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

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

I've never loved anyone else the way I love you. I'm full of poetry now. Rot and poetry. Rotten poetry.' 'Stop it. Harry, why do you have to turn into a devil now?' 'I don't like to leave anything,' the man said. 'I don't like to leave things behind.

Love |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

No Pilar, Agustin said. You are not smart. You are brave. You are loyal. You have decision. You have intuition. Much decision and much heart. But you are not smart.

Love |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

This is a good place, he said. There's a lot of liquor, I agreed.

Chance | Light | Work |

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

How can we disarm greed and envy? Perhaps by being much less greedy and envious ourselves; perhaps by resisting the temptation of letting our luxuries become needs; and perhaps by even scrutinizing our needs to see if they cannot be simplified and reduced.

Compensation | Leisure | Sacrifice | Work |

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

A society for investigating nature and ascertaining truth cannot celebrate its commemoration day more fittingly than by a discussion of its highest general problems.

Work | Learn | Think |

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

It takes a good deal of courage to say "no" to the fashions and fascinations of the age and to question the presuppositions of a civilization which appears destined to conquer the whole world; the requisite strength can be derived only from deep convictions. If it were derived from nothing more than fear of the future, it would be likely to disappear at the decisive moment.

Insight | People | System | Work |

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

To press non-economic values into the framework of the economic calculus, economists use the method of cost/benefit analysis. This is generally thought to be an enlightened and progressive development, as it is at least an attempt to take account of costs and benefits which might otherwise be disregarded altogether. In fact, however, it is a procedure by which the higher is reduced to the level of the lower and the priceless is given a price. It can therefore never serve to clarify the situation and lead to an enlightened decision. All it can do is lead to self-deception or the deception of others; all one has to do to obtain the desired results is to impute suitable values to the immeasurable costs and benefits. The logical absurdity, however, is not the greatest fault of the undertaking: with is worse, and destructive of civilization, is the pretense that everything has a price or, in other words, that money is the highest of all values.

Compassion | Evil | Little | Work |

Ester and Jerry Hicks

If you are feeling a shortage of time or money, your best effort would be to focus upon better-feeling thoughts, and do more things that make you feel good.

Day | Nothing | Talking | Work |

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

Methods of production, standards of consumption, criteria of success or failure, systems of values, and behavior patterns establish themselves in poor countries which, being (doubtfully) appropriate only to conditions of affluence already achieved, fix the poor countries ever more inescapably in a condition of utter dependence on the rich.

Hate | Love | People |

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

The common criterion of success, namely the growth of GNP, is utterly misleading and, in fact, must of necessity lead to phenomena which can only be described as neo-colonialism.

Chance | Man | People | Work |

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

The science of comparative anatomy. Its task is, by comparing the fully-developed bodily forms in the various groups of animals, to learn the general laws of organisation according to which the body is constructed; at the same time, it has to determine the affinities of the various groups by critical appreciation of the degrees of difference between them.

Cause | Existence | Love |

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

If technology is felt to be becoming more and more inhuman, we might do well to consider whether it is possible to have something better - a technology with a human face.

Evil | Majority | Nothing | Right | Work |

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

Is it not evident that our current methods of production are already eating into the very substance of industrial man?

Restraint | Work |

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

Since there is now increasing evidence of environmental deterioration, particularly in living nature, the entire outlook and methodology of economics is being called into question. The study of economics is too narrow and too fragmentary to lead to valid insights, unless complemented and completed by a study of meta-economics.

Cooperation | Nature | Public | Will | Work |

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

Social cohesion, cooperation, mutual respect, and above all, self-respect, courage in the face of adversity, and the ability to bear hardship—all this and much else disintegrates and disappears when these "psychological structures" are gravely damaged. A man is destroyed by the inner conviction of uselessness. No amount of economic growth can compensate for such losses—though this may be an idle reflection, since economic growth is normally inhibited by them.

Work |

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

In many of these languages there are numerals only for one, two, and three: no Australian language counts beyond four. Very many wild tribes can count no further than ten or twenty, whereas some very clever dogs have been made to count up to forty and even beyond sixty.

Existence | Faith | Force | History | Knowledge | Necessity | Nothing | Position | Science | Work |

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

It is not a question of choosing between "modern growth" and "traditional stagnation." It is a question of finding the right path of development, the Middle Way between materialist heedlessness and traditionalist immobilityÂ…

Effort | Important |

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

Excellent! This is real life, full of antinomies and bigger than logic. Without order, planning, predictability, central control, accountancy, instructions to the underlings, obedience, discipline—without these, nothing fruitful can happen, because everything disintegrates. And yet—without the magnanimity of disorder, the happy abandon, the entrepreneurship venturing into the unknown and incalculable, without the risk and the gamble, the creative imagination rushing in where bureaucratic angels fear to tread—without this, life is a mockery and a disgrace.

Ends | Guidance | Need | People | Science | Wisdom | Work | Guidance | Value |

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

We should be searching for policies to reconstruct rural culture, to open the land for the gainful occupation to larger numbers of people, whether it be on a full-time or a part-time bases, and to orientate all our actions on the land towards the threefold ideal of health, beauty and permanence.

Man | Plenty | Technology | Work |

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

Yet is seems, large-scale organization is here to stay. Therefore it is all the more necessary to think about it and to theorize about it. The stronger the current, the greater the need for skillful navigation.

Work |