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

Ester and Jerry Hicks

If you know that all is well, you know all you need to know. And if you know life is supposed to be fun, you know more than almost anybody else knows.

Effort | Focus | Time |

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

Both of these branches of evolutionary science, are, in my opinion, in the closest causal connection; this arises from the reciprocal action of the laws of heredity and adaptation.

Effort | Science |

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

An expansion of man's ability to bring forth secondary products is useless unless preceded by an expansion of his ability to win primary products from the earth; for man is not a producer but only a converter, and for every job of conversion he needs primary products.

Effort | Existence | Experience | Simplicity | Technology |

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

I say, therefore, that the dynamic approach to development, which treats the choice of appropriate, intermediate technologies as the central issue, opens up avenues of constructive action, which the static, econometric approach totally fails to recognize.

Religion | Worship |

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

The effort needed to sustain a way of life which seeks to attain the optimal pattern of consumption is likely to be much smaller than the effort needed to sustain a drive for maximum consumption.

Effort | Labor | Machines | Means | Nothing | People |

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

The real cause of personal existence is not the favor of the Almighty, but the sexual love of one's earthly parents.

Antithesis | Courage | Desire | Faith | Knowledge | Man | Men | Mind | Nature | Purpose | Purpose | Reality | Religion | Soul | Thinking | World |

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

The essence of educationÂ…is the transmission of values, but values do not help us to pick our way through life unless they have become our own, a part, so to say, of our mental make-up. This means that they are more than mere formulae or dogmatic assertions: that we think and feel with them, that they are the very instruments through which we look at, interpret, and experience the world.

Effort | Life | Life |

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

But while all fanaticism shows intellectual weakness, a fanaticism about the means to be employed for reaching quite uncertain objectives is sheer feeble mindedness.

Experience | Religion | Theoretical |

Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson

Speaking on the near skepticism of the study of the history of philosophy:

Criticism | Distinguish | Doubt | Effort | Existence | Faith | God | Mind | Modesty | Need | Question | Reason | Truth | God | Afraid |

Eudora Welty

The mystery in how little we know of other people is no greater than the mystery of how much, Laurel thought.

People | Religion | Soul | World | Think |

Eugene Peterson

Two biblical designations for people of faith: disciple and pilgrim. Disciple (mathetes) says we are people who spend our lives apprenticed to our master. We are in a growing-learning relationship, always. We donÂ’t learn in a school, but at the work site of the craftsman. We seek not to acquire information about God but skills in faith.

God | Office | Order | Religion | Thought | God | Think | Thought |

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

What we have been saying in regard to imagination and memory, must be applied to contemplation, according as it is referred to either. If it be made to consist in retaining the perceptions; before the use of instituted signs it has only a habit which does not depend on us: but it has none at all, if it be made to consist in preserving the signs themselves.

Design | Fame | Knowledge | Mankind | Memory | Music | Poetry | Religion | Time | Wants |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Nothing human is finally calculable; even to ourselves we are strange.

Bible | Religion | Bible |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

It is reasonable to assume that, by and large, what is not read now will not be read, ever. It is also reasonable to assume that practically nothing that is read now will be read later. Finally, it is not too farfetched to imagine a future in which novels are not read at all.

Character | Control | Effort | Empathy | Little | Race | Think |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

The idea of a good society is something you do not need a religion and eternal punishment to buttress; you need a religion if you are terrified of death.

Giving | Government | Religion | Government |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

I shared, naturally, in that hatred of organized labor which has been the one political constant in my lifetime, culminating in Ronald Reagan's most popular gesture, the smashing of the air-controllers' union. No alternative view of organized labor has ever come to us through the popular media. If labor leaders were not crooks like Jimmy Hoffa, they were in the pay of Moscow.

Good | Human race | People | Race | Regard | Religion | System | World |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

The important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.

Eternal | Good | Need | Punishment | Religion | Society | Society |

Eustace Budgell

In order to keep that temper which is so difficult, and yet so necessary to preserve, you may please to consider, that nothing can be more unjust or ridiculous, than to be angry with another because he is not of your opinion. The interests, education, and means by which men attain their knowledge, are so very different, that it is impossible they should all think alike; and he has at least as much reason to be angry with you, as you with him. Sometimes, to keep yourself cool, it may be of service to ask yourself fairly, what might have been your opinion, had you all the biasses of education and interest your adversary may possibly have?

Effort | History | Order | Time | Zeal | Think |

Evelyn Underhill

For a lack of attention a thousand forms of loveliness elude us everyday

Eternal | God | Little | Religion | Responsibility | God |