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

Plato NULL

The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men [the wicked].

Evil | Good | Indifference | Men | Price | Public |

Pope Pius X, aka Saint Pope Pius X and Pope of the Eucharist, born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto NULL

Catholic doctrine tells us that the primary duty of charity does not lie in the toleration of false ideas, however sincere they may be, nor in the theoretical or practical indifference towards the errors and vices in which we see our brethren plunged but in the zeal for their intellectual and moral improvement as well as for their material well-being. . . True, Jesus has loved us with an immense, infinite love, and He came on earth to suffer and die so that, gathered around Him in justice and love, motivated by the same sentiments of mutual charity, all men might live in peace and happiness. But for the realization of this temporal and eternal happiness, He has laid down with supreme authority the condition that we must belong to His Flock, that we must accept His doctrine, that we must practice virtue, and that we must accept the teaching and guidance of Peter and his successors… He was as strong as he was gentle. He reproved, threatened, chastised, knowing, and teaching us that fear is the beginning of wisdom, and that it is sometimes proper for a man to cut off an offending limb to save his body. Finally, He did not announce for future society the reign of an ideal happiness from which suffering would be banished; but, by His lessons and by His example, He traced the path of the happiness which is possible on earth and of the perfect happiness in heaven… something quite different from an inconsistent and impotent humanitarianism.

Authority | Beginning | Charity | Doctrine | Duty | Earth | Eternal | Fear | Future | Guidance | Improvement | Indifference | Justice | Man | Men | Peace | Practice | Society | Suffering | Toleration | Zeal | Theoretical | Society | Guidance | Happiness |

Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL

Together we all sense our duty to preach. Faced with problems and disappointments, many people will try to escape from their responsibility: escape in selfishness, escape in sexual pleasure, escape in drugs, escape in violence, escape in indifference and cynical attitudes. But today, I propose to you the option of love, which is the opposite of escape. Faith and reason are like two wings on which the human spirit rises to the contemplation of truth; and God has placed in the human heart a desire to know the truth- in a word, to know himself- so that, by knowing and loving God, men and women may also come to the fullness of truth about themselves.

Contemplation | Desire | Duty | Faith | God | Heart | Indifference | Knowing | Men | People | Problems | Reason | Sense | Spirit | Truth | Will | God | Contemplation |

Rita Levi-Montalcini

I tell young people: Do not think of yourself, think of others. Think of the future that awaits you, think about what you can do and do not fear anything. Do not fear the difficulties: I've had many in the past and I crossed without fear, with total indifference for myself.

Fear | Future | Indifference | Past | Think |

Richard Cecil

There is a manifest want of spiritual influence on the ministry of the present day. I feel it in my own case and I see it in that of others. I am afraid there is too much of a low, managing, contriving, maneuvering temper of mind among us. We are laying ourselves out more than is expedient to meet one man's taste and another man's prejudices. The ministry is a grand and holy affair, and it should find in us a simple habit of spirit and a holy but humble indifference to all consequences. A leading defect in Christian ministers is want of a devotional habit.

Habit | Indifference | Influence | Mind | Present | Spirit | Taste | Temper | Afraid |

Richard Whately

The depreciation of Christianity by indifference is a more insidious and less curable evil than infidelity itself.

Evil | Indifference | Infidelity |

Richard Whately

The liberality of some men is but indifference clad in the garb of candor.

Indifference | Men |

Saint Vincent de Paul

I see that you are not sure of what you should do. You must remain steadfast, Monsieur. It would be a great wrong for you to leave and an irreparable scandal to the town and the Company. If you were to abandon the house, I do not think people would ever be willing to welcome us back. Fear not; calm will follow the storm, and perhaps soon.

Circumstances | Contentment | God | Indifference | Little | Lord | Peace | Present | Regard | God |

Shrimad Bhagavatam, or the Bhâgavata Purâna, Śrīmad Bhāgavatam, or Bhāgavata NULL

It is a dangerous policy to claim that we are acting improperly because of destiny or fate.

God | Indifference | Kindness | Love | Self | Friendship | God |

Sidney Hook

I was guilty of judging capitalism by its operations and socialism by its hopes and aspirations; capitalism by its works and socialism by its literature.

Indifference | Nothing | Opposition | Smile | Thought | Words | Approval | Thought |

Simone Weil

That is why there is no hope for the vagrant as he stands before the magistrate. Even if, through his stammerings, he should utter a cry to pierce the soul, neither the magistrate nor the public will hear it. His cry is mute. And the afflicted are nearly always equally deaf to one another; and each of them, constrained by the general indifference, strives by means of self-delusion or forgetfulness to become deaf to his own self.

Good | Indifference | Language | Words | Value |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

It might be said of psychoanalysis that if you give it your little finger it will soon have your whole hand.

Indifference | Science | System |

Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle

He held up the lantern, and his hand shook until the circles of light flickered and wavered all round us. Miss Morstan seized my wrist, and we all stood with thumping hearts, straining our ears. From the great black house there sounded through the silent night the saddest and most pitiful of sounds--the shrill, broken whimpering of a frightened woman.

Admiration | Indifference | System | Words | Think |

Stanley Kubrick

The whole idea of god is absurd. If anything, '2001' shows that what some people call 'god' is simply an acceptable term for their ignorance. What they don't understand, they call 'god' -Stanley Kubrick, interview, 1963

Awareness | Capacity | Consciousness | Death | Existence | Experience | Faith | Idealism | Indifference | Joy | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Pain | Purpose | Purpose | Sense | Soul | Universe | Wonder | Awareness | Child |

Stanley Kubrick

The screen is a magic medium. It has such power that it can retain interest as it conveys emotions and moods that no other art form can hope to tackle.

Death | Existence | Indifference | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Universe |

Stanley Kubrick

Take a stress pill and think things over-- HAL in 2001

Awareness | Capacity | Consciousness | Death | Existence | Experience | Faith | Idealism | Indifference | Joy | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Pain | Purpose | Purpose | Sense | Soul | Universe | Wonder | Worth | Awareness | Child |

Theophrastus NULL

Offensiveness is distressing neglect of person.

Honor | Indifference |

Thich Nhất Hanh

May our heart's garden of awakening bloom with hundreds of flowers.

Body | Indifference | Joy | Light | Mind | Safe | Understanding | Happiness | Learn |