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

James Henry Leigh Hunt

I am persuaded there is no such thing after all as a perfect enjoyment of solitude; for the more delicious the solitude the more one wants a companion.

Enjoyment | Solitude | Wants | Wisdom |

Herbert Hoover, fully Herbert Clark Hoover

Even if governmental conduct of business could give us more efficiency instead of less efficiency, the fundamental objection to it would remain unaltered and unabated. It would destroy political equality. It would increase rather than decrease abuse and corruption. It would stifle initiative and invention. It would undermine the development of leadership. It would cramp and cripple the mental and spiritual energies of our people. It would extinguish equality and opportunity. It would dry up the spirit of liberty and progress.

Abuse | Business | Conduct | Corruption | Destroy | Efficiency | Equality | Initiative | Invention | Liberty | Opportunity | People | Progress | Spirit | Wisdom | Business |

L. Ron Hubbard, fully Lafayette Ronald Hubbard

Writing for a penny a word is ridiculous. If a man wants to make a million dollars, the best way would be to start a new religion. [Scientology]

Man | Religion | Wants | Wisdom | Writing |

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Language is a solemn thing: it grows out of life - out of its agonies and ecstasies, its wants and its weariness. Every language is a temple in which the soul of those who speak it is enshrined.

Language | Life | Life | Soul | Wants | Wisdom |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

We find that the religions, whose theology has been least preoccupied with events in time and most concerned with eternity, have been consistently the least violent and most humane in political practice.

Eternity | Events | Practice | Theology | Time | Wisdom |

William E. Holler

One thing everybody in the world wants and needs is friendliness.

Wants | Wisdom | World |

Herbert Hoover, fully Herbert Clark Hoover

You cannot extend the mastery of the government over the daily working life of a people without at the same time making it the master of the people’s souls and thoughts. Every expansion of government in business means that government in order to protect itself from the political consequences of its errors and wrongs is driven irresistibly without peace to greater and greater control of the nation’s press and platform. Free speech does not live many hours after free industry and free commerce die.

Business | Commerce | Consequences | Control | Free speech | Government | Industry | Life | Life | Means | Order | Peace | People | Speech | Time | Wisdom | Government | Business | Commerce |

Thomas Jefferson

I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in the punishment of rebellions as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.

Good | Government | Health | Little | Observation | People | Punishment | Rebellion | Rights | Sound | Truth | Wisdom | World |

Thomas Jefferson

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Earth | Events | God | Government | Mankind | Men | Nature | People | Respect | Right | Wisdom | Government | Respect | God | Truths |

Nachman Kohen Krochmal, aka Ranak

When a man is on a low cultural level, he can satisfy his spiritual needs with outward religious observances; but as he becomes more highly developed, he wants to grasp the spirit of religion.

Man | Religion | Spirit | Wants | Wisdom |

James Alfred Langford

A wise man will select his books, for he would not wish to class them all under the sacred name of friends. Some can be accepted only as acquaintances. The best books of all kinds are taken to the heart, and cherished as his most precious possessions. Others to be chatted with for a time, to spend a few pleasant hours with and laid aside, but not forgotten.

Books | Heart | Man | Possessions | Sacred | Time | Will | Wisdom | Wise |

Alphonse de Lamartine, fully Alphonse Marie Louis de Lamartine

When the press is the echo of sages and reformers, it works well; when it is the echo of turbulent cynics, it merely feeds political excitement.

Excitement | Wisdom |

Karl Marx (1818-1883) German Philosopher, Socialist and Friedrich Engels

The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

History | Society | Wisdom | Society |

Karl Marx (1818-1883) German Philosopher, Socialist and Friedrich Engels

The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. By modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.

Property | System | Wisdom |

Catherine Marshall

Often God has to shut a door in our face, so that He can subsequently open the door through which He wants us to go.

God | Wants | Wisdom | God |

James Russell Lowell

You may make everything else out of the passions of men except a political system that will work, and that there is nothing so pitilessly and unconsciously cruel as sincerity formulated into dogma.

Dogma | Men | Nothing | Sincerity | System | Will | Wisdom | Work |

Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

The friend of humanity cannot recognize a distinction between what is political and what is not. There is nothing that is not political.

Distinction | Friend | Humanity | Nothing | Wisdom |