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

Ezra Taft Benson

What about the lame, the sick and the destitute? Is an often-voiced question. Most other countries in the world have attempted to use the power of government to meet this need. Yet, in every case, the improvement has been marginal at best and has resulted in the long run creating more misery, more poverty, and certainly less freedom than when government first stepped in. Most of the major ills of the world have been caused by well-meaning people who ignored the principle of individual freedom, except as applied to themselves, and were obsessed with fanatical zeal to improve the lot of mankind-in-the-mass through some pet formula of their own… The harm dome by ordinary criminals, murderers, gangsters, and thieves is negligible in comparison with the agony inflicted upon human beings by the professional ‘do-gooder,’ who attempt to set themselves up as gods on earth and who would ruthlessly force their views on all others—with the abiding assurance that the end justifies the means.

God | Means | Talent | God |

Faye Wattleton

I think we have deluded ourselves into believing that people don't know that abortion is killing. So any pretense that abortion is not killing is a signal of our ambivalence, a signal that we cannot say yes, it kills a fetus.

Means | Nature | Sacrifice | Will | Think |

Feisal Abdul Rauf

My life has been devoted to peacemaking.

Day | God | Means | Peace | Religion | God |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The public, with its mob yearning to be instructed, edified and pulled by the nose, demands certainties?. but there are no certainties.

Means | Wife |

Italian Proverbs

Sometimes the lees are better than the wine.

Little | Means | Will |

Italian Proverbs

The father a saint the son a devil.

Culture | Means |

Italian Proverbs

Summer is the mother of the poor.

Democracy | Good | Means | Vision |

Italian Proverbs

No one ever kicks a dead dog.

Art | Means | People | Art |

Italian Proverbs

Speak of the Devil and he appears.

Means |

Italian Proverbs

Two women and a goose make a market.

Doubt | Irony | Life | Life | Means | Need | Plenty | Self | Superiority | Understanding | Work | World | Afraid |

Italian Proverbs

War makes robbers, and peace hangs them.

Authenticity | Good | Life | Life | Meaning | Means | Mystery | Thought | Worth | Thought |

Italian Proverbs

The right man comes at the right time.

Government | Looks | Means | Opportunity | Safe | Worry | Government | Think |

Italian Proverbs

Too many chiefs, not enough warriors.

Absence | Atheism | History | Means | Prayer | Public | Research | Rule |

Italian Proverbs

Who by himself can do anything, do not wait for others to do.

Commitment | Good | Means | Mystery | Object | Religion |

Italian Proverbs

The well-fed man does not believe in hunger.

Means | Public | System |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

And suddenly she began to sing. Keen, heart-piercing was her song as the song of the lark that rises from the gates of night and pours its voice among the dying stars, seeing the sun behind the walls of the world

Means |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

At first the beauty of the melodies and of the interwoven words in elven-tongues, even though he understood them little, held him in a spell, as soon as as he began to attend to them. Almost it seemed that the words took shape, and visions of far lands and bright things that he had never yet imagined opened out before him; and the firelit hall became like a golden mist above the seas of foam that sighed upon the margins of the world. Then the enchantment became more and more dreamlike, until he felt that an endless river of swelling gold and silver was flowing over him, too multitudinous for its pattern to be comprehended; it became part of the throbbing air about him, and it drenched and drowned him. swiftly he sank under its shining weight into a deep realm of sleep.

Abuse | Experience | Life | Life | Little | Means | Men | Problems | Suicide | Trust | Work | World | Learn |

Italian Proverbs

Who troubles others has no rest himself.

Belief | Compassion | Desire | God | Human race | Love | Means | Race | Will | God |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.

Curiosity | Error | Experience | Important | Life | Life | Nothing | Past | Pleasure | Price | Pride | Sense | Story | Teach | Time | Waiting | Will | Wrong |

J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly

Like its politicians and its wars, society has the teenagers it deserves.

Appreciation | Art | Faith | Heart | Life | Life | Meaning | Means | Mind | People | Religion | Appreciation | Art |