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

Václav Havel

None of us know all the potentialities that slumber in the spirit [of the people], or all the ways in which [people] can surprise us when there is the right interplay of events.

Events | People | Right | Spirit |

Thomas Jefferson

The spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions that I wish it to be always kept alive.

Government | Spirit | Government |

Mohamed Iqbal or Sir Muhammad Iqbal, aka Allama Iqbal

Respect for man is the underlying spirit of civilization.

Civilization | Man | Respect | Spirit |

David Hume

The proper office of religion is to regulate the heart of men, humanize their conduct, infuse the spirit of temperance, order, and obedience.

Conduct | Heart | Men | Obedience | Office | Order | Religion | Spirit |

Abraham Joshua Heschel

The problem is the spirit of our age: denial of transcendence, the vapidity of values, emptiness in the heart, the decreased sensitivity to the imponderable quality of the spirit, the collapse of communication between the realm of tradition and the inner world of the individual.

Age | Heart | Individual | Spirit | Tradition | World |

Hunein ibn Ishak, also Hunain or Hunein

While grasping eternal truth, ideas get into the whirlpool of consideration, and thus are raised to the sphere of pure spirit and arrive at the realm of high sublimity where the souls are resting in the shadow of Divine Majesty.

Consideration | Eternal | Ideas | Spirit | Truth |

Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze

Unless the mind, body and spirit are equally developed and fully integrated, no [wisdom] can be sustained. This is why extremist religions and ideologies do not bear fruit.

Body | Mind | Spirit | Wisdom |

Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

Although the tongue of God is busy speaking through all things, yet in order to speak to the deaf ears of many among us, it is necessary for Him to speak through the lips of man. He has done this all through the history of man, every great teacher of the past having been this guiding Spirit living the life of God in human guise. In other words, their human guise consists of various coats worn by the same person, who appeared to be different in each. Shiva, Buddha, Rama, Krishna, on the other side, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mohammad on the other; and many more, known or unknown to history, always one and the same person.

God | History | Life | Life | Man | Order | Past | Spirit | Words | God | Teacher |

Bibhuti Mazumder

The body is mortal but the changeless Spirit within is immortal. It pervades the universe and is indestructible. No one has the power to change the changeless.

Body | Change | Mortal | Power | Spirit | Universe |

Bibhuti Mazumder

Life is an expression of a timeless, changeless Spirit which was never born, will not grow old and will never die.

Life | Life | Spirit | Will | Old |

Jacques Maritain

life begins here upon earth, and the soul of man lives and breathes where it loves; and love, in living faith, has strength enough to make the soul of man experience unity with God – two natures in a single spirit and love.

Earth | Enough | Experience | Faith | God | Life | Life | Love | Man | Soul | Spirit | Strength | Unity | God |

Thomas Paine

The animosity which Nations reciprocally entertain is nothing more than what the policy of their Governments excites to keep up the spirit of the system. Each Government accuses the other of perfidy, intrigue, and ambition, as a means of heating the imagination of their respective Nations, and incensing them to hostilities. Man is not the enemy of Man, but through the medium of a false system of Government.

Ambition | Enemy | Government | Imagination | Intrigue | Man | Means | Nations | Nothing | Perfidy | Policy | Spirit | System | Government |

New York Times Editorial on the Holocaust NULL

It was and it is to do all that can be done to eradicate an evil thing out of our civilization… a thing so incredibly wicked that it would not have been believable of modern man if it had not actually occurred. This evil, this wickedness began with intolerance and hate in a few men’s hearts. It spread until it almost wrecked the world. Now the obligation is to remember, not in hate, not in the spirit of revenge, but so that this spirit cannot ever flourish again so long as man remains on earth. And to this end, let us begin, each of us, by looking into our own hearts.

Civilization | Earth | Evil | Hate | Intolerance | Man | Men | Obligation | Revenge | Spirit | Wickedness | World |

Mohawk Nation NULL

We are shown that our live exists with the tree life, that our well-being depends on the well-being of the vegetable life, that we are close relatives of the four-legged beings. In our ways, spiritual consciousness is the highest form of politics… We believe that all living things are spiritual beings. Spirits an be expressed as energy forms manifested in matter. A blade of grass is an energy form manifested in matter - grass matter. The spirit of the grass is that unseen force which produces the species of grass, and it is manifest to us in the form of real grass.

Consciousness | Energy | Force | Life | Life | Politics | Spirit |

Pritish Nandy

Death is but a new birth of the spirit into the great unknown.

Birth | Death | Spirit |

Henri Nouwen, fully Henri Jozef Machiel Nouwen

Prayer is standing in the presence of God with the mind in the heart; that is, at that point of our being where there are no divisions or distinctions and where we are totally one. There God’s Spirit dwells and there the great encounter takes place. There heart speaks to heart, because there we stand before the face of the Lord, all-seeing, within us.

God | Heart | Lord | Mind | Prayer | Spirit | God |

Rudolf Otto

God established the world as “A will to existence, to consciousness, to spirit.” He established it, not as complete, but as becoming. He does not build it as a house, but plants it, like a flower, in the seed, that it may grow, that it may struggle upwards stage by stage to fuller existence, aspiring with toil and endeavor towards the height where, in the image of the Creator, as a free and reasonable spirit capable of personality, it may realize the aim of its being.

Consciousness | Existence | God | Personality | Spirit | Struggle | Will | World |