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

Eleanora Duse, aka Duse

The weaker partner in a marriage is the one who loves the most.

Isolation | Life | Life | Little | Happiness |

Ernest Becker

After all, Kierkegaard was hardly a disinterested scientist. He gave his psychological description because he had a glimpse of freedom for man. He was a theorist of the open personality, of human possibility. In this pursuit, present-day psychiatry lags far behind him. Kierkegaard had no easy idea of what "health" is. But he knew what it was not: it was not normal adjustment—anything but that, as he has taken such excruciating analytical pains to show us. To be a "normal cultural man" is, for Kierkegaard, to be sick—whether one knows it or not: "there is such a thing as fictitious health."38 Nietzsche later put the same thought: "Are there perhaps —a question for psychiatrists—neuroses of health?" But Kierkegaard not only posed the question, he also answered it. If health is not "cultural normality," then it must refer to something else, must point beyond man's usual situation, his habitual ideas. Mental health, in a word, is not typical, but ideal-typical. It is something far beyond man, something to be achieved, striven for, something that leads man beyond himself. The "healthy" person, the true individual, the self-realized soul, the "real" man, is the one who has transcended himself.

Isolation | Openness | Personality | Rank | Work |

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

In forming a habit of communicating to one another this fort of ideas by actions, mankind accustomed themselves to determine them; and from that time they began to find a greater ease in connecting them with other signs.

Perception | Regard | Respect | Taste | Will | Respect |

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

And yet, let the nature of these perceptions be what it will, and let them be produced as they will, if we look amongst them for the idea of extension, for instance, of a line, of an angle, and any other figure, we shall find it in that repository very clearly and distinctly.

Abstract | Circumstances | Mind | Perception | Power | Think |

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

There is evidence that the faculty of reflection will appear as soon as our senses begin to develop, and it is equally true that we have the use of the senses from an early age, just because at an early age we began to reflect.

Distinguish | Error | Fame | Impression | Mistake | Perception |

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

Hence the prejudice of the ancients against separating the music from the words. Music was in regard to them, very steady what recitation is to us: by it they learnt so regulate the voice, which before that time was under no fort of direction.

Perception |

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

The prosody of different languages does not deviate equally from music. In some it affects a greater, in some a lesser variety of accents, because from the variety of constitutions in people of different climates, it is impossible they should have the same sensibility.

Impression | Perception | Progress |

Feisal Abdul Rauf

Our enemy is not Islam. Islam is not the enemy of America; Americans are not the enemy of Islam. Our real enemy is extremism and radicalism.

Perception | Practice | Religion | Truth |