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 Gaule

A complex system that works is invariably found to have evolved from a simple system that works.

System | Wisdom |

Kurt Gödel, also Goedel

Every system of knowledge contains meaningful tenets whose truth or falsity cannot be established if one remains completely within that system.

Knowledge | System | Tenets | Truth | Wisdom |

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 |

Ellen Goodman

Public smoking, like public spitting, is becoming a socially unacceptable habit.

Habit | Public | Wisdom |

Hayim Greenberg

A true democracy rests on the differences between its citizens, as individuals or as groups.

Democracy | Wisdom |

Philip G. Hamerton, fully Philip Gilbert Hamerton

Of all intellectual friendships, none are so beautiful as those which subsist between old and ripe men and their younger brethren in science or literature or art. It is by; these private friendships, even more than by public performance, that the tradition of sound thinking and great doing is perpetuated from age to age.

Age | Art | Literature | Men | Public | Science | Sound | Thinking | Tradition | Wisdom | Old |

Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare

A statesman should follow public opinion as a coachman follows his horses; having firm hold on the reins, and guiding them.

Opinion | Public | Wisdom |

Lawrence Hyde, 1st Earl of Rochester

It is undeniable that a man needs to be provided with some sort of philosophical background for his existence. And still more... does he need to be provided with a proper system of transcendental cosmology. But it remains true that the primary concern of the seeker after spiritual fulfillment is not with philosophy, but with wisdom.

Existence | Fulfillment | Man | Need | Philosophy | System | Wisdom |

Robert Hutchins, fully Robert Maynard Hutchins

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.

Apathy | Death | Democracy | Indifference | Will | Wisdom |

Abbie Hoffman, fully Abbot Howard "Abbie" Hoffman

I grew up with the idea that democracy is not something you believe in, or a place you hang your hat, but it’s something you do. You participate. If you stop doing it, democracy crumbles and falls apart.

Democracy | Wisdom |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

The aging man of the middle twentieth century lives, not in the public world of atomic physics and conflicting ideologies, of welfare states and supersonic speed, but in his strictly private universe of physical weakness and mental decay.

Man | Public | Universe | Weakness | Wisdom | World |

Chester Himes, fully Chester Bomar Himes

Democracy is not tolerance. Democracy is a prescribed way of life erected on the premise that all men are created equal.

Democracy | Life | Life | Men | Wisdom |

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

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Confidence | Government | Public | Wisdom | Government |

Blair Justice

Disease is not so much the effect of noxious, external forces - the 'bugs,' both literal and figurative in our lives - as it is the faulty effort of our minds and bodies to deal with them... already reside in our bodies. When our responses to problems in life are excessive or deficient, the central nervous system and hormones act on our immune defenses in such a way that the microbes aid and abet disease. The balance is upset between us and our resident pathogens.

Aid | Balance | Disease | Effort | Life | Life | Problems | System | Wisdom |

Ted Kennedy, fully Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy

What we have today in the United States is not so much a health-care system as a disease-cure system.

Care | Disease | Health | System | Wisdom |

Irving Robert Kaufman

The [Supreme] Court’s only armor is the cloak of public trust; its sole ammunition, the collective hopes of our society.

Public | Society | Trust | Wisdom |