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

Thomas Jefferson

Legal force to the government must stop at curbing harmful acts toward others citizens only. No harm to Gary that I said there is one God, or there are twenty machine. This act is not to steal his wallet or break for his

Authority | Control | Government | Industry | Selfishness | Government |

Thomas Jefferson

Ours is a policy of not embarking the public in enterprises better managed by individuals, and which might occupy as much of our time as those political duties for which the public functionaries are particularly instituted. Some money could be lent them [the New Orleans Canal Co.], but only on an assurance that it would be employed so as to secure the public objects.

Industry | Man |

Thomas Jefferson

In our university [of Virginia] you know there is no Professorship of Divinity. A handle has been made of this, to disseminate an idea that this is an institution, not merely of no religion, but against all religion. Occasion was taken at the last meeting of the Visitors, to bring forward an idea that might silence this calumny, which weighed on the minds of some honest friends to the institution.

Danger | Defense | Freedom | Industry | Danger |

Thomas Jefferson

Our children will be as wise as we are and will establish in the fullness of time those things not yet ripe for establishment.

Cause | Defiance | Energy | Firmness | God | Means | Mind | Present | Providence | God |

Thomas Jefferson

Men of high learning and abilities are few in every country; and by taking in those who are not so, the able part of the body have their hands tied by the unable.

Character | Energy | Will |

Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

This was love at first sight, love everlasting a feeling unknown, unhoped for, unexpected--in so far as it could be a matter of conscious awareness it took entire possession of him, and he understood, with joyous amazement, that this was for life.

Attention | Day | Energy | Music | Philosophy | Universe |

Thomas Jefferson

Yes, we did produce a near-perfect republic. But will they keep it? Or will they, in the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the path of destruction.

Energy | Fear | Government | Trust | Government |

Thomas Jefferson

What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is it's natural manure.

Good | Happy | Industry | Labor | Men | Wise |

Thomas Jefferson

The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys.

Control | Industry | People | Rights | Selfishness |

Thomas Jefferson

To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is.

Association | Guarantee | Industry | Order | Thought | Association | Thought |

Thomas Paine

If there must be trouble, let it be in my day so my child may have peace.

Difficulty | Extravagance | Government | Industry | Nothing | People | Principles | Rights | Society | World | Society | Government |

Thomas Paine

What are the present governments of Europe, but a scene of iniquity and oppression? What is that of England? Do not its own inhabitants say, It is a market where every man has his price, and where corruption is common traffic, at the expense of a deluded people? No wonder, then, that the French Revolution is traduced.

Government | Industry | Invention | Prosperity | Government |

Thomas Reid

Will is an ambiguous word, being sometimes put for the faculty of willing; sometimes for the act of that faculty; besides other meanings. But “volition” always signifies the act of willing, and nothing else.

Attention | Energy | Ideas | Mind | Past | Present | Reflection |

Wheeler McMillen

There are times when minds need to turn to simple things. Perhaps for a few of these nights all of us might do well to leave the briefcases at the office and to read again the pages of the Bible, and to re-read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. We might do well to stay home a few days and walk over the fields, or to stand in the shelter of the barn door and reflect upon the relentless and yet benevolent forces of Mother Nature. The laws of nature are relentless. They can never be disobeyed without exacting a penalty. Yet they are benevolent, for when they are understood and obeyed, nature yields up the abundance that blesses those who understand and obey.

Children | Freedom | Good | Happy | Honor | Industry | Labor | Land | Liberty | Magic | Men | Miracles | People | Work | World |

William Blake

His whole life is an epigram smart, smooth and neatly penn’d, Plaited quite neat to catch applause, with a hang-noose at the end.

Earth | Eternal | Fear | Gold | Grief | Guests | Heart | Industry | Infancy | Joy | Land | Little | Love | Man | Men | Nothing | Tears | Terror | Woman |

William Carleton

Hearses coffins, long funeral processions, and all the dark emblems of mortality, were reflected, as it were, on the sky, from the terrible works of pestilence and famine which were going on the earth beneath it.

Blessings | Creed | God | Happy | Heart | Ignorance | Industry | Knowledge | Order | People | Principles | Progress | Religion | Right | Society | Spirit | Vengeance | Worship | Youth | Society | Youth | God |

William Cowper

From reveries so airy, from the toil of dropping buckets into empty wells, and growing old in drawing nothing up.

Industry | Occupation |

Wilhelm von Humboldt, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt

The things of the world are ever rising and falling, and in perpetual change; and this change must be according to the will of God, as He has bestowed upon man neither the wisdom nor the power to enable him to check it. The great lesson in these things is, that man must strengthen himself doubly at such times to fulfill his duty and to do what is right, and must seek his happiness and inward peace from objects which cannot be taken away from him.

Energy | Individual | Man | Need | Perception | Reason | Research | Spirit | Study | Truth |

Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers

The reason political party platforms are so long is that when you straddle anything it takes a long time to explain it.

Energy | Majority | Will |