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

Victor Daniels, aka Chief Thundercloud

We must learn to tailor our concepts to fit reality, instead of trying to stuff reality into our concepts.

Reality | Wisdom | Learn |

Albert Einstein

Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. In our endeavor to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility or the meaning of such a comparison. But he certainly believes that, as his knowledge increases, his picture of reality will become simpler and simpler and will explain a wider and wider range of his sensuous impressions. He may also believe in the existence of the ideal limit of knowledge and that it is approached by the human mind. He may call this ideal limit the objective truth.

Existence | Knowledge | Man | Meaning | Mind | Reality | Will | Wisdom | World | Understand |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

Neurosis does not deny the existence of reality, it merely tries to ignore it: psychosis denies it and tries to substitute something else for it. A reaction which combines features of both these is the one we call normal or "healthy"; it denies reality as little as neurosis, but then, like psychosis, is concerned with effecting a change in it.

Change | Existence | Little | Reality | Wisdom |

Oscar Hammerstein II, fully Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hamerstein II

I know the world is filled with troubles and many injustices. But reality is as beautiful as it is ugly. It think it is just as important to sing about beautiful mornings as it is to talk about slums. I just couldn't write anything without hope in it.

Hope | Important | Reality | Troubles | Ugly | Wisdom | World | Think |

Erich Gutkind

The stupendous fact that we stand in the midst of reality will always be something far more wonderful than anything else we do.

Reality | Will | Wisdom |

Robert H. Goddard, fully Robert Hutchings Goddard

It is difficult to say what is impossible, for the dream of yesterday is the hope of today and the reality of tomorrow.

Hope | Reality | Tomorrow | Wisdom |

Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos

Creation is not an arrested reality that can be captured, dissected and handed down in frozen creeds; it is, instead, a living process that can only be completed by our own full participation.

Reality | Wisdom |

Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos

Man is going to evolve. It is our destiny. As in any evolution, parts of us will die in order for other parts to be born. Choosing at each moment the feelings, attitudes and values - acceptance, cooperation, caring, loving, forgiving - that will be the building blocks of the emerging reality is what it means to choose to evolve. At each moment we can choose to behave as natives of this new reality and co-creators in our evolution.

Acceptance | Cooperation | Destiny | Evolution | Feelings | Man | Means | Order | Reality | Will | Wisdom |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

The Perennial Philosophy... the metaphysic that recognizes a divine reality substantial to the world of things and lives and minds; the psychology that finds in the soul something similar to, or even identical with divine Reality; the ethic that places man's final end in the knowledge of immanent and transcendent Ground of being.

Knowledge | Man | Philosophy | Psychology | Reality | Soul | Wisdom | World |

Ta-chu Hui-Hai

When you stop thinking that things have a past or future, and that they come or go, then in the whole universe there won't be a single atom that is not your own treasure. All you have to do is look into your own mind; then the marvelous reality will manifest itself at all times. Don't search for the truth with your intellect. Don't search at all. The nature of the mind is intrinsically pure.

Future | Mind | Nature | Past | Reality | Search | Thinking | Truth | Universe | Will | Wisdom |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

We possess a hidden higher self, the spark of divinity within the soul, which reflects this transcendental reality in our lives. By fulfilling certain necessary conditions, such as making ourselves more loving and compassionate, we can clear away the mental and emotional static that separates us from this inner reality, enabling the higher self to assume a central, guiding role in our lives. This awakening - called enlightenment, deliverance, or salvation in the various traditions - is the goal or purpose of human life. When we achieve this complete transformation of consciousness, we awaken from our limited, often painful condition and reconnect with our true nature.

Awakening | Consciousness | Divinity | Enlightenment | Life | Life | Nature | Purpose | Purpose | Reality | Salvation | Self | Soul | Wisdom |

Firuz Kazemzadeh

The problem of our purpose is a religious problem... Our purpose is derived from faith and is imposed onto reality by our own souls. But faith and religious truth themselves are not absolute. They are relative. Thus the answers one gives to questions about the purpose of life must necessarily be relative to a time, a place, a tradition... To know and worship God means, in Baha’ullah’s words, to promote the unity of the human race and to foster the spirit of love and fellowship amongst men”... Someday there will be a global society in which humanity will realize its spiritual and moral potential... The destiny of mankind, actually, is the ultimate creation of the world civilization. It is only in the service of such a cause that I find the meaning and purpose of life.

Absolute | Cause | Civilization | Destiny | Faith | Global | God | Human race | Humanity | Life | Life | Love | Mankind | Meaning | Means | Men | Purpose | Purpose | Race | Reality | Service | Society | Spirit | Time | Tradition | Truth | Unity | Will | Wisdom | Words | World | Worship | Society | God |

John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

The supreme reality of our time is our indivisibility as children of God and the common vulnerability of this planet.

Children | God | Reality | Time | Wisdom | God |

William James

The world of our consciousness consists at all times of two parts, an objective and a subjective part, of which the former may be incalculably more extensive than the latter, and yet the latter can never be omitted or suppressed. The objective part is the sum total of whatsoever at any given time we may be thinking of, the subjective part is the inner ‘state’ in which the thinking comes to pass. What we think of may be enormous - the cosmic times and spaces, for example - whereas the inner state may be the most fugitive and paltry activity of the mind. Yet the cosmic objects, so far as the experience yields them, are but ideal pictures of something whose existence we do not inwardly possess but only point outwardly, while the inner state is our very experience itself; its reality and that of our experience are one.

Consciousness | Example | Existence | Experience | Mind | Reality | Thinking | Time | Wisdom | World | Think |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

Psychic reality exists in its original oneness, and awaits man's advance to a level of consciousness where he no longer believes in the one part and denies the other, but recognizes both as constituent elements of one psyche.

Consciousness | Man | Oneness | Reality | Wisdom |

William James

That which produces effects within another reality must be termed a reality itself, so I feel as if we had no philosophic excuse for calling the unseen or mystical world unreal.

Mystical | Reality | Wisdom | World |

Hans Küng

Self-realization is the meaning of life. We are here to realize ourselves in order to become true human beings. But I add from my own experience: My own self-realization must fail if it disregards the self-realization of others. My realization and other’s realizations are meaningful only if they are borne and determined by something that is more than we ourselves: Self-Realization rooted in the reality of God Himself.

Experience | God | Life | Life | Meaning | Order | Reality | Self | Self-realization | Wisdom | God |