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

Saint Teresa of Ávila, aka Saint Teresa of Jesus, baptized as Teresa Sánchez de Cepeda y Ahumada NULL

She becomes brutally aware of her insignificance and realizes how little we would be able to do to help ourselves if the Beloved ever decided to abandon us.

Courage | Enough | Evil | God | Harm | Lord | Satan | Strength | God | Afraid |

Salman Rushdie, fully Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie

You can find shame in every house, burning in an ashtray, hanging framed upon a wall, covering a bed. But nobody notices it any more.

World |

Salman Rushdie, fully Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie

I do not envy people who think they have a complete explanation of the world, for the simple reason that they are obviously wrong.

Cost | Culture | Enough | Father | Important | Little | Meaning | Peace | Story | Thinking | Understand |

Samuel Butler

For those that run away and fly, take place at least o' the enemy.

Sam Keen

One part of love is sweet and easy, something we fall into and are swept away by. But the other part is hard: it requires discipline, willpower, and opening your heart again and again to someone with whom you are angry, can't stand, and do not like.

Life | Life | Men |

Sammy Davis, Jr., born Samuel George "Sammy" Davis Jr.

Part of show business is magic. You don't know how it happens.

Samuel Butler

To put one’s trust in God is only a longer way of saying that one will chance it.

Children | Enough | Judgment | Life | Life | Lying | Parents | People | Perfection | Play | Quiet | Sense | Service | Will | World | Think |

Samuel Butler

Then he saw also that it matters little what profession, whether of religion or irreligion, a man may make, provided only he follows it out with charitable inconsistency, and without insisting on it to the bitter end. It is in the uncompromisingness with which dogma is held and not in the dogma or want of dogma that the danger lies.

God | God |

Samuel Butler

If, then, reason would be non-existent were there no such thing as unreason, surely it follows that the more unreason there is, the more reason there must be also? Hence the necessity for the development of unreason, even in the interests of reason herself. The Professors of Unreason deny that they undervalue reason: none can be more convinced than they are, that if the double currency cannot be rigorously deduced as a necessary consequence of human reason, the double currency should cease forthwith; but they say that it must be deduced from no narrow and exclusive view of reason which should deprive that admirable faculty of the one-half of its own existence. Unreason is a part of reason; it must therefore be allowed its full share in stating the initial conditions.

Giving | Men | Will |

Samuel Gompers

An industry which denies to all its workers and particularly denies to its women and minors who are toilers a living wage is unfit and should not be permitted to exist.

Equality | Work |

Samuel Gompers

The 14th and 15th amendments, no matter what we thought of them, are part of the Constitution. Negroes are now equal with the white man.

Battle | Crime | Defense | Hope | Justice | Principles | Sacrifice | War | Will |

Samuel Gompers

Freedom of speech is the safety valve of society; if it is obstructed, there will be an explosion somewhere. It is dangerous to tamper with this right of ours.

Consequences | Knowledge | Right | Will |

Sidney Madwed

I was always puzzled by the fact that people have a great deal of trouble and pain when and if they are forced or feel forced to change a belief or circumstance which they hold dear. I found what I believe is the answer when I read that a Canadian neurosurgeon discovered some truths about the human mind which revealed the intensity of this problem. He conducted some experiments which proved that when a person is forced to change a basic belief or viewpoint, the brain undergoes a series of nervous sensations equivalent to the most agonizing torture.

Change | Life | Life | Means | Need | People | Will | Value |

Sidney Hook

It still remains true that as a set of cognitive beliefs about the existence of God in any recognizable sense continuous with the great systems of the past, religious doctrines constitute a speculative hypothesis of an extremely low order of probability.

Better | Cause | Courage | Fate | Freedom | Intelligence | Life | Life | Man | Men | Price | Survival | Will | Worth | Fate |

Simón Bolívar, fully Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios Ponte y Blanco

It is harder to maintain the balance of freedom than it is to endure the weight of tyranny.

Nature |

Simon Wiesenthal

We thought we were going mad, ... Perhaps we feared (or hoped) we were mad already.

Need | People | Talking |

Simon Wiesenthal

Freedom is not a gift of heaven, you have to fight for it every day,

Law | Nations | People | Will | Learn |

Simone Weil

In this world, only those people who have fallen to the lowest degree of humiliation, far below beggary, who are not just without any social consideration but are regarded by all as being deprived of that foremost human dignity, reason itself—only those people, in fact, are capable of telling the truth. All the others lie.

Age |

Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir

Sex pleasure in woman is a kind of magic spell; it demands complete abandon; if words or movements oppose the magic of caresses, the spell is broken.

Courage | Guarantee | Office | Words | Happiness |

Simone Weil

There is no detachment where there is no pain. And there is no pain endured without hatred or lying unless detachment is present too.

Absolute | Abstract | Age | Capitalism | Democracy | Ideas | Means | Play | Principles | Sacrifice | Science | Time | Universe | Words |