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

Robert Hall

War is nothing less than a temporary repeal of the principles of virtue. It is a system out of which almost all the virtues are excluded, and in which nearly all the vices are included.

Character | Nothing | Principles | System | Virtue | Virtue | War |

Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

Hold for yourself the belief that each day that dawns is your last.

Belief | Character | Day |

William James

Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living, and your belief will help create that fact.

Belief | Character | Life | Life | Will | Worth | Afraid |

David Hume

The only difference betwixt the natural vices and justice lies in this, that the good, which results from the former, arises from every single act, and is the object of some natural passion: whereas a single act of justice, consider’d in itself, may often be contrary to the public good; and ‘tis only the concurrence of mankind, in a general scheme or system of action, which is advantageous.

Action | Character | Good | Justice | Mankind | Object | Passion | Public | System |

William James

Our belief in truth itself.. that there is a truth, and that our minds and it are made for each other, what is it but a passionate affirmation of desire, in which our social system backs us up? We want to have a truth; we want to believe that our experiments and studies and discussions must put us in a continually better and better position towards it; and on this line we agree to fight out our thinking lives.

Belief | Better | Character | Desire | Position | System | Thinking | Truth |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

There is a very general belief that, where gadgets are concerned, we can get something for nothing - can enjoy all the advantages of an elaborate, top-heavy and constantly advancing technology without having to pay for them by any compensating disadvantages.

Belief | Character | Nothing | Technology |

William James

In any project the important factor is your belief. Without belief there can be no successful outcome.

Belief | Character | Important |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Relationship means contact, communion. There cannot be communion where people are divided by ideas. A belief may gather a group of people around itself. Such a group will inevitably breed opposition and so form another group with a different belief. Ideas postpone direct relationship with the problem.

Belief | Character | Ideas | Means | Opposition | People | Relationship | Will |

Garrison Keillor, fully Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor

The only moral virtue of war is that it compels the capitalist system to look itself in the face and admit it is a fraud. It compels the present society to admit that it has no morals it will not sacrifice for gain.

Character | Fraud | Present | Sacrifice | Society | System | Virtue | Virtue | War | Will | Society |

B. C. Kher

Both the saint and the scientist must possess the same qualities in order to attain their ideals. But these qualities are selfless devotion, a meticulous love of truth, infinite patience, thoroughness, and a depth of mind which does not resent criticism. Without these qualities neither of the two can reach his goal. It is my firm belief that the goal which both science and religion reach by different routes is one and the same.

Belief | Character | Criticism | Devotion | Ideals | Love | Mind | Order | Patience | Qualities | Religion | Science | Truth |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

To most of us, relationship is a term for comfort, for gratification, for security, and in that relationship we use property, ideas, and persons for our gratification. We use belief as a means of security.

Belief | Character | Comfort | Ideas | Means | Property | Relationship | Security |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

What is important is to free ourselves from ideas, from nationalism, from all religious beliefs and dogmas, so that we can act, not according to a pattern or an ideology, but as needs demand... It is only when the mind is free of idea and belief that it can act rightly... and freedom from ideas can take place only through self-awareness and self-knowledge.

Awareness | Belief | Character | Freedom | Ideas | Important | Knowledge | Mind | Self | Self-awareness | Self-knowledge | Wisdom |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Reality comes into being only when the mind is still, not made still. Therefore, there must be no disciplining of the mind to be still. When you discipline yourself, it is merely a projected desire to be in a particular state. Such a state is not the state of passivity... Liberation is from moment to moment in the understanding of what is, when the mind is free, not made free. It is only a free mind that can discover, not a mind molded by a belief or shaped according to a hypothesis. Such a mind cannot discover. There can be no freedom is there is conflict, for conflict is the fixing of the self in relationship.

Belief | Character | Desire | Discipline | Freedom | Hypothesis | Mind | Reality | Relationship | Self | Understanding |

John Lubbock, fully Sir John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury

A wise system of education will at least teach us how little man yet knows, how much he has still to learn.

Character | Education | Little | Man | System | Teach | Will | Wise |

Johann Kaspar Lavater

All belief that does not render us more happy, more free, more loving, more active, more calm, is, I fear, an erroneous and superstitious belief.

Belief | Character | Fear | Happy |

Walter Savage Landor

It is as wise to moderate our belief as our desires.

Belief | Character | Wise |

Walter Lippmann

The unexamined life, said Socrates, is unfit to be lived by man. This is the virtue of liberty, and the ground on which we may justify our belief in it, that it tolerates error in order to serve truth.

Belief | Character | Error | Justify | Liberty | Life | Life | Man | Order | Truth | Virtue | Virtue |

Georg Christoph Lichtenberg

With most people, doubt about one thing is simply blind belief in another.

Belief | Character | Doubt | People |

George S. Merriam

That belief which inspires a man to higher life, which moves him to trample down his besetting sins, to help his weaker brother, to rise into communion with God, is to him a Divine voice.

Belief | Character | God | Life | Life | Man |

Neil Monro, sometimes wrote under pen name Hugh Foulis

To the acquisition of the rare quality of politeness, so much of the enlightened understanding is necessary that I cannot but consider every book in every science, which tends to make us wiser, and of course better men, as a treatise on a more enlarged system of politeness.

Better | Character | Men | Science | System | Understanding |