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

Mary Wollstonecraft

Society can only be happy and free in proportion as it is virtuous.

Happy | Society |

Milton Rakove

The amount of effort put into a campaign by a worker expands in proportion to the personal benefits that he will derive from his party's victory.

Effort | Will |

Milton Rakove

[Rakove’s Law of Principle and Politics] The citizen is influenced by principle in direct proportion to this distance from the political situation.

Law | Politics |

Mortimer J. Adler, fully Mortimer Jerome Adler

Our wisdom does not increase nearly at the same rate or proportion to the increase in our power.

Power | Wisdom |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The studious class are their own victims; they are thin and pale, their feet are cold, their heads are hot, the night is without sleep, the day a fear of interruption - pallor, squalor, hunger, and egotism. If you come near them and see what conceits they entertain - they are abstractionists, and spend their days and nights in dreaming some dream; in expecting the homage of society to some precious scheme built on a truth, but destitute of proportion in its presentment, of justness in its application, and of all energy of will in the schemer to embody and vitalize it.

Day | Energy | Fear | Hunger | Society | Truth | Will | Society |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

A vivid thought brings the power to paint it; and in proportion to the depth of its source is the force of its projection.

Force | Power | Thought | Thought |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Thought is the seed of action; but action is as much its second form as thought is its first. It rises in thought, to the end that it may be uttered and acted. The more profound the thought, the more burdensome. Always in proportion to the depth of its sense does it knock importunately at the gates of the soul, to be spoken, to be done.

Action | Sense | Soul | Thought | Thought |

René Descartes

As to the freedom of the will, a very different account must be given of it as it exists in God and as its exists for us... That idea of good impelled God to choose one thing rather than another... Thus that supreme indifference in God is the supreme proof of his omnipotence. But as to man, since he finds the nature of all goodness and truth already determined by God, and his will cannot bear upon anything else, it is evident that he embraces the true and the good the more willingly and hence the more freely in proportion as he sees the true and the good more clearly, and that he is never indifferent save when he does not know what is the more true or the better, or at least when he does not see clearly enough to prevent him from doubting about it. Thus the indifference which attaches to human liberty is very different from that which belongs to the divine.

Better | Enough | Freedom | God | Good | Indifference | Liberty | Man | Nature | Omnipotence | Truth | Will | God |

Richard T. Ely

Socialism is that contemplated system of industrial society which proposes the abolition of private property in the great material instruments of production, and the substitution therefore of collective property; and advocates the collective management of production, together with the distribution of social income by society, and private property in the larger proportion of this social income.

Property | Society | System | Society |

William Hazlitt

Unlimited power is helpless, as arbitrary power is capricious. Our energy is in proportion t the resistance it meets. We can attempt nothing great but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter; we can persevere in nothing great but from a pride in overcoming them.

Energy | Nothing | Power | Pride | Sense |

William Hazlitt

The insolence of the vulgar is in proportion to their ignorance: they treat everything with contempt, which they do not understand.

Contempt | Ignorance |

Tom Hopkins

I am not judged by the number of times I fail, but by the number of times I succeed; and the number of times I succeed is in direct proportion to the number of times I can fail and keep on trying.

William Hazlitt

Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets. We can attempt nothing great, but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter.

Energy | Nothing | Sense |

William Hazlitt

We dread life's termination as the close, not of enjoyment, but of hope... Our repugnance to death increases in proportion to our consciousness of having lived in vain.

Consciousness | Death | Dread | Enjoyment | Hope | Life | Life |

William Shakespeare

How sour sweet music is, when time is broke and no proportion kept! So is it in the music of men's lives, and here have I the daintiness of ear to check time broke in a disordered string; but for the concord of my state and time had not an ear to hear my true time broke. I wasted time, and now doth time waste me; for now hath Time made me his numbering clock. My thoughts are minutes, and with sighs they jar their watches on unto mine eyes, the outward watch, whereto my finger, like a dial's point, is pointing still, in cleansing them from tears. Now sir, the sound that tells what hour it is are clamorous groans which strike upon my heart, which is the bell. Richard II, Act v, Scene 5

Men | Music | Sound | Time | Waste |

Alan William Smolowe

People can only exhibit freedom in proportion to their comprehension of existence and grander realities. Only through an expanded knowledge, wisdom and the understanding of greater truths, do people have a greater capacity to express their freedom.

Capacity | Existence | Freedom | Knowledge | People | Understanding | Wisdom |

Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville

Religion in American takes no direct part in the government of society, but it must be regarded as the first of their political institutions... How is it possible that society should escape destruction if the moral tie is not strengthened in proportion as the political tie is relaxed? And what can be done with a people who are their own masters if they are not submissive to the Deity?

Government | People | Religion | Society | Society | Government |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

Hesitation increases in relation to risk in equal proportion to age.

Risk |

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

Let us therefore conclude that there are no ideas but such as are acquired: the first proceed immediately from the senses; the others are owing to experience, and increase in proportion as we become capable of reflecting.

Ideas |

Frederika Bremer

The great duty of life is not to give pain; and the most acute reasoner cannot find an excuse for one who voluntarily wounds the heart of a fellow-creature. Even for their own sakes, people should show kindness and regard to their dependants. They are often better served in trifles, in proportion as they are rather feared than loved: but how small is this gain compared with the loss sustained in all the weightier affairs of life! Then the faithful servant shows himself at once as a friend, while one who serves from fear shows himself an enemy.

Better | Duty | Fear | Heart | Kindness | Life | Life | People | Regard | Loss |