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

Tyron Edwards

Piety and morality are but the same spirit differently manifested. Piety is religion with its face toward God; morality is religion with its face toward the world.

Character | God | Morality | Piety | Religion | Spirit | World |

Charles Darwin, fully Charles Robert Darwin

At all times throughout the world tribes have supplanted other tribes; and as morality is one important element in their success, the standard of morality and the number of well-endowed men will thus rise and increase.

Character | Important | Men | Morality | Success | Will | World |

Charles Darwin, fully Charles Robert Darwin

To do good in return for evil, to love your enemy, is a height of morality to which it may be doubted whether the social instincts would, by themselves, have ever led us.

Character | Enemy | Evil | Good | Love | Morality |

Benjamin Franklin

In dealings between man and man, truth, sincerity and integrity are of the utmost importance to the felicity of life.

Character | Integrity | Life | Life | Man | Sincerity | Truth |

François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

There is no real elevation of mind in a contempt of little things; it is, on the contrary, from too narrow views that we consider those things of little importance which have in fact such extensive consequences.

Character | Consequences | Contempt | Little | Mind |

Thomas Jefferson

I never did, or countenanced, in public life, a single act inconsistent with the strictest good faith; having never believed there was one code of morality for a public, and another for a private man.

Character | Faith | Good | Life | Life | Man | Morality | Public |

David Hume

The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.

Character | Life | Life | Man | Universe |

Louis Kronenberger

Nominally a great age of scientific inquiry, ours has actually become an age of superstition about the infallibility of science; of almost mystical faith in its nonmystical methods; above all... of external verities; of traffic-cop morality and rabbit-test truth.

Age | Character | Faith | Inquiry | Morality | Mystical | Science | Superstition | Truth |

Petra Kelly, fully Petra Karin Kelley

Since human beings have a moral conscience, a spiritual self and a physical self, we can choose among various options. And we are responsible for the consequences of our choices. We can put the common interests of humankind above the conflicts of ideological, racial, religious and national groups. We can bring together thought and feeling, politics and moral values, women and men, the underprivileged and the privileged.... The essence of life is to search for happiness. To realize this end, we must become one with the human family, one with the universe... We should live as if we were to die today. We should die as if we live forever.

Character | Conscience | Consequences | Family | Life | Life | Men | Politics | Search | Self | Thought | Universe | Thought |

Walter Lippmann

There is nothing so bad but it can masquerade as moral... The whole speculation about morality is an effort to find a way of living which men who live it will instinctively feel is good.

Character | Effort | Good | Men | Morality | Nothing | Speculation | Will |

Luigi Luzzatti

The two essential factors of progress: morality and knowledge.

Character | Knowledge | Morality | Progress |

Yeruchem Levovitz, aka The Mashgiach

When unable to fulfill a specific desire, we tend to exaggerate its importance for our happiness... Become aware of your tendency to consider something more important than it really is when you lack it.

Character | Desire | Important |

Samuel David Luzzatto, aka by acronym of SHaDaL or SHeDaL

Science does not make us happy; the highest morality alone is capable of conferring true happiness upon us.

Character | Happy | Morality | Science | Happiness |

Johann Kaspar Lavater

He who gives himself airs of importance exhibits the credentials of impotence.

Character |