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

Fang Lizhe

In the field of modern cosmology, the first principle is called “the Cosmological Principle.” It says that the universe has no center, that it has the same properties throughout. Every place in the universe has, in this sense, equal rights. How can the human race, which has evolved in a universe of such fundamental equality, fail to strive for a society without violence and terror? How can we fail to build a world in which the rights due to every human being from birth are respected?

Birth | Equality | Human race | Race | Rights | Sense | Society | Terror | Universe | World | Society |

Jacques Maritain

Having given up God so as to be self-sufficient, man has lost track of his soul. He looks in vain for himself; he turns the universe upside down trying to find himself, he finds masks, and behind the masks, death.

Death | God | Looks | Man | Self | Soul | Universe | God |

Bibhuti Mazumder

Love is the creative power of the universe that manifests as strength and beauty. To love is to know God and the inmost nature of the ultimate Reality… Love is letting go of fear and worry… Love consecrates life… By letting go of separateness we see love as the reflection of our own self and harmony in the inconsistencies and imperfections of the existence and explore joy in the midst of the pains and problems of life.

Beauty | Existence | Fear | God | Harmony | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Nature | Power | Problems | Reality | Reflection | Self | Strength | Universe | Worry | God |

Yukio Mishima

In all ages, literature aims at the interpretation of the universe and a deep perception of humanity by means of language.

Aims | Humanity | Language | Literature | Means | Perception | Universe |

Jacques Maritain

Chance cannot possibly be the origin of things. For it presupposes an encounter of causal series... Chance, that is to say, necessarily implies preordination. to hold that the universe can be explained by a primordial chance is self-contradictory.

Chance | Self | Universe |

Garfield Bromley Oxnam

Why didn’t God create the universe without sin? There is only one answer: He could have done so, and man would have been but a pawn upon the chessboard. Pawns are not responsible for moves of the great Player. We must be free to be persons, and being free, we are charged with making decisions.

God | Man | Sin | Universe | God |

Arno Allan Penzias

Today’s dogma holds that matter is eternal. The dogma comes from the intuitive belief of people who don’t want to accept the observational evidence that the universe was created – despite the fact that the creation of the universe is supported by all the observable data astronomy has produced so far. As a result, the people who reject the data can arguably be described as having a religious belief that matter must be eternal… Since scientists prefer to operate in the belief that the universe must be meaningless – that reality consists of nothing more than the sum of the world’s tangible constituents – they cannot confront the idea of creation easily, or take it lightly.

Belief | Dogma | Eternal | Evidence | Nothing | People | Reality | Universe | World |

Mark Noll, fully Mark A. Noll

The road from discrete scientific observations to large-scale explanations of the origin and destiny of the universe always passes through political, social, religious, and cultural precincts.

Destiny | Universe |

Diana Robertson

We may explore the universe and find ourselves, or we may explore ourselves and find the universe. It matters not which of these paths we choose.

Universe |

Josiah Royce

So far as we live and strive at all, our lives are various, are needed for the whole, and are unique. No one of our lives can be substituted for another; no one of us finite beings can take another’s place. And all of this is true just because the Universe is one significant whole.

Unique | Universe |

Winwood Reade, fully William Winwood Reade

All men cannot be poets or philanthropists; but all men can join in that gigantic and god-like work the progress of creation. Whoever improves their own nature improves the universe of which they are a part.

God | Men | Nature | Progress | Universe | Work |

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

The visible order of the universe proclaims a supreme intelligence.

Intelligence | Order | Universe |

James Bisset Pratt

Religion is man’s sense of the disposition of the universe to himself.

Man | Religion | Sense | Universe |

Jonathan Schell, fully Jonathan Edward Schell

The universe is one of God’s thoughts.

God | Universe |

E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

Here we are in this wholly fantastic universe with scarcely a clue as to whether our existence has any real significance.

Existence | Universe |

Seneca the Younger, aka Seneca or Lucius Annaeus Seneca NULL

For what else is Nature but God and the Divine Reason that pervades the whole universe and all its parts.

God | Nature | Reason | Universe | God |

Baird T. Spalding

A child has not yet been hypnotized by the world idea of limitation and lives naturally in harmony with its source. That is why most grown people love to be with children. They radiate the natural harmony of the Universe and that is the natural environment of man.

Children | Harmony | Love | Man | People | Universe | World | Child |

Garrett Thomson

The Nine Mistakes [about ways to think about the meaning of life]: (1) Only the infinite has meaning; the finite can only have meaning insofar as it participates in the infinite. (2) The meaning of life consists in some goal or purpose. (3) The meaning of life is happiness. (4) The meaning of life must be invented. (5) Life cannot have a meaning if the universe is entirely composed of matter, as science teaches us. (6) The sole or primary purpose of evaluations is to guide our choice of actions, and value judgments are reducible to reasons for action. (7) The meaning of a person’s life cannot extend to things beyond the boundaries of his or her mode of living. (8) A person’s life does not having meaning because only linguistic items can be meaningful. (9) The meaning of our lives consists in our living in accordance with a self-determined life-plan.

Action | Choice | Life | Life | Meaning | Plan | Purpose | Purpose | Science | Self | Universe | Think | Value |

Gerald Vann

We of the modern West are the only people in the whole history of the world who have refused to find an explanation of the universe in a divine mind and will.

History | Mind | People | Universe | Will | World |