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

Gamaliel Bailey

There is no surer mark of the absence of the highest moral and intellectual qualities than a cold reception of excellence.

Absence | Character | Excellence | Qualities |

Wernher von Braun, fully Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun

Part of human nature resents change, loves equilibrium, while another part welcomes novelty, loves the excitement of disequilibrium. There is no formula for the resolution of this tug-of-war, but it is obvious that absolute surrender to either of them invites disaster.

Absolute | Change | Character | Excitement | Human nature | Nature | Novelty | Resolution | Surrender | War |

G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Cruelty is perhaps the worst kind of sin. Intellectual cruelty is certainly the worst kind of cruelty.

Character | Cruelty | Sin | Cruelty |

Edwin Hubbell Chapin

Courage is always greatest when blended with meekness; intellectual ability is most admirable when it sparkles in the setting of a modest self-distrust; and never does the human soul appear so strong as when it forgoes revenge and dares to forgive an injury.

Ability | Character | Courage | Distrust | Meekness | Revenge | Self | Soul | Forgive |

William Ellery Channing

All that a man does outwardly is but the expression and completion of his inward thought. To work effectually, he must think clearly; to act nobly, he must think nobly. Intellectual force is a principal element of the soul’s life, and should be proposed by every man as the principal end of his being.

Character | Force | Life | Life | Man | Soul | Thought | Work | Think |

Calvin Coolidge, fully John Calvin Coolidge, Jr.

We do not need more national development, we need more spiritual development. We do not need more intellectual power, we need more spiritual power. We do not need more knowledge, we need more character... We do not need more of the things that are seen, we need more of the things that are unseen.

Character | Knowledge | Need | Power |

John Dewey

The dominant vocation of all human beings at all times is living - intellectual and moral growth.

Character | Growth |

Albert Einstein

It is a welcome symptom in an age which is commonly denounced as materialistic, that it makes heroes of men whose goals lie wholly in the intellectual and moral sphere. This proves that knowledge and justice are ranked above wealth and power by a large section of the human race.

Age | Character | Goals | Human race | Justice | Knowledge | Men | Power | Race | Wealth |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

Only those who know the supremacy of the intellectual life - the life which has a seed of ennobling thought and purpose within it - can understand the grief of one who falls from the serene activity into the absorbing soul wasting struggle.

Character | Grief | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Soul | Struggle | Thought | Thought | Understand |

Joseph Marie, baron de Gérando, born Joseph Marie Degérando, also Joseph-Marie de Gérando

Philosophers have very justly remarked that the only solid instruction is that which the pupil brings from his own depths; that the true instruction is not that which transmits notions wholly formed, but that which renders him capable of forming for himself good opinions. That which they have said in regard to the intellectual faculties applies equally to the moral faculties. There is for the soul a spontaneous culture, on which depends all the real progress in perfection.

Character | Culture | Good | Perfection | Progress | Regard | Soul | Instruction |

John Dewey

Genuine intellectual integrity is found in experimental knowing. Until this lesson is fully learned, it is not safe to dissociate knowledge from experiment nor experiment from experience.

Character | Experience | Experiment | Integrity | Knowing | Knowledge | Lesson | Safe |

Nosson Tzvi Finkel

When we have something for a long time we usually take it for granted. From the day we were born we have breathed air and seen sunlight and the beauty of nature. We have had sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch for such a long time we have lost our appreciation for them. We take our daily pleasures and our intellectual attainments for granted.

Appreciation | Beauty | Character | Day | Nature | Taste | Time | Appreciation | Beauty |

Friedrich Gentz, aka Friedrich von Gentz

Two principles govern the moral and intellectual world. One is perpetual progress, the other the necessary limitations to that progress. If the former alone prevailed, there would be nothing steadfast and durable on earth, and the whole of social life would be the sport of winds and waves. If the alter had exclusive sway, or even if it obtained a mischievous preponderancy, every thing would petrify or rot. The best ages of the world are those in which these two principles are the most equally balanced. In such ages every enlightened man ought to adopt both principles, and with one hand develop what he can, with the other restrain and uphold what he ought.

Character | Earth | Life | Life | Man | Nothing | Principles | Progress | World | Govern |

Robert Hall

In the power of fixing the attention lies the most precious of the intellectual habits.

Attention | Character | Power |

Charles Montagu Halifax, 1st Earl of Halifax, Lord Halifax

The sense of ultimate truth is the intellectual counterpart of the aesthetic sense of perfect beauty, or the moral sense of perfect good.

Aesthetic | Beauty | Character | Good | Sense | Truth |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

Our perceptions and our understanding are directed, in large measure, by our will. We are aware of, and we think about, the things which, for one reason or another, we want to see and understand. Where there’s a will there is always an intellectual way. The capacities of the human mind are almost indefinitely great.

Character | Mind | Reason | Understanding | Will | Think |