Great Throughts Treasury

"The Reformation, as the religious phase of the Renaissance, invited man to become just independent enough to take the step from one orthodoxy into another."

"To hate and to fear is to be psychologically ill. It is, in fact, the consuming illness of our time."

"The very essence of all power to influence lies in getting the other person to participate. The mind that can do that has a powerful leverage on his human world."

"I may safely predict that the education of the future will be inventive-minded. It will believe so profoundly in the high value of the inventive or creative spirit that it will set itself to develop that spirit by all means within its power."

"If minds are truly alive they will seek out books, for books are the human race recounting its memorable experiences, confronting its problems, searching for solutions, drawing the blueprints of it futures.""

"Better a dish of illusion and a hearty appetite for life, than a feast of reality and indigestion therewith."

"Recreation is not a secondary concern for a democracy. It is a primary concern, for the kind of recreation a people make for themselves determines the kind of people they become and the kind of society they build."

"One of the most important phases of maturing is that of growth from self-centering to an understanding relationship to others. A person is not mature until he has both an ability and a willingness to see himself as one among others and to do unto those others as he would have them do to him."

"The immature mind hops from one thing to another; the mature mind seeks to follow through."

"Humanism assumes that the goal of human development lies in the greatest possible fulfillment of human powers. Man does not live to serve some supernatural being. He lives to bring to fruition the powers with which nature has endowed him. As of today, this fruition would seem to lie in a life of widely shared friendliness, understanding, and cooperation."

"A person remains immature, whatever his age, as long as he thinks of himself as an exception to the human race. "

"Christianity as an institutionalized religion has laid no stress on the pursuit of truth. Indeed, for the most part it has been suspicious of the truth-seeking process. The truth-seeker might overturn accepted beliefs."

"The new naturalism assumes that nature includes for more than any of our systems of knowledge has ever included or now includes. This means that to a naturalistic humanist there are no limits that can now be set to the possibilities inherent in the nature that includes human nature. This removes all dogmatic certainties whether of the ‘materialistic’ or the ‘spiritual’ sort. The destiny of man is apparently as limitless as the nature of which he is part."

"The new naturalism further assumes that the only way of knowing is through the natural processes of the mind. All supernatural deliverances and guarantees, therefore, are out."

"To hate and to fear is the be psychologically ill... it is, in fact, the consuming illness of our time."