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

George Crabbe

Man yields to custom as he bows to fate - in all things, ruled, mind, body, and estate.

Body | Character | Custom | Fate | Man | Mind | Fate |

John Dewey

The whole history of science, art and morals proves that the mind that appears in individuals, is not as such individual mind. The former is in itself a system of belief, recognitions, and ignorances, of acceptances and rejections, of expectancies and appraisals of meanings which have been instituted under the influence of custom and tradition.

Art | Belief | Character | Custom | History | Individual | Influence | Mind | Science | System | Tradition | Art |

Thomas Hobbes

For... what liberty is; there can no other proof be offered but every man’s own experience, by reflection on himself, and remembering what he useth in his mind, that is, what he himself meaneth when he saith an action... is free. Now he that reflecteth so on himself, cannot but be satisfied... that a free agent is he that can do if he will, and forbear if he will; and that liberty is the absence of external impediments. But to those that out of custom speak not what they conceive, but what they heard, and are not able, or will not take the pains to consider what they think when they hear such words, no argument can be sufficient, because experience and matter of fact are not verified by other men’s arguments, but by every man’s own sense and memory.

Absence | Action | Argument | Character | Custom | Experience | Liberty | Man | Memory | Men | Mind | Reflection | Sense | Will | Words | Think |

Plautus, full name Titus Maccius Plautus NULL

Laws are slaves of custom [Laws are subordinate to custom].

Character | Custom |

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

The imagination acquires by custom a certain involuntary, unconscious power of observation and comparison, correcting its own mistakes and arriving at precision of judgment, just as the outward eye is disciplined to compare, adjust, estimate, measure, the objects reflected on the back of its retina. The imagination is but the faculty of glassing images; and it is with exceeding difficulty, and by the imperative will of the reasoning faculty resolved to mislead it, that it glasses images which have no prototype in truth and nature.

Custom | Difficulty | Imagination | Judgment | Nature | Observation | Power | Precision | Truth | Will | Wisdom | Precision |

Euripedes NULL

A good custom is surer than law.

Custom | Good | Law | Wisdom |

Philip G. Hamerton, fully Philip Gilbert Hamerton

Society has only one law, and that is custom. Even religion is socially powerful only so far as it has custom on its side.

Custom | Law | Religion | Society | Wisdom |

Law Maxim NULL

The custom of the manor and the place must be observed.

Custom | Wisdom |

Law Maxim NULL

Ancient custom is always held of regarded as law.

Custom | Law | Wisdom |

John Locke

The custom of frequent reflection will keep their minds from running adrift, and call their thoughts home from useless unattentive roving.

Custom | Reflection | Will | Wisdom |

Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter

All theories, all values, all reforms, all revolutions, all change, and all actions are built on the shifting sands of custom and opinion, and the winds of doubt and new circumstances and considerations are always blowing, always rising.

Change | Circumstances | Custom | Doubt | Opinion | Theories |

Blaise Pascal

Custom should be followed only because it is custom, and not because it is reasonable or just. But people follow it for this sole reason, that they think it just. Otherwise they would follow it no longer, although it were the custom; for they will only submit to reason or justice. Custom without this would pass for tyranny; but the sovereignty of reason and justice is no more tyrannical than that of desire. They are principles natural to man.

Custom | Desire | Justice | Man | People | Principles | Reason | Tyranny | Will | Think |

Blaise Pascal

For we must not misunderstand ourselves; we are as much automatic as intellectual; and hence it comes that the instrument by which conviction is attained is not demonstrated alone. How few things are demonstrated! Proofs only convince the mind. Custom is the source of our strongest and most believed proofs. It bends the automaton, which persuades the mind without its thinking about the matter.

Custom | Mind | Thinking |