Great Throughts Treasury

"Freedom does not mean that right to do whatever we please, but rather to do whatever we ought... The right to do whatever we please reduces freedom to a physical power and forgets that freedom is a moral power." - Fulton Sheen, fully Archbishop Fulton John Sheen

"I personally have experienced the power of prayer to heal the most devastating disease of them all - the power of prayer to heal fear!" -

"Faith in God is the great loosener of bonds. It frees us of all that binds, fetters, and shackles, whether it be the fear of life or the fear of death, whether it be the fear of power of others over us or fear of the lack of power within ourselves." -

"The sins that we should hate most are not those of our neighbor but our own. These are the only sins over which god has given us immediate power." - Raphael Simon, possibly also writes under Pseudonymous Bosch

"To deny we need and want power is to deny that we hope to be effective." - Liz Smith, formally Mary Elizabeth "Liz" Smith, aka The Grand Dame of Dish

"The only difference between men of great achievement and those who remain in mediocrity is that the great pay little attention to what has been done and what obstacles or apparent reasons may stand in the way of achievement but devote themselves to contemplating what can or ought to be done. Those who allow their mental and emotional natures to recoil, refusing to let this sense reach out into the undiscovered, destroy their own capabilities and this keeps them always in the prison house of limitation. But it should be noted that prison is only the recoil or reflex of their own nature. Genius is that which goes on through conditions and circumstances and keeps eternally in the process of expansion and extension of achieving power." - Baird T. Spalding

"We know of four different languages today where there is not a negative word in the language, there is not a word in the past tense, or a word in the future; tense. All is here and now. Negative words, feelings, conditions have absolutely no power except what we individually give to them. The moment we cease feeding our energy into them they no longer have life, and thus they cease to exist." - Baird T. Spalding

"Words are things. Thoughts are things. Where your thoughts are, you are. When we learn to discipline and control our thoughts and feelings, and use only the positive, constructive words, sent forth with divine love, our body and mind respond to that righteousness – right-use-ness. The right use and selection of words is of vital importance but equally important is the feeling behind those words, for feeling is the motivating power that makes the words live." - Baird T. Spalding

"Intellect does not attain its full force unless it attacks power." -

"Any ritual is an opportunity for transformation. To do ritual, you must be willing to be transformed in some way. That inner willingness is what makes the ritual come alive and have power." - Starhawk, born Miriam Simos NULL

"What causes adolescents to rebel is not the assertion of authority but the arbitrary use of power, with little explanation of the rules and no involvement in the decision-making." - Laurence Steinberg

"It has become almost banal to say that the atomic age has fundamentally altered the nature of war. No nuclear power can tell another: “Do as I say or I shall kill you,” but is reduced to saying: “Do as I say or I shall kill us both,” which is an entirely different matter." -

"To be affectionately detached is a power. That is a wisdom. That is a love greater than any emotional love, a love born of understanding." - Sivaya Subramuniyaswami, aka Gurudeva and Satguru

"The fundamental conflicts in human life are not between competing ideas – one of which is true and the other false, but rather, between those that hold power and use it to oppress others, and those who are oppressed by power and seed to free themselves of it." -

"The less a person knows about the workings of the social institutions of his society, the more he must trust those who wield power in it; and the more he trusts those who wield such power, the more vulnerable he makes himself to becoming their victim." -

"Knowing others is intelligence. Knowing yourself is true wisdom. Mastering others is strength. Mastering yourself is true power." -

"[Idolatry as] the moments when we forget who we really are and instead of remembering that we are sparks of the Divine, we start giving up our power to a guru, an ideology, a romantic obsession, a stressful job that begins to define us, or an unhealthy habit we think we can’t live without. Even is we no longer build or worship physical idols like in ancient times, we have modern-day addictions and pressures that cause us to forget that our purpose here is to be a vehicle for Divine energies." - Ted Falcon

"There must be for me a deep sense of relatedness to God. This relatedness is the way by which there shall open for me more and more springs of energy and power, which will enable me to thread life’s mysteries with life’s clue. I shall not waste any effort trying to reduce God to my particular logic. Here in the quietness, I shall give myself in love to God." -

"Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on." - Eckhart Tolle, born Ulrich Leonard Tolle

"The Master responds to falsehood and truth, bad news and good news, inexactly the same way: “Is that so?” He allows the form of the moment, good or bad, to be as it is and so does not become a participant in human drama. To him there is only this moment, and this moment is as it is. Events are not personalized. He is nobody’s victim. He is so completely at one with what happens that what happens has no power over him anymore. Only if you resist what happens are you at the mercy of what happens, and the world will determine your happiness and unhappiness." - Eckhart Tolle, born Ulrich Leonard Tolle

"The past has no power to stop you from being present now. Only your grievance about the past can do that. And what is a grievance? The baggage of old thought and emotion." - Eckhart Tolle, born Ulrich Leonard Tolle

"It is within my power either to serve God or not to serve him. Serving him, I add to my own good and the good of the whole world. Not serving him, I forfeit my own good and deprive the world of that good, which was in my power to create." - Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi

"“God is well and so are you.” You must awaken to the knowledge of your real being. When this awakening comes, you will have, and you will see that you have the power to determine what conditions are externalized in your body. You must recognize, you must realize yourself, as one with Infinite Spirit. God’s will is then your will; your will is God’s will, and “with God all things are possible.” When we are able to do away with all sense of separateness by living continually in the realization of his oneness, not only will our bodily ills and weaknesses vanish, but all limitations along all lines." - Ralph Waldo Trine

"In the degree, however, that you come into a vital realization of your oneness with the Infinite Spirit of Life, whence all life in individual form has come and is continually coming, and in the degree that through this realization you open yourself to its divine inflow, you set into operation forces that will sooner or later bring even the physical body into a state of abounding health and strength. For to realize that this Infinite Spirit of Life can from its very nature admit of no disease, and to realize that this, then, is the life in you, by realizing your oneness with it, you can so open yourself to its more abundant entrance that the diseased bodily conditions - effects - will respond to the influences of its all-perfect power, this either quickly or more tardily, depending entirely on yourself." - Ralph Waldo Trine

"Many will receive great help, and many will be entirely healed by a practice somewhat after the following nature: Wit a mind at peace, and with a heart going out in love to all, go into the quiet of your own interior self, holding the thought - I am one with the Infinite Spirit of Life, the life of my life. I then as spirit, I a spiritual being, can in my own real nature admit of no disease. I now open my body, in w2hich disease has obtained a foothold, I open it fully to the inflowing tide of this Infinite Life, and it now, even now, is pouring in and coursing through my body, and the healing process is going on. Realize this so fully that you begin to feel a quickening and a warming glow imparted by the life forces to the body. Believe the healing process is going on. Believe it, and hold continually to it. Many people greatly desire a certain thing but expect something else. They have greater faith in the power of evil than in the power of good, and hence they remain ill." - Ralph Waldo Trine

"In direct proportion as a man recognizes himself as spirit, and lives accordingly, is he able to transcend in power the man who recognizes himself merely as material." - Ralph Waldo Trine

"Since nothing is settled until it is settled right, no matter how unlimited power a person may have, unless they exercises it fairly and justly their actions will return to plague them." - Frank A. Vanderlip

"Men with power have an extraordinary capacity to convince themselves that what they want to do coincides with what society needs done for its [own] good." - Raymond Vernon

"Man is, indeed, a being apart, since he is not influenced by the great laws which irresistibly modify all other organic beings… Man has not only escaped natural selection himself, but he is actually able to take away some of that power from nature which before his appearance she universally exercised." - Alfred Russell Wallace

"Character is power." -

"Power… is the supreme end for all those who have not understood." - Simone Weil

"We possess nothing in this world other than the power to say `I’." - Simone Weil

"Talent repeats; Genius creates. Talent is a cistern; Genius, a fountain… Talent accumulates knowledge, and has it packed up in the memory; Genius assimilates it with its own substance, grows with every new accession, and converts knowledge into power. Talent gives out what it has taken in; Genius, what has risen from its unsounded wells of living thought." - Edwin Percy Whipple

"Whether a man is burdened by power or enjoys power; whether he is trapped by responsibility or made free by it; whether he is moved by other people and outer forces or moves them this is of the essence of leadership." -

"He who prays must commit himself and his wants to the transforming power of God. He must seek what is genuinely the greatest good and not merely the specific things which will satisfy his present wants." - Henry Nelson Wieman

"If by prayer I mean the power of words to persuade God to do things, then prayer is futile and foolish. One might utter the words of the most devout prayer that was ever breathed and yet not be praying at all. It is the attitude of the personality which is the prayer, not the words." - Henry Nelson Wieman

"All the seven deadly sins are self destroying, morbid appetites, but in their early stages at least, lust and gluttony, avarice and sloth know some gratification, while anger and pride have power, even though that power eventually destroys itself. Envy is impotent, numbed with fear, never ceasing in its appetite, and it knows no gratification, but endless self torment. It has the ugliness of a trapped rat, which gnaws its own foot in an effort to escape." - Angus Wilson, fully Sir Angus Frank Johnstone Wilson

"Our power to think things out about human nature… is liable to be blocked by our fear of the full implication of what we find." - Donald Woods Winnicott

"If one concentrates on one thing and does not get away from it… he will possess strong, moving power." - Cheng Yi

"He searches all around for his thought. But what thought? It is either passionate, or hateful, or confused. What about the past, future or present? What is past that is extinct, what is future that has not yet arrived, and the present has no stability. For thought, Kasyapa, cannot be apprehended, inside, or outside, or in between both. For thought is immaterial, invisible, nonresisting, inconceivable, unsupported, and homeless. Thought has never been seen by any of the Buddhas, nor do they see it, nor will they see it. And what the Buddhas never see, how can that be an observable process, except in the sense that dharmas proceed by the way of mistaken perception? Thought is like a magical illusion; by an imagination of what is actually unreal it takes hold of a manifold variety of rebirths. A thought is like the stream of a river, without any staying power; as soon as it is produced it breaks up and disappears. A thought is like a flame of a lamp, and it proceeds through causes and conditions. A thought is like lightning, it breaks up in a moment and does not stay on... Can thought review thought? No, thought cannot review thought. As the blade of a sword cannot cut itself, so a thought cannot see itself. Moreover, vexed and pressed hard on all sides, thought proceeds, without any staying power, like a monkey or like the wind. It ranges far, bodiless, easily changing, agitated by the objects of sense, with the six sense-fields for its sphere, connected with one thing after another. The stability of thought, its one-pointedness, its immobility, its undistraughtness, its one-pointed calm, its nondistraction, that is on the other hand called mindfulness as to thought." - Satipatthana Sutra NULL

"When you take responsibility for your actions, you give yourself immeasurable power." - Fred D. Anderson

"We don't need a self-help guru to remind us we all have the power to change our lives. Would you like to lose weight or tone your body? Want to be kinder, gentler? How about becoming more intellectual, or more creative? No one can stop us from reaching these goals but ourselves. We set our own limits." - Judith Barad

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in a democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government, which is the true ruling power of the country." - Edward Bernays, fully Edward Louis Bernays

"Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around." -

"You have it easily in your power to increase the sum total of this world's happiness now. How? By giving a few words of sincere appreciation to someone who is lonely or discouraged. Perhaps you will forget tomorrow the kind words you say today, but the recipient may cherish them over a lifetime." -

"In our nation, the people are sovereign, not the government. It is the people, not the media or the financial system or megacorporations or the two political parties, who have the power to create change." - Howard Dean

"The release of atom power has changed everything except our way of thinking... the solution to this problem lies in the heart of mankind. If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker." -

"Reason provides a means of escaping from the constraints of belief-systems backed by authority and from the resentment which clever people feel at the power of their own passions. Because reason--in admittedly varying degrees--is available to everybody, it has a potential advantage over the truth you feel and the truth you are told." - Felipe Fernández-Armesto

"[Plato's ideal society] guarantees to all people the right to an education that diagnoses and perfects their unique talents, plus a work role that conveys a sense of self-esteem, saving them from the neuroses of megalomania and the lust for power. It forbids privilege and sexism and all other criteria irrelevant to merit. It eliminates conflict of interest from those who hold office and gives the masses a potent checklist they can use to hold their rulers to account. Best of all, it eliminates all traces of "might makes right" and serves as a pattern laid up in heaven to rank actual societies in terms of what corrupts them. Society becomes more corrupt as the struggle for power becomes more brutal." - James R. Flynn, aka Jim Flynn

"Sell not virtue to purchase wealth, nor liberty to purchase power." - Benjamin Franklin