whether he is trapped by responsibility or made free by it; whether he is moved by other people and outer forces or moves them - this is of the essence of leadership.

Character | Man | People | Power | Responsibility |

Marshall Wingfield

Prejudice is not held against people because they have evil qualities. Evil qualities are imputed to people because prejudices are held against them.

Character | Evil | People | Prejudice | Qualities |

Franklin Pierce Adams, pen name F.P.A.

The trouble with this country is that there are too many politicians who believe, with a conviction based on experience, that you can fool all of the people all of the time.

Experience | People | Time | Wisdom | Trouble |

Edward Noyes Westcott

Do all the good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as you ever can.

Character | Good | Means | People |

James Q. Wilson

To say that people have a moral sense is not the same thing as saying that they are innately good. A moral sense must compete with other senses that are natural to humans - the desire to survive, acquire possessions, indulge in sex, or accumulate power - in short, with self-interest narrowly defined. How that struggle is resolved will differ depending on our character, our circumstances, and the cultural and political tendencies of the day. But saying that a moral sense exists is the same thing as saying that humans, by their nature, are potentially good.

Character | Circumstances | Day | Desire | Good | Nature | People | Possessions | Power | Self | Self-interest | Sense | Struggle | Will |

Morris Adler

There are those who are fearful to be alone with themselves. They run with the crowd not out of love for others but out of fear to remain alone with themselves, terrified lest they hear the voice of their own spirit, or fearful of remaining alone with their own void.

Fear | Love | Spirit | Wisdom |

James R. Adams

The super-businessmen have to a large extent failed to see that the need for morality in the people they practically govern is greater than ever, because social relations are infinitely more delicate and complex in adjustment than heretofore.

Morality | Need | People | Wisdom | Govern |

Mary Hunter Austin

Ride your emotions as a scallop rides the waves; don't get upset among them. There are people who enjoy getting swamped emotionally just as, incredibly, there are people who enjoy getting drunk.

Emotions | People | Wisdom |

Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens

Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear - not absence of fear. Except a creature be part coward it is not a compliment to say it is brave.

Absence | Character | Courage | Fear |

Robin Williams, fully Robin McLaurin Williams

We have nothing to fear but sanity itself.

Character | Fear | Nothing | Sanity |

Ansel Adams

Not everybody trust paintings but people believe photographs.

People | Trust | Wisdom |

George Matthew Adams

People with many interests live, not only longest, but happiest. People with interests are never bores!

People | Wisdom |

Lionel Trilling

The diminution of the reality of class, however socially desirable, in many respects seems to have the practical effect of diminishing our ability to see people in their differences and specialness.

Ability | Character | People | Reality |

Margaret Young, born Margaret Youngblood

Often people attempt to live their lives backwards; they try to have more things, or more money, in order to do more of what they want, so they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are, then do what you need to do, in order to have what you want.

Character | Money | Need | Order | People | Will |

Alain Pen name of Emile-Auguste Chartier

It is a small thing to accept people for what they are; if we really love them we must want them to be what they are.

Love | People | Wisdom |

Youth Movement Slogan NULL

We are the people our parents warned us about.

Character | Parents | People |

Samuel Adams

Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. These are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature.

Duty | Law | Liberty | Life | Life | Property | Right | Rights | Wisdom |