Great Throughts Treasury

"Out of every hundred new ideas ninety-nine or more will probably be inferior to the traditional responses which they propose to replace. No one man, however brilliant or well-informed, can come in one lifetime to such fullness of understanding as to safely judge and dismiss the customs or institutions of his society, for those are the wisdom of generations after centuries of experiment in the laboratory of history."

"Perhaps Gandhi failed as saints are likely to fail in this very hostile, selfish and Darwinian world. But these very failures are the eternal successes attained by saintly people as they can never stoop to the detestable levels of this materialistic world in which each one is running after the god of Mammon."

"Perhaps in return for conquest, arrogance and spoliation, India will teach us the tolerance and gentleness of the mature mind, the quiet content of the inquisitive soul, the calm of the understanding spirit, and a unifying, a pacifying love for all living things."

"Perhaps our supercilious disgust with existence is a cover for a secret disgust with ourselves; we have botched and bungled our lives, and we cast the blame upon the environment or the world, which have no tongues to utter a defense. The mature man accepts the natural limitations of life; he does not expect Providence to be prejudiced in his favor; he does not ask for loaded dice to play the game of life. He knows, with Carlyle, that there is no sense in vilifying the sun because it will not light our cigars. And perhaps, if we are clever enough to help it, the sun will even do that; and this vast neutral cosmos may turn out to be a pleasant place enough if we bring a little sunshine of our own to help it out. In truth, the world is neither with us or against us; it is but raw material in our hands, and can be heaven or hell according to what we are."

"Perhaps the cause of our contemporary pessimism is our tendency to view history as a turbulent stream of conflicts – between individuals in economic life, between groups in politics, between creeds in religion, between states in war. This is the more dramatic side of history; it captures the eye of the historian and the interest of the reader. But if we turn from that Mississippi of strife, hot with hate and dark with blood, to look upon the banks of the stream, we find quieter but more inspiring scenes: women rearing children, men building homes, peasants drawing food from the soil, artisans making the conveniences of life, statesmen sometimes organizing peace instead of war, teachers forming savages into citizens, musicians taming our hearts with harmony and rhythm, scientists patiently accumulating knowledge, philosophers groping for truth, saints suggesting the wisdom of love. History has been too often a picture of the bloody stream. The history of civilization is a record of what happened on the banks."

"Peace is an unstable equilibrium, which can be preserved only by acknowledged supremacy or equal power."

"Philosophy is harmonized knowledge making a harmonious life; it is the self-discipline which lifts us to serenity and freedom. Knowledge is power, but only wisdom is liberty."

"Says Schopenhauer: All epics representative cannot help but imagine a dispute and effort and fighting for happiness but cannot tolerate happiness never the same. She walked to declare false to thousands of risks and difficulties to reach the desired goal, and once you reach these heroes goals acceleration story to curtain as no longer have anything after that to show only that the goal illustrious Buraq, who predicted the hero that he finds happiness may dashed hope, and it was not after reaching happier than before attainable."

"Power dements even more than it corrupts, lowering the guard of foresight and raising the haste of action."

"Says Spinoza: When it seems to us anything in the nature funny or silly, obscure or evil it is because we do not have only little knowledge of things, and we are ignorant system of nature and cohesion as a whole, and we want to hold things according to our thinking and our opinions, even though what he sees as our mind bad or evil is not evil or bad for the system and the laws of nature comprehensive college. But in relation to the laws of our own nature separate. As for the word of good and evil, it does not indicate something positive in itself, because the one thing the same may be simultaneously good or evil, or neither such as music, for example, it is better for Almnaqbd self evil for Alnaúh sad and lost people seemed to be his. It is not good or evil for the Dead"

"Rooted in freedom, bonded in the fellowship of danger, sharing everywhere a common human blood, we declare again that all men are brothers, and that mutual tolerance is the price of liberty."

"Science is organized knowledge, wisdom is organized life."

"Sixty years ago I knew everything. Now I know nothing. Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance."

"So the story of man runs in a dreary circle, because he is not yet master of the earth that holds him."

"Schopenhauer says: Nothing gives us more harmony of accurate knowledge, and the more knowledge we to our emotions, the less control we. And nothing to protect us more control over our souls, if you want to subject everything to yourself subjected yourself to your mind. The compelling world not arouse in us admiration as compelling raised himself"

"Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom."

"Spinoza says: We Taatqazva reasons of all foreign hand, and move Kamoaj paid headwinds do not know anything about our fate. If a person controlled by emotions do not think only one aspect of the situation. The thought alone humans can see all aspects of his position. The passion incomplete idea. And a great instinctive emotions as the driving force, but serious as a guide for us, because every one of the instincts are looking for satisfying desires, is not interested in the interests of all personal. Any destruction came down to people because of excessive greed and love of strife or even desires ???? Obaid instincts that control them. The emotions that attack us every day linked to a part of the body that is affected more than the rest of the parts, and extreme emotions and prevent the mind from thinking only in one subject, no longer the strength to think of other things Spinoza says: We Taatqazva reasons of all foreign hand, and move Kamoaj paid headwinds do not know anything about our fate. If a person controlled by emotions do not think only one aspect of the situation. The thought alone humans can see all aspects of his position. The passion incomplete idea. And a great instinctive emotions as the driving force, but serious as a guide for us, because every one of the instincts are looking for satisfying desires, is not interested in the interests of all personal. Any destruction came down to people because of excessive greed and love of strife or even desires ???? Obaid instincts that control them. The emotions that attack us every day linked to a part of the body that is affected more than the rest of the parts, and extreme emotions and prevent the mind from thinking only in one subject, no longer the strength to think of other things Spinoza says: We Taatqazva reasons of all foreign hand, and move Kamoaj paid headwinds do not know anything about our fate. If a person controlled by emotions do not think only one aspect of the situation. The thought alone humans can see all aspects of his position. The passion incomplete idea. And a great instinctive emotions as the driving force, but serious as a guide for us, because every one of the instincts are looking for satisfying desires, is not interested in the interests of all personal. Any destruction came down to people because of excessive greed and love of strife or even desires ???? Obaid instincts that control them. The emotions that attack us every day linked to a part of the body that is affected more than the rest of the parts, and extreme emotions and prevent the mind from thinking only in one subject, no longer the strength to think of other things"

"The ego is willing but the machine cannot go on. It's the last thing a man will admit, that his mind ages."

"The finger that turns the dial rules the air."

"The future never just happened. It was created."

"The greatest question of our time is not communism vs. individualism, not Europe vs. America, not even the East vs. the West; it is whether men can bear to live without God."

"The health of nations is more important than the wealth of nations."

"The laws that Charondas gave to Catana ... A man might divorce his wife, or a wife her husband, said Charondas, but then he or she must not marry anyone younger than the divorced mate."

"The past is not dead. Indeed, it is often not even past."

"The most interesting thing in the world is another human being who wonders, suffers, and raises the questions that have bothered him to the last day of his life, knowing he will never get the answers."

"The political machine triumphs because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority."

"The love we have in our youth is superficial compared to the love that an old man has for his old wife."

"The Mohammedan Conquest of India is probably the bloodiest story in history… The meaning of the word is pending redefinition by the benign dictator who will hopefully rule India one day."

"The only real revolution is in the enlightenment of the mind and the improvement of character, the only real emancipation is individual, and the only real revolutionaries are philosophers and saints."

"The Roman government gave them bread and circuses. Today we give them bread and elections."

"The State, which had so often called for a reform of the Church, was now part of the evils, for the bishops were appointed by the King."

"The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks. Historians are pessimists because they ignore the banks for the river."

"The trouble with most people is that they think with their hopes or fears or wishes rather than with their minds."

"The world wisely prefers happiness to wisdom."

"There have been only 268 of the past 3,421 years free of war."

"Those who have suffered much become very bitter or very gentle."

"To the geologic eye all the surface of the earth is a fluid form, and man moves upon it as insecurely as Peter walking on the waves to Christ."

"To say nothing, especially when speaking, is half the art of diplomacy."

"There is nothing in Socialism that a little age or a little money will not cure."

"There is no greater drama in human record than the sight of a few Christians, scorned or oppressed by a succession of emperors, bearing all trials with a fierce tenacity, multiplying quietly, building order while their enemies generated chaos, fighting the sword with the word, brutality with hope, and at last defeating the strongest state that history has known. Caesar and Christ had met in the arena, and Christ had won."

"To give life a meaning, one must have a purpose larger than one's self, and more enduring than one's life."

"Truth always originates in a minority of one, and every custom begins as a broken precedent."

"To seek, beneath the universal strife, the hidden harmony of things."

"Ultimately, our troubles are due to dogma and deduction; we find no new truth because we take some venerable but questionable proposition as the indubitable starting point, and never think of putting this assumption itself to a test of observation or experiment."

"Voltaire has said if you want to talk to me knew what it says and select your saying. How could shrink and talk turns to if he dared section Almtnaakecon determine their and Jmlhm words, this is the first and the other in logic, and his heart and soul, that the subject is important in an interview to the most serious types of definition, identification and examination. It's a tough way, and exam where there is no mercy for the mind"

"We are living in the excesses of freedom. Just take a look at 42nd Street and Broadway."

"War is one of the constants of history, and it has not diminished with civilization or democracy."

"We Americans are the best informed people on earth as to the events of the last twenty-four hours; we are the not the best informed as the events of the last sixty centuries."

"We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit."

"We discovered birth control, and now it sterilizes the intelligent, multiplies the ignorant, debases love with promiscuity, frustrates the educator, empowers the demagogue, and deteriorates the race."