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

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

All efforts and all attention should now be concentrated on the next step — the search after forms of the transition or the approach to the proletarian revolution.

Experience | History | Majority | Meaning | Power | Price | Purpose | Purpose | Right | Time |

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

When we say "the state," the state is We, it is we, it is the proletariat, it is the advanced guard of the working class.

Gold | Public | Purpose | Purpose | World | Think |

Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL

The fact is that pictures which are unlike reality ought not be approved, and even if they are technically fine, this is no reason why they should offhand be judged to be correct, if their subject is lacking in the principles of reality carried out with no violations.

Machines | Need | Power | Purpose | Purpose |

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

The entire trend of development is towards abolition of coercive domination of one part of society over another.

Democracy | Freedom | Organization | Proletariat | Purpose | Purpose | Time |

Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.

Absence | Good | Light | Money | Nothing | Purpose | Purpose | Thought | Friends | Thought |

Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

But in this country it is necessary, now and then, to put one admiral to death in order to inspire the others to fight.

Earth | Purpose | Purpose |

Vimala Thakar

But being a religious person, I would like to question the validity of everything for myself. That is the essence of religion, which is humility. Not to accept anything unless you understand the meaning there of, personally in your life. If you accept without understanding, you will be imposing upon the mind. And then you are neither true to the mind, nor true to the meaning. The essence of religion, which is humility, lies in uncovering the meaning of life, uncovering the meaning of every moment, learning the meaning for ourselves.

Behavior | Change | Compassion | Design | Focus | Individual | Injustice | Injustice | Motives | Need | Opportunity | Purpose | Purpose | Rest | Society | System | Will | Society |

Vimala Thakar

We have accepted the watertight compartments of society, the fragmentation of living as factual and necessary. We live in relationship to these fragments and accept the internalized divisions—the various roles we play, the contradictory value systems, the opposing motives and priorities—as reality. We are at odds with ourselves internally; we believe that the inner is fundamentally different from the outer, that what is me is quite separate from the not-me, that divisions among people and nations are necessary, and yet we wonder why there are tensions, conflicts, wars in the world. The conflicts begin with minds that believe in fragmentation and are ignorant of wholeness.

Acceptance | Action | Awareness | Culture | Desire | Meaning | Passion | Peace | Problems | Purpose | Purpose | Right | Service | Society | Will | Society | Awareness |

Vince Lombardi, fully Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi

Life’s battles don’t always go to the stronger or faster man. But sooner or later the man who wins, is the man who thinks he can.

Capacity | Power | Purpose | Purpose | Truth | Will | Leader | Leadership |

Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

There are truths that are not for all men, nor for all times.

Purpose | Purpose | Words |

Virginia Satir

I have often thought had there been somebody like me around, something might have been able to be done. I also think I don't see how I could have done what I've done in the world had I been married. And when I decided — because I've been on the verge of marriage many times — I said no, because if I wanted to roam the globe like I did, it wouldn't be fair. It wouldn't be fair to me, it wouldn't be fair to the people. At the point, I really feel it was a kind of destiny because I've been able to get to places. There are some people in the world who have other jobs to do.

Ability | Adolescence | Beginning | Purpose | Purpose | Sense | Will |

Virginia Postrel

Even the most seemingly materialistic daydreams - the transformed life we imagine in a new dress, a new car, a new house - allow us to rise above the here and now, projecting ourselves into an idealized future. In the process, we learn truths about who we are, what we desire, and who we might become. Those things may matter only to our minds, but that doesn't make them any less valuable or any less real.

Ideals | Meaning | Principles | Purpose | Purpose |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

When the body escaped mutilation, seldom did the heart go to the grave unscarred.

Happy | People | Reserve |

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

Ignorance is inferior to intelligence. Intelligence is superior to ignorance.

Aims | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Will | Wrong |

Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

And there were always choices to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determined whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate.

Death | Enjoyment | Existence | Fate | Fulfillment | Giving | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Opportunity | Purpose | Purpose | Suffering | Fate |

Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

Once, an elderly general practitioner consulted me because of his severe depression. He could not overcome the loss of his wife who had died two years before and whom he had loved above all else. Now, how can I help him? What should I tell him? Well, I refrained from telling him anything but instead confronted him with the question, “What would have happened, Doctor, if you had died first, and your wife would have had to survive you?” “Oh,” he said, “for her this would have been terrible; how she would have suffered!” Whereupon I replied, “You see, Doctor, such a suffering has been spared her, and it was you who have spared her this suffering — to be sure, at the price that now you have to survive and mourn her.” He said no word but shook my hand and calmly left my office. In some way, suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice.

Advice | Day | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Sense | Thought | Friends | Thought |

Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

These words frequently came to my mind after I became acquainted with those martyrs whose behavior in camp, whose suffering and death, bore witness to the fact that the last inner freedom cannot be lost. It can be said that they were worthy of their sufferings; the way they bore their suffering was a genuine inner achievement.

Enjoyment | Existence | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose |

Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

In doubt and emotional attachment, this person understands nothing; with this leash, these feet are tied up.

Birth | Purpose | Purpose |

Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

Belief in heaven and hell is a big deal in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and some forms of doctrinaire Buddhism. For the rest of us it's simply meaningless. We don't live in order to die, we live in order to live.

Argument | Chance | Courage | Fighting | Kill | Man | Manliness | Men | Need | Organization | People | Purpose | Purpose | Worth | Old | Think |

Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

He had been taught as a child that Urras was a festering mass of inequity, iniquity, and waste. But all the people he met, and all the people he saw, in the smallest country village, were well dressed, well fed, and contrary to his expectations, industrious. They did not stand about sullenly waiting to be ordered to do things. Just like Anaresti, they were simply busy getting things done. It puzzled him. He had assumed that if you removed a human being's natural incentive to work -- his initiative, his spontaneous creative energy -- and replaced it with external motivation and coercion, he would become a lazy and careless worker. But no careless workers kept those lovely farmlands, or made the superb cars and comfortable trains. The lure and compulsion of profit was evidently a much more effective replacement of the natural initiative than he had been led to believe.

Kill | Men | Organization | Purpose | Purpose |