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

William James

Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help create the fact.

Belief | Life | Life | Will | Worth |

Thomas Jefferson

I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.

Control | Discretion | Education | Enough | People | Safe | Society | Society | Think |

James Kellenberger

The ultimate grounding of obligation, and finally of all morality, is a single but universal relationship between each and all… a sense of duty grounded in the recognition of the intrinsic worth of persons.

Duty | Morality | Obligation | Relationship | Sense | Worth |

John Geddes MacGregor

A religion would not be worth my adherence if I could live up to it perfectly.

Religion | Worth |

Alice Lee Roosevelt Longworth

Looking Glass, Chief Looking Glass – I love my life; if not, it would not be worth dying for.

Life | Life | Love | Worth |

Arne Dekke Eide Naess

The joy and meaning of life is enhanced through increased self-realization, through the fulfillment of each being’s potential. Whatever the differences between beings, increased self-realization implies broadening and deepening of the self… Part of the joy stems from the consciousness of our intimate relation to something bigger than our own ego, something which has endured for millions of years and is worth continued life for millions of years.

Consciousness | Ego | Fulfillment | Joy | Life | Life | Meaning | Self | Self-realization | Worth |

James Bisset Pratt

According to the Buddha the will is free, effort is worth while, man makes his own fate, deeds have consequences, knowledge is possible, the body is not the real self, and death is not its end.

Body | Consequences | Death | Deeds | Effort | Fate | Knowledge | Man | Self | Will | Worth | Deeds |

Islamic Proverbs

One hour in the execution of justice is worth seventy years of prayer.

Justice | Prayer | Worth |

Fritz A. Rothschild

Mankind will not perish for want of information; but only for want of appreciation. The beginning of our happiness lies in the understanding that life without wonder is not worth living. What we lack is not a will to believe but a will to wonder.

Appreciation | Beginning | Life | Life | Mankind | Understanding | Will | Wonder | Worth | Happiness |

Arnot L. Sheppard, Jr.

Isn't it surprising how many things, if not said immediately, seem not worth saying ten minutes from now?

Worth |

Virginia Satir

Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible -- the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family.

Family | Feelings | Individual | Worth |

Robert de Ropp, fully Robert Sylvester de Ropp

Seek above all for a game worth playing. Play as if your life and sanity depend on it, because they do.

Life | Life | Play | Sanity | Worth |

Samuel Smiles

To be worth anything, character must be capable of standing firm upon its feet in the world of daily work, temptation, and trial.

Character | Temptation | Work | World | Worth |

M. C. Swabey, fully Marie Taylor Collins Swabey

If consciousness means what it claims to mean, not everything of worth in the World is traceable to an origin with Man, reference to Man, or application to Man’s use.

Consciousness | Man | Means | World | Worth |

Tom Warson, Ph.D.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, one act is worth a thousand pictures.

Words | Worth |

Gerald Vann

The greatest and most urgent task of educators today is to instill ineradicably into the young precisely the utility of the useless, the value of the things that produce no cash returns but that make the “soul worth saving.”

Soul | Worth | Value |