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

Samuel M. Lindsay

Belief in immortality gives dignity to life and enables us to endure cheerfully those trials which come to us all. As the thought of immortality occupies our minds, we gain a clearer conception of duty and are inspired to cultivate character. Living for the future is not coward's philosophy, but an inspiration to noble and unselfish activity.

Belief | Character | Dignity | Duty | Future | Immortality | Inspiration | Life | Life | Philosophy | Thought | Trials | Wisdom | Thought |

Samuel David Luzzatto, aka by acronym of SHaDaL or SHeDaL

Society's preservation and man's happiness depend on illusion. Nature itself, which certainly represents the will of God, deludes us in many respects, as when it leads us by the cords of love to reproduce the race. If a youth would consider the trouble in rearing a family, not one in a thousand would marry, but nature closes our eyes to the future (and indeed, wherever popular knowledge rises, the birth rate declines). The same is true of the other passions, which nature utilizes to deceive man and goad them toward the attainment of ends which, when attained, turn out to be but vanity.

Attainment | Birth | Ends | Family | Future | God | Illusion | Knowledge | Love | Man | Nature | Race | Society | Will | Wisdom | Youth | Youth | Trouble | Happiness |

Walter Lippmann

Life is an irreversible process and for that reason its future can never be a repetition of the past.

Future | Life | Life | Past | Reason | Wisdom |

John "J. M. E." McTaggart. born John McTaggart Ellis

Past, present and future are incompatible determinations. Every event must be one or the other, but no event can be more than one. If I say that any event is past, that implies that it is neither present nor future, and so with the others. And this exclusiveness is essential to change, and therefore to time. For the only change we can get is from future to present, and from present to past. The characteristics, therefore, are incompatible. But every event has them all. If M is past, it has been present and future. If it is future, it will be present and past. If it is present, it has been future and will be past. thus all the three characteristics belong to each event. How is this consistent with their being incompatible?

Change | Future | Past | Present | Time | Will | Wisdom |

Harvey Milk

Let’s make no mistake about this: The American Dream starts with our neighborhoods. If we wish to rebuild our cities, we must first rebuild our neighborhoods. And to do that, we must understand that the quality of life is more important than the standard of living. to sit on the front steps - whether it’s a veranda in a small town or a concrete stoop in a big city - and talk to our neighbors is infinitely more important than to huddle on the living-room lounger and watch make-believe world in not-quite living color.

Important | Life | Life | Mistake | Wisdom | World | Understand |

George Peabody

Education: a debt due from the present to the future generations.

Debt | Education | Future | Present | Wisdom |

Bons (Leonidovich) Pasternak

Can a man control his future? Yes. Despite the system they live under, men everywhere have, I believe, more power over the future than ever before. The important thing is that we must choose to exercise it. What we do today determines how the world shall go, for tomorrow is made up of the sum total of today's experiences... Far from feeling hopeless or helpless, we must seize every opportunity, however small, to help the world around us toward peace, productivity and human brotherhood.

Brotherhood | Control | Future | Important | Man | Men | Opportunity | Peace | Power | System | Tomorrow | Wisdom | World |

Robert Oppenheimer, fully Julius Robert Oppenheimer

The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.

Atomic bomb | Future | War | Wisdom |

Padmasamabhava, "The Lotus-Born", aka Guru Rinpoche "Precious Guru" or Lopon Rinpoche or Padum in Tibet NULL

If you want to know your past life, look into your present condition; if you want to know your future life, look at your present actions.

Future | Life | Life | Past | Present | Wisdom |

William Osler, fully Sir William Osler

The load of tomorrow, added to that of yesterday, carried today, makes the strongest falter. We must learn to shut off the future as tightly as the past.

Future | Past | Tomorrow | Wisdom | Learn |

Plotinus NULL

The Cosmos has had no beginning... and this is warrant for its continued existence. Why should there be in the future a change that has not yet occurred? The elements there are not worn away like beams and rafters: they hold sound for ever, and so the All holds sound. And even supposing these elements to be in ceaseless transmutation, yet the All persists: the ground of all the change must itself be changeless.

Beginning | Change | Existence | Future | Sound | Wisdom |

Philip Bennett Power

To tell the truth, however, family and poverty have done more to support me than I have to support them. They have compelled me to make exertions that I hardly thought myself capable of; and often when on the eve of despairing, they have forced me, like a coward in a corner, to fight like a hero, not for myself, but for my wife and little ones.

Family | Hero | Little | Poverty | Thought | Truth | Wife | Wisdom | Thought |