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

John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.

Blame | Future | Past | Responsibility | Right | Wisdom |

Maurice Nicoll

To live unto eternity is to live unto aeon, unto unity, unto wholeness, completeness, unto the integration of all the life. And this is now. The enemy to now is the illusion of passing-time... When we reach the now the world is turned the other way round. We are at the centre of things. The responsibility is ours. Had we now in our lives we would cease to blame.... Universe evolves out of one’s own mind... because the WORLD is a series of possible mental transformations

Blame | Enemy | Eternity | Illusion | Integration | Life | Life | Mind | Responsibility | Time | Unity | Universe | Wholeness | Wisdom | World |

Robert C. Pooley, fully Robert Cecil Pooley

Our responsibility as educators is to teach youth to have respect for those who differ from the customary ways as well as for those who conform. In simpler words, we have a profound obligation both to education and to society itself to support and strengthen the right to be different, and to create a sound respect for intellectual superiority.

Education | Obligation | Respect | Responsibility | Right | Society | Sound | Superiority | Teach | Wisdom | Words | Youth | Society | Respect | Youth |

Harold W. Percival, fully Sir Harold Waldwin Percival

Every thing existing on the physical plain is an exteriorization of a thought which must be balanced through the one who issued the thought and in accordance with that one's responsibility at the conjunction of time, condition and place. This law of thought is Destiny. Thinking is the basic factor in shaping human destiny. The machinery of the law is nature. The purpose of the universe is to make all units of matter conscious of progressively higher degrees.

Destiny | Law | Nature | Purpose | Purpose | Responsibility | Thinking | Thought | Time | Universe | Wisdom | Thought |

Daniel Webster

The most important thought I ever had was that of my individual responsibility to God.

God | Important | Individual | Responsibility | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Leo Baeck

Only through human freedom and responsibility are history and salvation able to fulfill themselves.

Freedom | History | Responsibility | Salvation |

Julian Baggini

It is not that life has not meaning, but that it has no predetermined meaning. This requires us to confront our own responsibility for creating meaning for ourselves.

Life | Life | Meaning | Responsibility |

Jeanne Achterberg

We live in a biochemical, neurophysiological, resonant quantum soup. If this is true, the responsibility for what we have for our inner life is enormous, and extends far beyond one’s own personal and spiritual development. Whatever our inner experience might be in terms of love and passion, hate and greed, abundance and longing, or any other human qualities may well not be ours alone.

Abundance | Experience | Greed | Hate | Life | Life | Longing | Love | Passion | Qualities | Responsibility |

Jay Atkins

I believe each person should take responsibility to forge their own destiny in life and find what they feel is the true meaning for themselves. The meaning of life will ultimately be perceived differently by everyone and could actually be looked at as a sort of fingerprint of the mind because of the varying outlooks and perceptions.

Destiny | Life | Life | Meaning | Mind | Responsibility | Will |

Abdul Baha, or ‘Abdu’l-Bahá, born `Abbás Effendí

God has given man the eye of investigation by which he may see and recognize truth. He has endowed man with ears that he may hear the message of reality, and conferred upon him the gift of reason by which he may discover things for himself. Man is not intended to see through the eyes of another, hear through another’s ears nor comprehend with another’s brain. Each human creature has individual endowment, power and responsibility in the creative plan of God.

God | Individual | Man | Plan | Power | Reality | Reason | Responsibility | Truth |

Madeline Bartosch

The greatest responsibility an individual assumes is to oneself.

Individual | Responsibility |

Carol Adrienne

Purpose is about developing relationships. Purpose is about bringing attention and intention into the present moment, moving ahead with new ideas, giving and receiving support, volunteering, mentoring, listening to the imagination and intuition, communicating, taking action based on inner direction and hints from the external, being adaptable, taking responsibility and ending the victim stance forever surrendering to the divine will and working with the lessons developing fluidity, tolerance, compassion, and the ability to love.

Ability | Action | Attention | Compassion | Giving | Ideas | Imagination | Intention | Intuition | Listening | Love | Present | Purpose | Purpose | Responsibility | Will | Victim |

Carol Adrienne

Maintaining responsibility but not identification with the obstacle. In handling obstacles resourcefully, we once again come face-to-face with paradox: the problem is ours to deal with, and yet the problem is not the whole of who we are.

Paradox | Responsibility |

Julian Baggini

Faith is by its nature non-rational. Having faith does not in any way remove responsibility for one’s own ethical and existential decisions. Faith is about `opting out’ of the need for rational justification rather than a deliberate attempt to act contrary to reason.

Faith | Justification | Nature | Need | Reason | Responsibility |

Tom Butler-Bowdon

The clarity of expectation produces Whitmore’s twin performance pillars of greater responsibility and awareness.

Awareness | Expectation | Responsibility | Expectation |

Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter

We are fully responsible for who it is that we become. In the final analysis, there is no one else to blame. It is totally our own doing. We are always already free to remake our present and future by disencumbering ourselves of unwanted and unhelpful aspects of our past history. Freedom, choice, and responsibility are the ethical watchwords of existentialism.

Blame | Choice | Existentialism | Freedom | Future | History | Past | Present | Responsibility |

Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter

With freedom goes responsibility, and from responsibility comes the possibility of life enrichment.

Freedom | Life | Life | Responsibility |

J. Dominian

Theologians have always recognized that passions may overwhelm the person suddenly and completely to the pint where freedom of choice does not exist and responsibility is not present.

Choice | Freedom | Present | Responsibility |

Norman F. Dixon

The apportioning of blame [is] the means by which society obtains a modicum of revenge for the wrong it has suffered, expiates its own guilt for such responsibility as it may have had for the event in question, and finally seeks to prevent a repetition of the disaster.

Blame | Guilt | Means | Question | Responsibility | Revenge | Society | Wrong | Society |