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

Dialectics is the teaching which shows how Opposites can be and how they happen to be (how they become) identical,—under what conditions they are identical, becoming transformed into one another,—why the human mind should grasp these opposites not as dead, rigid, but as living, conditional, mobile, becoming transformed into one another.

Knowledge | Reality | System |

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

When nine-tenths of Africa had been seized (by 1900), when the whole world had been divided up, there was inevitably ushered in the era of monopoly possession of colonies and, consequently, of particularly intense struggle for the division and the re-division of the world.

Freedom | Oppression | Society | System | Society |

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

A United States of Europe is possible as an agreement between the European capitalists ... but to what end? Only for the purpose of jointly suppressing socialism in Europe

System |

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Materialism is the recognition of "objects in themselves", or outside the mind; ideas and sensations are copies of images of those objects.

Bourgeoisie | Character | Means | Necessity | Rule | System |

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Our business is to help get everything possible done to make sure the "last" chance for a peaceful development of the revolution, to help by the presentation of our programme, by making clear its national character, its absolute accord with the interests and demands of a vast majority of the population.

Man | Mankind | System | Will |

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Tsar Nicholas the Bloody, who has dispersed the First and Second Dumas, who has drowned Russia in blood, enslaved Poland and Finland, and is in alliance with out — and-out reactionaries conducting a policy of stifling the Jews and all “aliens”, the tsar whose loyal friends shot down the workers on the Lena and ruined the peasants to the point of starvation all over Russia — that tsar pretends to be the champion of Slav independence and freedom!"

Change | Justice | Need | People | Struggle | System | Will | Crisis |

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

We set ourselves the ultimate aim of abolishing the state, i.e., all organized and systematic violence, all use of violence against people in general. We do not expect the advent of a system of society in which the principle of subordination of the minority to the majority will not be observed. In striving for socialism, however, we are convinced that it will develop into communism and, therefore, that the need for violence against people in general, for the subordination of one man to another, and of one section of the population to another, will vanish altogether since people will become accustomed to observing the elementary conditions of social life without violence and without subordination.

Man | Mankind | System | Will |

Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

I cannot imagine how the clockwork of the universe can exist without a clockmaker.

Life | Life | Men | System |

Vimala Thakar

A tender, loving concern for all living creatures will need to arise and reign in our hearts if any of us is to survive. And our lives will be truly blessed only when the misery of one is genuinely felt to be the misery of all. The force of love is the force of total revolution. It is the unreleased force, unknown and unexplored as a dynamic for change.

Dynamic | Ego | Silence | System |

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 |

Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

A good dinner is of great importance to good talk. One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.

Disease | Need | Reading | System |

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

Mental silence is the perfect response to a challenge.

Means | System | Wants | Will |

Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

Everyone wishes to receive kindly treatment, but few people see how harshly they treat themselves by living without esoteric science.

System |

Vicki Robin

How you spend your money is how you vote on what exists in the world

Ability | Body | Freedom | Good | Land | Liberty | Play | Possessions | Practice | System | Thought | Thought |

Victor Hugo

Suddenly finding such a secret in the midst of one's happiness is like the discovery of a scorpion in a nest of turtledoves.

Darkness | Law | Men | System | Waste |

Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

Dad, as a good American, believed his newspapers.

People | Satan | System | World | Child |

Václav Havel

I also appeal to those who have already done most of their work for society. I hope that the changes you awaited or worked for so long will bring joy and satisfaction into your lives. We need your experience, your wisdom and your love.

Failure | Humanity | System | Time | Failure |

Vannevar Bush

Presumably man's spirit should be elevated if he can better review his shady past and analyze more completely and objectively his present problems. He has built a civilization so complex that he needs to mechanize his record more fully if he is to push his experiment to its logical conclusion and not merely become bogged down part way there by overtaxing his limited memory. His excursion may be more enjoyable if he can reacquire the privilege of forgetting the manifold things he does not need to have immediately at hand, with some assurance that he can find them again if they prove important.

System | Will |

Václav Havel

I still very well remember the moment in 1978 when me and my friends learned that Karol Wojtyla was elected the pope. It was a moment of an immense joy for us. I even think that we were so delighted that we danced for joy.

System | Words |