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

Winston Churchill, fully Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill

When great causes are on the move in the world, stirring all men’s souls, drawing them from their firesides, casting aside comfort, wealth and the pursuit of happiness in response to impulses at once awe-striking and irresistible, we learn that we are spirits, not animals.

Awe | Comfort | Men | Wealth | World | Happiness | Learn |

Hélder Câmara, fully Dom Hélder Pessoa Câmara

Selfishness is the deepest root of all unhappiness... It feeds an insatiable hunger that first eats up everything belonging to others and then causes a creature to devour itself.

Hunger | Selfishness | Unhappiness |

José Figueres, fully José María Hipólito Figueres Ferrer, aka Don Pepe

Peace will help development. Development will engender peace. They are both causes and effects. They strengthen each other.

Peace | Will |

Germaine Greer

The only causes of regret are laziness, outbursts of temper, hurting others, prejudice, jealousy and envy.

Envy | Jealousy | Laziness | Prejudice | Regret | Temper |

Romano Guardini

The most effective kind of prayer is that in which we place ourselves, in our hearts, before God, relinquishing all resistance, letting go of all secret irritation, opening ourselvse to the truth, to God’s holy mystery, saying over and over again, “I desire truth, I am ready to receive it, even this truth which causes me such concern, if it be the truth. Give me the light to know it – and to see how it bears on me.”

Desire | God | Light | Mystery | Prayer | Receive | Truth |

David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins

Basic axiomatic positionalities of the ego: (1) Phenomena are either good or bad, right or wrong, just or unjust, fair or unfair. (2) The `bad’ deserve to be punished and the `good’ rewarded. (3) Things happen by accident or else they are the fault of somebody else. (4) the mind is capable of comprehending and recognizing truth from falsehood. (5) The word causes and determines one’s experiences. (6) Life is unfair because the innocent suffer while the wicked go unpunished. (7) People can be different than they are. (8) It is critical and necessary to be right. (9) It is critical and necessary to win. (10) Wrongs must be righted. (11) Righteousness must prevail. (12) Perceptions represent reality.

Accident | Ego | Falsehood | Fault | Good | Life | Life | Mind | People | Phenomena | Reality | Right | Righteousness | Truth | Wrong | Fault |

Hitopadesa, translated means Book of Good Counsels NULL

How can true happiness proceed from wealth, which in its acquisition causes pain; ;in loss, affliction; in abundance, folly.

Abundance | Affliction | Folly | Pain | Wealth | Happiness |

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Like an unchecked cancer, hate corrodes the personality and eats away its vital unity. Hate destroys a man’s sense of values and his objectivity. It causes him to describe the beautiful as ugly and the ugly as beautiful, and to confuse the true with the false, and the false with the true.

Hate | Man | Objectivity | Personality | Sense | Ugly | Unity |

Thomas Merton

The present world crisis... is a crisis of man’s spirit. It is a great religious and moral upheaval of the human race, and we do not really know half the causes of this upheaval.

Human race | Man | Present | Race | Spirit | World | Crisis |

Joseph de Maistre, fully Joseph-Marie, comte de Maistre

How can we be so willfully blind as to look for causes in nature when nature herself is an effect?

Nature |

John A. O’Brien

Man is forever climbing up the ladder of secondary causes to the First and Supreme Cause - God Himself.

Cause | God | Man | God |

Albert Schweitzer

As the sun makes the ice melt, kindness causes misunderstanding, mistrust, and hostility to evaporate.

Kindness | Mistrust |

Karlheinz Stockhausen

This is the meaning of life - continuously to add something we haven’t know so far. That, anyway, is the meaning of all existing things. Existence is built upon the idea of the creative - that there is always something unknown to be discovered, which causes and motivates new perception, new studies, the energy to go on.

Energy | Existence | Life | Life | Meaning | Perception |

Jonathan Schell, fully Jonathan Edward Schell

If choice is real, if there really are alternatives, it follows that in choosing between them we are exhibiting our power as real agents, real causes and initiators of new departures in the flow of cosmic change, we thereby prove the existence of free causes.

Change | Choice | Existence | Power |

Laurence Steinberg

What causes adolescents to rebel is not the assertion of authority but the arbitrary use of power, with little explanation of the rules and no involvement in the decision-making.

Assertion | Authority | Decision | Little | Power |