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

John Lubbock, fully Sir John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury

A wise system of education will at least teach us how little man yet knows, how much he has still to learn.

Character | Education | Little | Man | System | Teach | Will | Wise |

Eda J. LeShan

We are not asking our children to do their own best but to be the best. Education is in danger of becoming a religion based on fear; its doctrine is to compete. The majority of our children are being led to believe that they are doomed to failure in a world which has room only for those at the top.

Character | Children | Danger | Doctrine | Education | Failure | Fear | Majority | Religion | World | Danger | Failure |

Abbott Lawrence Lowell

Too much attention has been paid to making education attractive by smoothing the path as compared with inducing strenuous voluntary effort.

Attention | Character | Education | Effort | Wisdom |

Johann Kaspar Lavater

The most stormy ebullitions of passion, from blasphemy to murder, are less terrific than one single act of cool villainy; a still rabies is more dangerous than the paroxysms of a fever. Fear the boisterous savage of passion less than the sedately grinning villain.

Blasphemy | Character | Fear | Murder | Passion |

Stephen Levine

When your fear touches someone’s pain it becomes pity; when your love touches someone’s pain, it becomes compassion.

Character | Compassion | Fear | Love | Pain | Pity |

William Mitford

Men fear death, as if unquestionably the greatest evil, and yet no man knows that it may not be the greatest good.

Character | Death | Evil | Fear | Good | Man | Men |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

The thing [of which I have most fear] I fear most is fear.

Character | Fear |

John T. McNicholas, fully John Timothy McNicholas

The God-given rights of parents are not understood or are ignored by our secularist educators and by many school administrators who, in the delusion of sovereignty, act as though they, not the parents, have complete control of the education of the child.

Character | Control | Delusion | Education | God | Parents | Rights |

Charles B. Newcomb

Fear not that thy life shall come to an end, but rather fear that it shall never have a beginning.

Beginning | Character | Fear | Life | Life |

National Commission on Excellence in Education NULL

Help your children understand that excellence in education cannot be achieved without intellectual and moral integrity coupled by hard work and commitment.

Character | Children | Commitment | Education | Excellence | Integrity | Work | Excellence | Understand |

Thomas Merton

The contemplative life has nothing to tell you except to reassure you and say that if you dare to penetrate your own silence and dare to advance without fear into the solitude of your own heart... you will truly recover the light and capacity to understand what is beyond words and beyond explanation because it is too close to be explained.

Capacity | Character | Fear | Heart | Life | Life | Light | Nothing | Silence | Solitude | Will | Words | Understand |

John F. Milburn

Fear is like fire: If controlled it will help you; if uncontrolled, it will rise up and destroy you. Men's actions depend a great deal upon fear. We do things either because we enjoy doing them or because we are afraid not to do them. This sort of fear has not relation to physical or moral courage. It is inspired by the knowledge that we are not adequately prepared to face the future and the events it may bring - poverty perhaps, or injury, or death.

Character | Courage | Death | Destroy | Events | Fear | Future | Knowledge | Men | Poverty | Will | Afraid |

Molière, pen name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin NULL

I maintain, in truth, that with a smile we should instruct our youth, be very gentle when we have to blame, and not to put them in fear of virtue's name.

Blame | Character | Fear | Smile | Truth | Virtue | Virtue | Youth |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The one permanent emotion of the inferior man is fear - fear of the unknown, the complex, the inexplicable. What he wants beyond everything else is safety.

Character | Fear | Man | Wants |

José Joaquín de Olmedo, fully José Joaquín de Olmedo y Maruri

They set the slave free, striking off his chains. Then he was as much of a slave as ever. He was still chained to servility. He was still manacled to indolence and sloth, he was still bound by fear and superstition, by ignorance suspicion and savagery. His slavery was not in the chains, but in himself. They can only set free men free. And there is no need of that. Free men set themselves free.

Character | Fear | Ignorance | Indolence | Men | Need | Slavery | Sloth | Superstition | Suspicion |

Jane Porter

It depends on education to open the gates which lead to virtue or to vice, to happiness or to misery.

Character | Education | Virtue | Virtue | Happiness |

James Northcote

Half the things that people do not succeed in, are through fear of making the attempt.

Character | Fear | People |

Pliny the Elder, full name Casus Plinius Secundus NULL

Most men are afraid of a bad name, but few fear their consciences.

Character | Fear | Men | Afraid |