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

Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Mere customary life (the watch wound up and going on of itself) is that which brings on natural death. Custom is activity without opposition, for which there remains only a formal duration; in which the fullness and zest that originally characterized the aim of life are out of the question - a merely external sensuous existence which has ceased to throw itself enthusiastically into its object.

Custom | Death | Existence | Life | Life | Object | Opposition | Question |

Holbrook Jackson, fully George Holbrook Jackson

Every custom was once an eccentricity; every idea was once an absurdity.

Custom | Eccentricity |

John Stuart Mill

The progressive principle is antagonistic to the sway of custom. The contest between these two principles, custom and progress, constitutes the chief interest of the history of mankind.

Custom | History | Mankind | Principles | Progress |

John Stuart Mill

The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement.

Custom |

Joseph Joubert

Morality is made up of customs and habits. Custom makes public morality, and habit individual morality.

Custom | Habit | Individual | Morality | Public |

Mortimer J. Adler, fully Mortimer Jerome Adler

We overcome in all human affairs the inertia of custom. Custom is a great enemy of progress

Custom | Enemy | Progress | Inertia |

Plato NULL

Not only custom but nature also affirms that to do is more disgraceful than to suffer injustice, and that justice is equality.

Custom | Equality | Injustice | Injustice | Justice | Nature |

Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL

We are more sensible of what is done against custom than of what is done against nature.

Custom | Nature |

Pythagoras, aka Pythagoras of Samos or Pythagoras the Samian NULL

Choose always the way that seems best, however rough it may be, and custom will soon render it easy and agreeable.

Custom | Will |

Pythagoras, aka Pythagoras of Samos or Pythagoras the Samian NULL

Choose the life that is best, and constant habit will make it pleasant. [Choose always the way that seems the best, however rough it may be; custom will soon render it easy and agreeable.]

Custom | Habit | Life | Life | Will |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

In this great society wide lying around us, a critical analysis would find very few spontaneous actions. It is almost all custom and gross sense.

Custom | Lying | Sense | Society | Society |

Thomas Fuller

Custom is generally too hard for Conscience. Custom is the Guide of the Ignorant. Custom without Reason, is but an ancient Error.

Conscience | Custom | Error | Reason |

Thomas Fuller

Old custom without truth is but an old error.

Custom | Error | Truth | Old |

Chief Luther Standing Bear

The pressure that has been brought to bear upon the native people, since the cessation of armed conflict, in the attempt to force conformity of custom and habit has caused a reaction more destructive than war, and the injury has not only affected the Indian, but has extended to the white population as well. Tyranny, stupidity, and lack of vision have brought about the situation now alluded to as the “Indian Problem.”

Conformity | Custom | Force | Habit | People | Stupidity | Tyranny | Vision | War |

Ferdowsi or Firdausi or Firdusi, formally Hakīm Abu'l-Qāsim Firdowsī Tūsī, born Abu Ol-Qasem Mansur NULL

A custom of the world is so that we don’t see in a sea of mysteries the shores.

Custom | World |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The whole drift of our law is toward the absolute prohibition of all ideas that diverge in the slightest from the accepted platitudes, and behind that drift or law there is far more potent force of growing custom, and under that custom there is a national philosophy which erects conformity into the noblest of virtues and the free functioning of personality into a capital crime against society.

Absolute | Conformity | Crime | Custom | Force | Ideas | Law | Personality | Philosophy |

Johann Georg Zimmermann

Be not so bigoted to any custom as to worship it at the expense of truth.

Custom | Worship |

John Calvin

Were the judgments of mankind correct, custom would be regulated by the good. But it is often far otherwise in point of fact; for, whatever the many are seen to do, forthwith obtains the force of custom. But human affairs have scarcely ever been so happily constituted as that the better course pleased the greater number. Hence the private vices of the multitude have generally resulted in public error, or rather that common consent in vice which these worthy men would have to be law.

Better | Custom | Force | Mankind | Men | Public | Vice |

King James I of England

Have you not reason then to be ashamed and to forbear this filthy novelty, so basely grounded, so foolishly received and so grossly mistaken in the right use thereof. In your abuse thereof sinning against God harming yourselves both in person and goods, and raking also thereby the marks and notes of vanity upon you by the custom thereof making yourselves to be wondered at by all foreign civil nations and by all strangers that come among you to be scorned and held in contempt; a custom loathsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmful to the brain, dangerous to the lungs, and in the black stinking fume thereof nearest resembling the horrible stygian smoke of the pit that is bottomless.

Abuse | Custom | God | Nations | Reason | Right | God |