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

Louis Pauwels

Genetic mutation is not, it would seem, due to chance, but directed in some way, perhaps toward a spiritual regeneration of humanity - a bridge, as it were, between a lower, and a higher level of consciousness.

Chance | Consciousness | Humanity | Wisdom |

V. S. Pritchett, fully Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett

The mark of genius is an incessant activity of mind. Genius is a spiritual greed.

Genius | Greed | Mind | Wisdom |

Charles B. Rogers

To give great attention to details is one mark of the genius - to putter with trifles is not.

Attention | Genius | Trifles | Wisdom |

Terence, full Latin name Publius Terentius Afer NULL

I am a human being; no part of humanity do I consider foreign to me.

Humanity | Wisdom |

Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville

Amid the ruins which surround me I shall dare to say that revolutions are not what I most fear for coming generations?... It is believed by some that modern society will be always changing its aspect; for myself, I fear that it will ultimately be too invariably fixed in the same institutions, the same prejudices, the same manners, so that mankind will be stopped and circumscribed; that the mind will swing backwards and forwards forever without begetting fresh ideas; that man will waste his strength in bootless and solitary trifling, and, though in continual motion, that humanity will cease to advance.

Fear | Humanity | Ideas | Man | Mankind | Manners | Mind | Society | Strength | Waste | Will | Wisdom | Society |

Edwin Percy Whipple

Talent repeats; genius creates.

Genius | Wisdom |

Lane Weston

There is no such thing as an average man. Each one of us is a unique individual. Each one of us expresses his humanity and his divinity in some distinctly different way. The beauty and the bloom of each human soul is a thing apart - a separate holy miracle under God, never once repeated throughout all the millenniums of time.

Beauty | Divinity | God | Humanity | Individual | Man | Soul | Time | Unique | Wisdom | Beauty |

Franz Werfel, fully Franz Viktor Werfel

Religion is the everlasting dialogue between humanity and God. Art is its soliloquy.

Art | God | Humanity | Religion | Wisdom | Art |

Paul Valéry, fully Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry

Every enthusiast contains a false enthusiast, every lover a false lover, every man of genius a false man of genius, and, as a rule, every fault its counterfeit: this is necessary in order to assure the continuity of one's personality, not only in the eyes of others but in one's own - in order to understand oneself, count upon oneself, think of oneself; in order, in short, to be oneself.

Fault | Genius | Man | Order | Personality | Rule | Wisdom | Fault | Think | Understand |

Haku'un Ryoko Yasutani, aka Yasutani Roshi

The fundamental delusion of humanity is to supposed that I am here and you are out there.

Delusion | Humanity | Wisdom |

Raymond Aron, fully Raymond-Claude-Ferdinand Aron

In the atomic age, each individual, each party, each state, must feel itself responsible to humanity in its entirety and not merely to its own group or ideal.

Age | Humanity | Individual |

John Elof Boodin

We are material in the hands of the Genius of the universe for a still larger destiny that we cannot see in the everlasting rhythm of worlds.

Destiny | Genius | Universe |

Tennessee Williams, fully Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams

We're all of us guinea pigs in the laboratory of God. Humanity is just a work in progress.

God | Humanity | Progress | Wisdom | Work |

Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev

Belief in God is belief in the highest Truth and Right, exalted above the wrongness of the world. But this Truth demands the creative participation of man and the world. But this Truth demands the creative participation of man and the world. It is divine-human; in it the ideal humanity operates.

Belief | God | Humanity | Man | Right | Truth | World | God |

Fidel Castro, fully Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz

Whoever hesitates while waiting for ideas to triumph among the masses before initiating revolutionary action will never be a revolutionary. Humanity will, of course, change. Human society will, of course, continue to develop – in spite of men and the errors of men. But that is not a revolutionary attitude.

Action | Change | Humanity | Ideas | Men | Society | Waiting | Will | Society |