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

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Now, I say to you today my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed; -'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.' I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the people's injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. The choice today is not between violence and non-violence. It is either non-violence or non-existence...Segregation is the offspring of an illicit intercourse between injustice and immorality.

Brotherhood | Character | Children | Choice | Creed | Day | Existence | Freedom | Injustice | Injustice | Justice | Little | Meaning | Men | Non-existence | Oppression | People | Self | Tomorrow | Will | Wisdom | Truths |

Abraham Isaac Kook

How shall man obtain conception of the majesty of the Divine...? Through the expansion of his scientific faculties; through the liberation of his imagination...; through the disciplined study of the world and of life; through the cultivation of a rich, multifarious sensitivity to every phase of being. All these desiderata require obviously the study of all the branches of wisdom, all the philosophies of life, all the ways of the diverse civilizations and doctrines of ethics and religion in every nation and tongue.

Cultivation | Ethics | Imagination | Life | Life | Man | Religion | Study | Wisdom | World |

John Locke

The works of nature and the works of revelation display religion to mankind in characters so large and visible that those who are not quite blind may in them see and read the first principles and most necessary parts of it, and from thence penetrate into those infinite depths filled with the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.

Display | Knowledge | Mankind | Nature | Principles | Religion | Revelation | Wisdom |

Robert M. Linder,fully Robert Mitchell Linder

As a dimension of man, rebellion actually defines him.

Man | Rebellion | 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 |

C. Wright Mills, fully Charles Wright Mills

As a social and as a personal force, religion has become a dependent variable. It does not originate; it reacts. It does not denounce; it adapts. It does not set forth new models of conduct and sensibility; it imitates. Its rhetoric is without deep appeal; the worship it organizes is without piety. It has become less a revitalization of the spirit in permanent tension with the world than a respectable distraction from the sourness of life.

Conduct | Force | Life | Life | Piety | Religion | Rhetoric | Sensibility | Spirit | Wisdom | World | Worship |

Milarepa, fully Jetsun Milarepa NULL

My religion is to live - and die - without regret.

Regret | Religion | Wisdom |

Melvin L. Morse

I feel that just understanding near-death experiences will be our first step at healing the great division between science and religion that started with Isaac Newton almost three hundred years ago. Educating physicians, nurses, and ourselves about what people experience in those final hours will shatter our prejudices about the ways we think about medicine and life.

Death | Experience | Life | Life | People | Religion | Science | Understanding | Will | Wisdom | Think |

Guiseppe Mazzini

The religion of humanity is love.

Humanity | Love | Religion | Wisdom |

Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

There is not even enough religion in the world to destroy the world's religions.

Destroy | Enough | Religion | Wisdom | World |

Pope Pius XI, born Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti NULL

Those who speak of the incompatibility of science and religion either make science say that which it never said or make religion say that which it never taught.

Religion | Science | Wisdom |

Thomas Paine

Any system of religion that has anything in it that shocks the mind of a child, cannot be a true system.

Mind | Religion | System | Wisdom |

William Penn

To be furious in religion is to be irreligiously religious.

Religion | Wisdom |

Pope Pius XI, born Ambrogio Damiano Achille Ratti NULL

Salvation and justice are not to be found in revolution, but in evolution through concord. Violence has ever achieved only destruction, not construction; the kindling of passions, not their pacification; the accumulation of hate and destruction, not the reconciliation of the contending parties; and it has reduced men and parties to the difficult task of building slowly after sad experience on the ruins of discord.

Evolution | Experience | Hate | Justice | Men | Reconciliation | Revolution | Salvation | Wisdom |

Sam Peckinpah

There is a great streak of violence in every human being. If it is not channeled and understood, it will break out in war or in madness.

Madness | War | Will | Wisdom |

Thomas Paine

Every religion is good that teaches man to be good.

Good | Man | Religion | Wisdom |