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

Lloyd C. Douglas, fully Lloyd Cassel Douglas, born Doya C. Douglas

It was probably a mistake to pursue happiness, much better to create happiness, still better to create happiness for others.

Better | Mistake | Wisdom | Happiness |

Albert Einstein

It is in fact nothing short of a miracle that the modern methods of instruction have not yet entirely strangled the holy curious of inquiry. It is a very grave mistake to think that the enjoyment of seeing and searching can be promoted by means of coercion and a sense of duty.

Coercion | Duty | Enjoyment | Grave | Inquiry | Means | Mistake | Nothing | Sense | Wisdom | Instruction | Think |

Henry Ford

Even a mistake may turn out to be the one thing necessary to a worthwhile achievement.

Achievement | Mistake | Wisdom |

Saint Gertrude, aka Saint Gertrude of Nivelles NULL

It is a fearful mistake to believe that because our wishes are not accomplished that they can do no harm.

Harm | Mistake | Wisdom | Wishes |

William Ewart Gladstone

Men are apt to mistake the strength of their feeling for the strength of their argument. The heated mind resents the chill touch and relentless scrutiny of logic.

Argument | Logic | Men | Mind | Mistake | Strength | Wisdom |

Frederick Hertz, until 1946 Friedrich Otto Hertz, aka Germanus Liber

At the heart of racism is the religious assertion that God made a creative mistake when He brought some people into being.

Assertion | God | Heart | Mistake | People | Wisdom | God |

Louis Kossuth, also Lajos Kossuth, fully Lajos Kossuth de Udvard et Kossuthfalva

I am a man of peace, God knows how I love peace; but I hope I shall never be such a coward as to mistake oppression for peace.

God | Hope | Love | Man | Mistake | Oppression | Peace | Wisdom | God |

Lewis Namier, fully Sir Lewis Bernstein Namier, aka Ludwik Niemirowski, born Ludvik Bernstein

It is a woeful mistake to suppose that the educated are kinder or more tolerant: education creates vested interests, and renders the beneficiaries acutely jealous and very vocal.

Education | Mistake | Wisdom |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

To be in love is merely to be in a state of perceptual anesthesia - to mistake an ordinary young man for a Greek god or an ordinary young woman for a goddess.

God | Love | Man | Mistake | Wisdom | Woman | God |

Harvey Milk

Let’s make no mistake about this: The American Dream starts with our neighborhoods. If we wish to rebuild our cities, we must first rebuild our neighborhoods. And to do that, we must understand that the quality of life is more important than the standard of living. to sit on the front steps - whether it’s a veranda in a small town or a concrete stoop in a big city - and talk to our neighbors is infinitely more important than to huddle on the living-room lounger and watch make-believe world in not-quite living color.

Important | Life | Life | Mistake | Wisdom | World | Understand |

Cynthia Ozick

I’m not afraid of facts, I welcome facts but a congeries of facts is not equivalent to an idea. This is the essential fallacy of the so-called “scientific” mind. People who mistake facts for ideas are incomplete thinkers, they are gossips.

Fallacy | Ideas | Mind | Mistake | People | Thinkers | Wisdom | Afraid |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

It is a great mistake of many ardent students that they trust too much to their books, and do not draw from their own resources - forgetting that of all sophists our own reason is that which abuses us least.

Books | Mistake | Reason | Trust | Wisdom |

Samuel Smiles

We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success; we often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.

Discovery | Failure | Mistake | Success | Will | Wisdom | Failure | Learn |

Tibetan Saying NULL

Do not mistake understanding for realization, and do not mistake realization for liberation.

Mistake | Understanding | Wisdom |

Harry Wolfson, fully Harry Austryn Wolfson

We often mistake a desire of the body for a yearning of the soul.

Body | Desire | Mistake | Soul | Wisdom |

Joe Boot

To be human is to long for something more, something beyond us. Fulfillment, peace, and lasting happiness, for no apparent reason, seem to have evaded us. We believe that we are meant for happiness and made for joy. Pain and suffering are somehow a mistake that should not be part of life.

Fulfillment | Joy | Life | Life | Mistake | Pain | Peace | Reason | Suffering | Happiness |