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

Robert Collier

Your belief that you can do the thing gives your thought forces their power.

Belief | Power | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Sri Chinmoy, born Chinmoy Kumar Ghose

When is a man actually sick? He is sick only when his mind is empty of belief and his life is empty of promise.

Belief | Life | Life | Man | Mind | Promise | Wisdom |

Joseph Conrad, born Teodor Josef Konrad Korzeniowski

It is my belief no man ever understands quite his own artful dodges to escape from the grim shadow of self-knowledge.

Belief | Knowledge | Man | Self | Self-knowledge | Wisdom |

Mary Baker Eddy

Error is a supposition that pleasure and pain, that intelligence, substance, life, are existent in matter. Error is neither Mind nor one of Mind's faculties. Error is the contradiction of Truth. Error is a belief without understanding. Error is unreal because untrue. It is that which stemma to be and is not. If error were true, its truth would be error, and we should have a self-evident absurdity namely, erroneous truth. Thus we should continue to lose the standard of Truth.

Belief | Contradiction | Error | Health | Mind | Pleasure | Truth | Wisdom | Absurdity |

Fred Dretske, fully Frederick "Fred" Irwin Dretske

There is a gap between belief and knowledge... If you can’t know it, you can’t believe it either.

Belief | Knowledge | Wisdom |

Marvin E. Frankel

The advertising industry is one of our most basic forms of communication and, allegedly, of information. Yet, obviously, much of this ostensible information is not purveyed to inform but to manipulate and to achieve a result -- to make somebody think he needs something that very possibly he doesn't need, or to make him think one version of something is better than another version when the ground for such a belief really doesn't exist.

Advertising | Belief | Better | Industry | Need | Wisdom | Think |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

It may be difficult, too, for many of us, to abandon the belief that there is an instinct towards perfection at work in human beings, which has brought them to their present high level of intellectual achievement and ethical sublimation and which may be expected to watch over their development as supermen. I have no faith, however, in the existence of any such internal instinct and I cannot see how this benevolent illusion is to be preserved. The present development of human beings requires, as it seems to me, no different explanation from that of animals. What appears in a minority of human individuals as an untiring impulsion towards further perfection can easily be understood as a result of the instinctual repression upon which is based all that is most precious in human civilization.

Achievement | Belief | Civilization | Existence | Faith | Illusion | Instinct | Perfection | Present | Wisdom | Work |

Brian Greer

There is no separation between a patient’s neurobiology, spiritual life, life perspectives, and quality of life force. Words, and spiritual/therapeutic interventions can tangibly affect a patient’s neurochemistry and physical health just as assuredly as psycho-pharmacological drugs can tangibly affect a patient’s feelings and thoughts... I have found that working with the meaning of a patient’s illness can profoundly alter not only the prognosis but can influence and give meaning to all other aspects of a patient’s life. Depression, for example, is often a direct communication from the soul that one’s belief system is not working... It is all too easy, and part of the human condition, to be misled by our lower half into believing that the sensory world is all that’s real.

Belief | Depression | Example | Feelings | Force | Health | Influence | Life | Life | Meaning | Soul | System | Wisdom | Words | World |

Louise L. Hay

If a thought or belief does not serve you, let it go!

Belief | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Benjamin R. Haydon

Beware of the beginnings of vice. Do not delude yourself with the belief that it can be argued against in the presence of the exciting cause. Nothing but actual flight can save you.

Belief | Cause | Nothing | Wisdom |

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

Nothing is constant but change! All existence is a perpetual flux of "being and becoming"! That is the broad lesson of the evolution of the world... The belief in the freedom of the will is inconsistent with the truth of evolution. Modern philosophy shows clearly that the will is never really free in man or animal, but determined by the organization of the brain; and that in turn acquires its individual character by the laws of heredity and the influence of environment.

Belief | Change | Character | Evolution | Existence | Freedom | Heredity | Individual | Influence | Lesson | Man | Nothing | Organization | Philosophy | Truth | Will | Wisdom | World |

Alvin Ira Goldman

A current time-slice theory makes the justificational status of a belief wholly a function of what is true of the cognizer at the time of belief. An historical theory makes the justificational status of a belief depend on its prior history. Since my historical theory emphasizes the reliability of the belief-generating processes, it may be called ‘historical reliabilism.’

Belief | History | Reliability | Time | Wisdom |

Paul G. Hoffman, fully Paul Gray Hoffman

It is a deep-seated belief on the part of almost all Americans that their success will be better assured as they help to build the success of others.

Belief | Better | Success | Will | Wisdom |

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a God, but never without belief in a devil.

Belief | Devil | God | Wisdom |

Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla

“Do you want to be healed?” translates into “Do you want to exorcise your belief in and expectation of illness?

Belief | Expectation | Wisdom | Expectation |

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Faith always implies the disbelief of a lesser fact in favor of a greater. A little mind often sees the unbelief, without seeing the belief of a large one.

Belief | Disbelief | Faith | Little | Mind | Unbelief | Wisdom |

Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla

A change in belief patterns takes place on the most basic level of existence.

Belief | Change | Existence | Wisdom |

Ted Kennedy, fully Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy

It strains belief to know that Neil Armstrong can walk on the moon, 250,000 miles away, but that he cannot swim in Lake Erie, a few miles from his Ohio home.

Belief | Wisdom |

William James

Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help you create the fact.

Belief | Life | Life | Will | Wisdom | Worth |

John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe - the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.

Belief | Generosity | God | Life | Life | Man | Mortal | Poverty | Power | Rights | Wisdom | World |