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

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present.

Future | Present | Reason | Weapons | Will | Wisdom |

John Jacob Abel

Greater even than the greatest discovery is to keep open the way to future discovery.

Discovery | Future | Wisdom | Discovery |

James B. Walker

Men with intellectual light alone may make advances without moral principle, but without that moral principle which gospel faith produces, permanent progress is impossible.

Character | Faith | Light | Men | Progress |

Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL

At any rate it is now quite clear that neither future nor past actually exists. Nor is it right to say that there are times, past, present and future. Perhaps it would be more correct to say: there are three times, a present of things past, a present of things present, a present of things future. For these three exist in the mind, and I find them nowhere else: the present of things past is memory, the present of things present is sight, the present of things future is expectation.

Expectation | Future | Memory | Mind | Past | Present | Right | Wisdom |

Leo Baeck

Every answer given arouses new questions. The progress of science is matched by an increase in the hidden and mysterious.

Progress | Science | Wisdom |

Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL

That God is eternal, is agreed by all who possess reason. What then is eternity?... Eternity is the complete and simultaneous possession of endless life in a single whole... God lives ever in an eternal present, his knowledge transcends all movement of time, and abides in the indivisibility of his present; he grasps the past and the future in all their infinite extent, and with his indivisible cognition he contemplates all events as if they were even now taking place.

Eternal | Eternity | Events | Future | God | Knowledge | Life | Life | Past | Present | Reason | Time | Wisdom | God |

Henry Bolingbroke, Henry IV of England

It is the modest, not the presumptuous inquirer, who makes a real and safe progress in the discovery of divine truths.

Discovery | Progress | Safe | Wisdom | Discovery |

Christian Nestell Bovee

Intellectually, as well as politically, the direction of all true progress is toward greater freedom, and long an endless succession of ideas.

Freedom | Ideas | Progress | Wisdom |

Christian Nestell Bovee

Ideas are, like matter, infinitely divisible. It is not given to us to get down, so to speak, to their final atoms, but to their molecular groupings the way is never ending, and the progress infinitely delightful and profitable.

Ideas | Progress | Wisdom |

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

"Know thyself," said the old philosopher, "improve thyself," saith the new. Our great object in time is not to waste our passions and gifts on the things external that we must leave behind, but that we cultivate within us all that we can carry into the eternal progress beyond.

Eternal | Know thyself | Object | Progress | Time | Waste | Wisdom | Old |

Kenneth Boulding, fully Kenneth Ewart Boulding

The future is bound to surprise us, but we don't have to be dumbfounded.

Future | Wisdom |

Christian Nestell Bovee

When all else is lost, the future still remains.

Future | Wisdom |

Christian Nestell Bovee

The great obstacle to progress is prejudice.

Prejudice | Progress | Wisdom | Obstacle |

John Christian Bovee

Intellectually, as well as politically, the direction of all true progress is toward greater freedom, and along an endless succession of ideas.

Freedom | Ideas | Progress | Wisdom |

William E. Borah

It seems perfectly clear to me that we can never make any real progress toward permanent peace so long as well recognize the institution of war as legitimate and clothe it with glory.

Glory | Peace | Progress | War | Wisdom |

John Christian Bovee

The greatest obstacle to progress is prejudice.

Prejudice | Progress | Wisdom | Obstacle |