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

Daniel James Marsh

If the television craze continues with the present level of programs, we are destined to have a nation of morons.

Present | Television | Wisdom |

John Locke

Joy is a delight of the mind, from the consideration of the present or assured approaching possession of a good; and we are then possessed of any good, when we have it so in our power that we can use it when we please... Sorrow is uneasiness in the mind, upon the thought of a good lost, which might have been enjoyed longer; or the sense of a present evil.

Consideration | Evil | Good | Joy | Mind | Power | Present | Sense | Sorrow | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

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 |

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

The bourgeoisie has played a most revolutionary role in history... It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms has set up that single, unconscionable freedom - Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.

Bourgeoisie | Freedom | History | Wisdom | Worth |

James Russell Lowell

Men have their intellectual ancestry, and the likeness of some one of them is forever unexpectedly flashing out in the features of a descendant, it may be after a gap of several centuries. In the parliament of the present every man represents a constituency of the past.

Ancestry | Man | Men | Past | Present | Wisdom |

George Brossin Méré, chevalier de

Beauty is the first present Nature gives to women, and the first it takes away.

Beauty | Nature | Present | Wisdom |

Justus Möser

The institutions of a country depend in great measure on the nature of its soil and situation. Many of the wants of man are awakened or supplied by these circumstances. To these wants, manners, laws, and religion must shape and accommodate themselves. The division of land, and the rights attached to it, alter with the soil; the laws relating to its produce, with its fertility. The manners of its inhabitants are in various ways modified by its position. The religion of a miner is not the same as the faith of a shepherd, nor is the character of the ploughman so war-like as that of the hunter. The observant legislator follows the direction of all these various circumstances. the knowledge of the natural advantages or defects of a country thus form an essential part of political science and history.

Character | Circumstances | Defects | Faith | History | Knowledge | Land | Man | Manners | Nature | Position | Religion | Rights | Science | Wants | War | Wisdom |

Daniel Patrick Moynihan, aka "Pat"

Liberty and Equality are the twin ideals of American democracy. But they are not the same thing... Many person who would gladly die for liberty are appalled by equality. Many who are devoted to equality are puzzled and even troubled by liberty. Much of the political history of the American nation can be seen as a competition between these two ideals.

Competition | Democracy | Equality | History | Ideals | Liberty | Wisdom |

John "J. M. E." McTaggart. born John McTaggart Ellis

Past, present and future are incompatible determinations. Every event must be one or the other, but no event can be more than one. If I say that any event is past, that implies that it is neither present nor future, and so with the others. And this exclusiveness is essential to change, and therefore to time. For the only change we can get is from future to present, and from present to past. The characteristics, therefore, are incompatible. But every event has them all. If M is past, it has been present and future. If it is future, it will be present and past. If it is present, it has been future and will be past. thus all the three characteristics belong to each event. How is this consistent with their being incompatible?

Change | Future | Past | Present | Time | Will | Wisdom |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Not in theory, but in truth, the best and most excellent government for each nation is the one under which it has preserved its existence. Its form and essential fitness depend on habit. We are prone to be discontented with the present state of things. But I maintain, nevertheless, that to wish for the government of a few in a democratic state, or another type of government in a monarchy, is foolish and wrong.

Existence | Government | Habit | Present | Truth | Wisdom | Wrong | Government |

Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu

Luxury is... absolutely necessary in monarchies; as it is also in despotic states. In the former, it is the use of liberty; in the latter, it is the abuse of servitude. A slave appointed by his master to tyrannize over other wretches of the same condition, uncertain of enjoying tomorrow the blessings of today, has no other felicity that that of glutting the pride, the passions, and the voluptuousness of the present moment.

Abuse | Blessings | Liberty | Luxury | Present | Pride | Servitude | Tomorrow | Wisdom |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

It takes a lot of self-love and presumption to have such esteem for one’s own opinions that to establish them one must overthrow the public peace and introduce so many inevitable evils, and such a horrible corruption of morals, as civil wars and political changes bring with them in a matter of such weight - and introduce them into one’s own country.

Corruption | Esteem | Inevitable | Love | Peace | Presumption | Public | Self | Self-love | Wisdom |

James Kirke Paulding

Equality is one of the most consummate scoundrels that ever crept from the brain of a political juggler - a fellow who thrusts his hand into the pocket of honest industry or enterprising talent, and squanders their hard-earned profits on profligate idleness or indolent stupidity.

Equality | Idleness | Industry | Stupidity | Wisdom |

George Peabody

Education: a debt due from the present to the future generations.

Debt | Education | Future | Present | Wisdom |

Plotinus NULL

God is outside of none, present unperceived to all; we break away from Him, or rather from ourselves; what we turn from we cannot reach; astray ourselves, we cannot go in search of another; a child distraught will not recognize its father; to find ourselves is to know our source.

Father | God | Present | Search | Will | Wisdom | Child |

Harold W. Percival, fully Sir Harold Waldwin Percival

All destiny begins with thinking. Responsibilities connected with the present duty. Duty of which leads to the balancing of the thought. One of the objects of life is to think without creating thoughts. That is without being attached to the object for which the thought is created and can be attained only when desire is self-controlled and directed by thinking. Until then, thoughts are created and are destiny.

Desire | Destiny | Duty | Life | Life | Object | Present | Self | Thinking | Thought | Wisdom | Think | Thought |

Alexander Pope

At present we can only reason of the divine justice form what we know of justice in man. When we are in other scenes, we may have truer and nobler ideas of it; but while we are in this life, we can only speak from the volume that is laid open before us.

Ideas | Justice | Life | Life | Man | Present | Reason | Wisdom |

Padmasamabhava, "The Lotus-Born", aka Guru Rinpoche "Precious Guru" or Lopon Rinpoche or Padum in Tibet NULL

If you want to know your past life, look into your present condition; if you want to know your future life, look at your present actions.

Future | Life | Life | Past | Present | Wisdom |