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

John Locke

Every man is born with a double right. First, a right of freedom to his person, which no other man has a owner over, but the free disposal of it lies in himself. Secondly, a right before any other man, to inherit, with his brethren, his father’s goods.

Father | Freedom | Man | Right | Wisdom |

Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

It is absurd to speak of right and wrong per se. Injury, violation, exploitation, annihilation, cannot be wrong in themselves, for life essentially presupposes injury, violation, exploitation, and annihilation.

Absurd | Life | Life | Right | Wisdom | Wrong |

Robert C. Pooley, fully Robert Cecil Pooley

Our responsibility as educators is to teach youth to have respect for those who differ from the customary ways as well as for those who conform. In simpler words, we have a profound obligation both to education and to society itself to support and strengthen the right to be different, and to create a sound respect for intellectual superiority.

Education | Obligation | Respect | Responsibility | Right | Society | Sound | Superiority | Teach | Wisdom | Words | Youth | Society | Respect | Youth |

William Penn

What man in his right mind would conspire his own hurt? Men are beside themselves when they transgress against their convictions.

Convictions | Man | Men | Mind | Right | Wisdom |

Robert Peel, fully Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet

Public opinion is compounded by folly, weakness, prejudice, wrong feeling, right feeling, obstinacy, and newspaper paragraphs.

Folly | Opinion | Prejudice | Public | Right | Weakness | Wisdom | Wrong |

Donald Culross Peattie

Whatever life is (and nobody can define it) it is something forever changing shape, fleeting, escaping us into death. Life is indeed the only thing that can die, and it begins to die as soon as it is born, and never ceases dying. Each of us is constantly experiencing cellular death. For the renewal of our tissues means a corresponding death of them, so that death and rebirth become, biologically, right and left hand of the same thing. All growing is at the same time a dying away from that which lived yesterday.

Death | Life | Life | Means | Right | Time | Wisdom |

William G. Patten, fully William George Patten, aka Gilbert Patten

Science seeks truth and discovers rightness. Religion seeks righteousness and discovers truth. Both have acquired knowledge of creative and destructive ways, and both point the same way of right living.

Knowledge | Religion | Right | Righteousness | Science | Truth | Wisdom |

Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

We should not let ourselves be burned for our opinions themselves, since we can never be quite sure of them; but perhaps we might for the right to hold and alter them.

Right | Wisdom |

Angelo Patri

Education consists of being afraid at the right time.

Education | Right | Time | Wisdom | Afraid |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Conscience is the voice of the soul, the passions are the voice of the body. Is it astonishing that often these two languages contradict each other, and then to which must we listen? Too often reason deceives us; we have only to listen too much acquired the right of refusing to listen to it; but conscience never deceives us; it is the true guide of man; it is to man what instinct is to the body, which follows it, obeys nature, and never is afraid of going astray.

Body | Conscience | Instinct | Man | Nature | Reason | Right | Soul | Wisdom | Afraid |

Hiram Powers

The eye is the window of the soul, the mouth the door. The intellect, the will, are seen in the eye; the emotions, sensibilities, and affections, in the mouth. The animals look for man’s intentions right into his eyes. Even a rat, when you hunt him and bring him to bay, looks you in the eye.

Emotions | Looks | Man | Right | Soul | Will | Wisdom |

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy

Everybody is a bit right; nobody is completely right or completely wrong. The prevalence of this point of view among all decent people nearly always has the same dreadful result for, according to their doctrine, every time a contemporary is quite right, he must be crucified. They can never forgive him because he denies their dogma; worst still, he reveals that they hold another dogma which they conceal.

Doctrine | Dogma | People | Right | Time | Wisdom | Wrong | Forgive |

John Selden

Of all actions of a man's life, his marriage does least concern other people, yet of all actions of our life, 'tis most meddled with by other people.

Life | Life | Man | Marriage | People | Wisdom |