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 people, rulers, leaders and chiefs - none of them shall be able to remain in the world. Death is inevitable; it strikes the heads of the false.

Events | Past |

Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

Fire and fear, good servants, bad lords.

Desire | Events | Will | Writing |

Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

An event of colossal and overwhelming significance may happen all at once, but the words which describe it have to come one by one in a long chain.

Capitalism | Change | Democracy | Nothing | People | Play | Politics | Will | World | Friends |

Václav Havel

Vision is not enough – it must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps, we must step up the stairs.

Body | Events | Science | Search | Space | Unique | Universe |

Václav Havel

He tries to explain why man behaves most improbably, strangely, at variance with his nature, how it is possible for instance that a calm, rather neutral petty bourgeois is all of a sudden capable of commanding a concentration camp, burning to death or gassing thousands of people, and afterwards returning to his clerk's life as if nothing happened

Politics | Responsibility | Will |

Václav Havel

Life cannot be destroyed for good, neither... can history be brought entirely to a halt. A secret streamlet trickles on beneath the heavy lid of inertia and pseudo-events, slowly and inconspicuously undercutting it. It may be a long process, but one day it must happen: the lid will no longer hold and will start to crack. This is the moment when something once more begins visibly to happen, something truly new and unique ... something truly historical, in the sense that history again demands to be heard.

Desire | Need | Politics | Teach | Happiness |

Václav Havel

The hope of the world lies in the rehabilitation of the living human being, not just the body but also the soul.

Association | Civilization | Conduct | Culture | Events | Fate | Global | History | Human race | Humanity | Race | Reason | Rights | Unique | War | World | Fate | Association |

Václav Havel

When a person tries to act in accordance with his conscience, when he tries to speak the truth, when he tries to behave like a citizen, even in conditions where citizenship is degraded, it won't necessarily lead anywhere, but it might. There's one thing, however, that will never lead anywhere, and that is speculating that such behavior will lead somewhere.

Ability | Good | Heart | Man | Politics | Right | Sensibility |

Václav Havel

The most important thing is that man should be the measure of all structures, including economic structures, and not that man be made to measure for those structures. The most important thing is not to lose sight of personal relationships —i.e., the relationships between man and his co-workers, between subordinates and their superiors, between man and his work, between this work and its consequences.

Humility | Individual | People | Politics | Responsibility |

Václav Havel

What makes the Anthropic Principle and the Gaia Hypothesis so inspiring? One simple thing: Both remind us, in modern language, of what we have long suspected, of what we have long projected into our forgotten myths and perhaps what has always lain dormant within us as archetypes. That is, the awareness of our being anchored in the earth and the universe, the awareness that we are not here alone nor for ourselves alone, but that we are an integral part of higher, mysterious entities against whom it is not advisable to blaspheme. This forgotten awareness is encoded in all religions. All cultures anticipate it in various forms. It is one of the things that form the basis of man's understanding of himself, of his place in the world, and ultimately of the world as such.

Ability | Politics | Sensibility |

Václav Havel

Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have -- by disrupting that order -- a way of surprising.

Good | Instinct | Lying | People | Politics | Public | Temptation | Temptation |

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 |

Turkish Proverbs

A weapon is an enemy even to its owner

Discussion | Events |

Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

The nation's honor is dearer than the nation's comfort; yes, than the nation's life itself.

Age | Counsel | Day | Feelings | God | Government | Heart | Ideals | Justice | Knowledge | Mercy | Need | Opportunity | Politics | Right | Search | Time | Will | Government | Counsel | God | Understand |

Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

Too much law was too much government; and too much government was too little individual privilege,- as too much individual privilege in its turn was selfish license

Little | Politics | War | Worth |

Tom Hayden, fully Thomas Emmet "Tom" Hayden

Imagine a nineteenth-century Jane Fonda visiting the Oglala Sioux in the Black Hills before the battle at Little Big Horn. Imagine her examining Crazy Horse's arrows or climbing upon Sitting Bull's horse. Such behavior by a well-known actress no doubt would have infuriated Gen. George Armstrong Custer, but what would the rest of us feel today

Hope | Nothing | Peace | Politics | War |

Tom Hayden, fully Thomas Emmet "Tom" Hayden

Protest, even more than property, is a sacred resource of American society. It begins with radical minorities at the margins, eventually marching into the mainstream, where their views become the majority sentiment. Prophetic minorities instigated the American Revolution, ended slavery, achieved the vote for women, made trade unions possible, and saved our rivers from becoming sewers.

Politics | War |

Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins

A mockingbird ... was heard to blend the songs of 32 different kinds of birds into a ten minute performance, a virtuoso display that served no practical purpose, falling, therefore, into the realm of pure art.

Display | Freedom | Nothing | Politics |