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

Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

The remedy for the Great Depression is to give the workers access to the means of production, and let them produce for themselves, not for others… the American way.

Despise | Good | Meaning | Pious | Question | Sense | Society | Wealth | Will | Society | Old | Understand |

V. S. Pritchett, fully Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett

Now, practically all reviewers have academic aspirations. The people from the universities are used to a captive audience, but the literary journalist has to please his audience.

Difficulty | Grave | Play | Public | Sense | Think |

Václav Havel

As soon as man began considering himself the source of the highest meaning in the world and the measure of everything, the world began to lose its human dimension and man began to lose control of it.

Better | Democracy | Journey | People | Problems | Sense | Will |

Václav Havel

I feel with leaving office I will enter a new realm of great freedom than I have had ... and I will speak more freely.

Need | People | Respect | Sense | Respect |

Václav Havel

It is the beginning of the worst moment. All of the flood barriers are at their maximum level.

Good | Manners | People | Principles | Sense | Understanding | Politeness |

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 |

Václav Havel

The previous regime — armed with its arrogant and intolerant ideology — reduced man to a force of production, and nature to a tool of production. In this it attacked both their very substance and their mutual relationship. It reduced gifted and autonomous people, skillfully working in their own country, to the nuts and bolts of some monstrously huge, noisy and stinking machine, whose real meaning was not clear to anyone.

Ability | Absurd | Irony | Sense |

V. S. Pritchett, fully Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett

The peculiar foreign superstition that the English do not like love, the evidence being that they do not talk about it.

Life | Life | Pleasure | Sense | Soul | Tears | Will | Wonder |

Václav Havel

Sober perseverance is more effective than enthusiastic emotions, which are all too capable of being transferred, with little difficulty, to something different each day.

Listening | Sense |

Václav Havel

There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight.

Ability | Absurd | Awareness | Courage | Good | Gratitude | Irony | Life | Life | Meaning | Responsibility | Sense | Vigilance | Awareness |

Václav Havel

There are no exact guidelines. There are probably no guidelines at all. The only thing I can recommend at this stage is a sense of humor, an ability to see things in their ridiculous and absurd dimensions, to laugh at others and at ourselves, a sense of irony regarding everything that calls out for parody in this world. In other words, I can only recommend perspective and distance. Awareness of all the most dangerous kinds of vanity, both in others and in ourselves. A good mind. A modest certainty about the meaning of things. Gratitude for the gift of life and the courage to take responsibility for it. Vigilance of spirit.

Ability | Absurd | Courage | Good | Gratitude | Life | Life | Meaning | Responsibility | Sense | Sensibility |

Václav Havel

We must not be afraid of dreaming the seemingly impossible if we want the seemingly impossible to become a reality.

Experience | Order | Responsibility | Sense | Understanding | Will | Work | Understand |

Václav Havel

It also happens, rather often, that politicians do not actually talk to each other but only to one another's shadows as they appear in the media.

Birth | Doubt | Life | Life | Sense |

Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

There is no point of insult that is unforgiving when it was avenged.

Enough | Man | Sense |

Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

Conscience, the organ of feeling which dominates us and of the opinions which rule us, is presumptuous in the strong, timid in the weak and unfortunate, uneasy in the undecided.

Sense | Think |

Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

Most people grow old within a small circle of ideas, which they have not discovered for themselves. There are perhaps less wrong-minded people than thoughtless.

Courage | Men | Sense |

Tom Lehrer, fully Thomas Andrew Lehrer

In my youth there were words you couldn't say in front of a girl; now you can't say 'girl.'

Sense | Will |

Tom Lehrer, fully Thomas Andrew Lehrer

There once lived a man named Oedipus Rex, you may have heard about his odd complex. His name appears in Freud's index 'cause he loved his mother.

Creed | Sense |

Tryon Edwards

Compromise is but the sacrifice of one right or good in the hope of retaining another -- too often ending in the loss of both.

Good | Sense | Sound | Wisdom |

Tryon Edwards

Death has nothing terrible which life has not made so. A faithful Christian life in this world is the best preparation for the next.

Belief | Sense |