Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Terrorism

"Art is an antidote for violence. It gives the ecstasy, the self-transcendence that could otherwise take the form of drug addiction, terrorism, suicide, or warfare." -

"As long as our leaders believe they can’t win votes by working to reduce poverty, the media will continue to focus on politician’s efforts to increase safety by fighting terrorism." - Jurriaan Kamp

"A bold policy to reduce the addiction to oil would be the most powerful weapon to win the epic struggle against terrorism. In the short term, this means saving energy through more efficient technologies, necessary anyway to slow the greenhouse effect and global warming." - Lutz Kleveman

"It is of little use trying to suppress terrorism if the production of deadly devices continues to be deemed a legitimate employment of man's creative powers." -

"Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it." - Noam Chomsky, fully Avram Noam Chomsky

"It is worth remembering - particularly since it has been so uniformly suppressed - that the U.S. is the only country that was condemned for international terrorism by the World Court and that rejected a Security Council resolution calling on states to observe international law." - Noam Chomsky, fully Avram Noam Chomsky

"It is of little use trying to suppress terrorism if the production of deadly devices continues to be deemed a legitimate employment of man's creative powers." -

"The real danger we face is not from terrorism but what is being done under the pretext of fighting it." - Michael Parenti

"Terrorism is the war of the poor, and war is the terrorism of the rich." - Peter Ustinov, fully Sir Peter Alexander Ustinov

"From the beginning men used God to justify the unjustifiable." - Salman Rushdie, fully Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie

"Politically, economically and technologically, the world is changing at an unprecedented and sometimes alarming pace." - William Cohen, fully William Sebastian Cohen

"These plans make it very clear . . . that there is no room for harassment or threats in the military." - William Cohen, fully William Sebastian Cohen

"We were marginalized in the public eye as a presidential party. What Clinton did is an enormous accomplishment. I myself even wondered if we'd do it again." - Walter Mondale, fully Walter Frederick "Fritz" Mondale

"The worst sort of business is one that grows rapidly, requires significant capital to engender the growth, and then earns little or no money. Think airlines. Here a durable competitive advantage has proven elusive ever since the days of the Wright Brothers. Indeed, if a farsighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would have done his successors a huge favor by shooting Orville down." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha

"Much protest is naive; it expects quick, visible improvement and despairs and gives up when such improvement does not come. Protesters who hold out for longer have perhaps understood that success is not the proper goal. If protest depended on success, there would be little protest of any durability or significance. History simply affords too little evidence that anyone’s individual protest is of any use. Protest that endures, I think, is moved by a hope far more modest than that of public success: namely, the hope of preserving qualities in one’s own heart and spirit that would be destroyed by acquiescence." - Wendell Berry

"Maybe this neighborhood is just beyond transformation. That will become clear in the next few months as we see just what kind of minority the Sunnis in Iraq intend to be. If they come around, a decent outcome in Iraq is still possible, and we should stay to help build it. If they won’t, then we are wasting our time. We should arm the Shiites and Kurds and leave the Sunnis of Iraq to reap the wind." - Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman

"No policy is sustainable without a public that broadly understands why it's necessary and sees the world the way you do..." - Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman

"One of the problems of contemporary culture is that life moves at such a quick pace, we usually don't give ourselves time to feel and listen deeply. You may have to take deliberate action to nurture the soul. If you want to increase your soul's bank account, you may have to seek out the unfamiliar and do things that at first could feel uncomfortable. Give yourself time as you experiment. How will you know if you're on the right track? I like Rumi's counsel: 'When you do something from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy.'" - Elizabeth Lesser

"Woman, essentially a purist, is naturally bigoted and relentless in her effort to make others as good as she thinks they ought to be." - Emma Goldman

"It is only when we can see the world as a ladder, and when we can see man's position on the ladder, that we can recognize a meaningful task for man's life on earth." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

"God says in the Quran that there is only one true religion, God's religion. It's the same theme that God revealed to all of the prophets, even before Muhammad." - Feisal Abdul Rauf