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

Matthew Arnold

The love of liberty is simply the instinct in man for expansion. Not only to find oneself tyrannized over and outraged is a defeat to this instinct, but in general, to feel oneself over-tutored, over-governed, sate upon (as the popular phrase is) by authority, is a defeat to it.

Authority | Defeat | Instinct | Liberty | Love | Man |

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Is it a fact - or have I dreamt it - that by means of electricity the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time? Rather, the round globe is a vast head, a brain, instinct with intelligence; or shall we say it is itself a thought, nothing but thought, and no longer the substance which we dreamed it.

Instinct | Intelligence | Means | Nothing | Thought | Time | World |

Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I

For my part, it is not the mystery of the incarnation which I discover in religion, but the mystery of social order, which associates with heaven that idea of equality which prevents the rich from destroying the poor.

Associates | Equality | Heaven | Mystery | Order | Religion |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

All our progress is an unfolding, like a vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge as the plant has root, bud, and fruit. Trust the instinct to the end. though you can render no reason.

Instinct | Knowledge | Opinion | Progress | Reason | Trust |

Socrates NULL

Whom do I call educated? First, those who manage well the circumstances they encounter day by day. Next, those who are decent and honorable in their intercourse with all men, bearing easily and good naturedly what is offensive in others and being as agreeable and reasonable to their associates as is humanly possible to be... those who hold their pleasures always under control and are not ultimately overcome by their misfortunes... those who are not spoiled by their successes, who do not desert their true selves but hold their ground steadfastly as wise and sober -- minded men.

Associates | Circumstances | Control | Day | Good | Pleasure | Success | Thinking | Wise |

Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

Bring together all the children of the universe, you will see nothing in them but innocence, gentleness, and fear; were they born wicked, spiteful, and cruel, some signs of it would come from them; as little snakes strive to bite, and little tigers to tear. But nature having been of offensive weapons to man as to pigeons and rabbits, it cannot have given them an instinct to mischief and destruction.

Children | Fear | Gentleness | Innocence | Instinct | Little | Man | Nature | Nothing | Universe | Weapons | Will |

Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell

Civilized people cannot fully satisfy their sexual instinct without love.

Instinct | Love | People |

Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

All naturalism in morality, that is all healthy morality, is dominated by an instinct of life - some commandment of life is fulfilled through a certain canon of ‘shall’ and ‘shall not’, some hindrance and hostile element on life’s road is thereby removed. Anti-natural morality, that is virtually every morality that has hitherto been taught, reverenced and preached, turns on the contrary precisely against the instincts of life - it is a now secret, now loud and impudent condemnation of these instincts. By saying ‘God sees into the heart’ it denies the deepest and the highest desires of life and takes God for the enemy of life.

Enemy | God | Instinct | Life | Life | Morality | God |

Friedrich Daniel Ernst Schleiermacher

Belief must be something different from a mixture of opinions about God and the world, and of precepts for one life or for two. Piety cannot be an instinct craving for a mess of metaphysical and ethical crumbs.

God | Instinct | Life | Life | Piety | God |

Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

By morality the individual is taught to become a function of the herd, and to ascribe to himself value only as a function... Morality is the herd instinct in the individual.

Individual | Instinct | Morality | Value |

Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Life is an instinct for growth, for survival, for the accumulation of forces, for power.

Instinct |

Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

Intellect is the knowledge obtained by experience of names and forms; wisdom is the knowledge which manifests only from the inner being; to acquire intellect one must delve into studies, but to obtain wisdom, nothing but the flow of divine mercy is needed; it is as natural as the instinct of swimming to the fish, or of flying to the bird. Intellect is the sight which enables one to see through the external world, but the light of wisdom enables one to see through the external into the internal world.

Experience | Instinct | Knowledge | Light | Mercy | Nothing | Wisdom | Intellect |

H. G. Wells, fully Herbert George Wells

I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been. It had committed suicide. It had set itself steadfastly towards comfort and ease, a balanced society with security and permanency as its watchword, it had attained its hopes—to come to this at last. Once, life and property must have reached almost absolute safety. The rich had been assured of his wealth and comfort, the toiler assured of his life and work. No doubt in that perfect world there had been no unemployed problem, no social question left unsolved. And a great quiet had followed. It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have to meet a huge variety of needs and dangers.

Absolute | Change | Comfort | Compensation | Doubt | Habit | Harmony | Instinct | Intelligence | Law | Life | Life | Nature | Need | Property | Question | Quiet | Security | Society | Wealth | World | Society | Intellect | Think |

H. G. Wells, fully Herbert George Wells

Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no need of change.

Habit | Instinct | Intelligence | Need |

Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller

Every optimist moves along with progress and hastens it, while every pessimist would keep the worlds at a standstill. The consequence of pessimism in the life of a nation is the same as in the life of the individual. Pessimism kills the instinct that urges men to struggle against poverty, ignorance and crime, and dries up all the fountains of joy in the world.

Ignorance | Instinct | Joy | Life | Life | Men | Pessimism | Progress | Struggle |

Joseph Addison

Great souls by instinct to each other turn, demand alliance, and in friendship burn.

Instinct | Friendship |

José Martí, fully José Julián Martí Pérez

An insatiable appetite for glory leads to sacrifice and death, but innate instinct leads to self-preservation and life.

Appetite | Glory | Instinct | Sacrifice | Self-preservation |

Maria Montessori

Imitation is the first instinct of the awakening mind.

Awakening | Instinct |

Mary Shelley, née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin

I seek not a fellow feeling in my misery. No sympathy may I ever find. When I first sought it, it was the love of virtue, the feelings of happiness and affection with which my whole being overflowed, that I wished to be participated. But now that virtue has become to me a shadow, and that happiness and affection are turned into bitter and loathing despair, in what should I seek for sympathy? I am content to suffer alone while my sufferings shall endure; when I die, I am well satisfied that abhorrence and opprobrium should load my memory. Once my fancy was soothed with dreams of virtue, of fame, and of enjoyment. Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding. I was nourished with high thoughts of honour and devotion. But now crime has degraded me beneath the meanest animal. No guilt, no mischief, no malignity, no misery, can be found comparable to mine. When I run over the frightful catalogue of my sins, I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness. But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.

Associates | Beauty | Crime | Dreams | Enemy | Feelings | God | Loathing | Love | Man | Qualities | Sympathy | Virtue | Virtue | Beauty | God | Friends | Happiness |