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

Aldous Leonard Huxley

The aim and purpose of human life is the unitive knowledge of God. Among the indispensable means to that end is right conduct, and by the degree and kind of virtue achieved, the degree of liberating knowledge may be assessed and its quality evaluated. In a word, the tree is known by its fruits; God is not mocked.

Character | Conduct | God | Indispensable | Knowledge | Life | Life | Means | Purpose | Purpose | Right | Virtue | Virtue | God |

John Locke

Since the mind, in all its thoughts and reasonings, hath no other immediate object but its own ideas, which it alone does or can contemplate, it is evident that our knowledge is only conversant about them... Knowledge then seems to me to be nothing but the perception of the connection of and agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy of any of our ideas. In this alone it consists. Where this perception is, there is knowledge, and where it is not, there, though we may fancy, guess, or believe, yet we always come short of knowledge.

Character | Disagreement | Ideas | Knowledge | Mind | Nothing | Object | Perception |

Chief Luther Standing Bear

Everything was possessed of personality, only different from us in form. Knowledge was inherent in all things. The world was a library and its books were the stones, leaves, grass, brooks, and the birds and animals that shared, alike with us, the storms and blessings of earth. We learned to do what only the student of nature ever learns, and that was to feel beauty... Observation was certain to have its rewards. Interest, wonder, admiration grew, and the fact was appreciated that life was more than mere human manifestation; it was expressed in a multitude of forms. This appreciation enriched Lakota existence. Life was vivid and pulsating; nothing was casual and commonplace. The Indian lived - lived in every sense of the word - from his first to his last breath.

Admiration | Appreciation | Beauty | Blessings | Books | Character | Earth | Existence | Knowledge | Life | Life | Nature | Nothing | Observation | Personality | Sense | Wonder | World | Appreciation |

John Locke

The knowledge of our own being we have by intuition. The existence of a God, reason clearly makes known to us, as has been shown. The knowledge of existence of any other thing we can have only by sensation: for there being no necessary connection of real existence with any idea a man hath in his memory; nor of any other existence but that of God with the existence of any particular man: no particular man can know the existence of any other being but only when, by actual operating upon him, it makes itself perceived by him. For, the having the idea of anything in our mind, no more proves the existence of that thing, than the picture of a man evidences his being in the world, or the visions of a dream make thereby a true history.

Character | Existence | God | History | Intuition | Knowledge | Man | Memory | Mind | Reason | World | God |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Lying is an ugly vice... Since mutual understanding is brought about solely by way of words, he who breaks his word betrays human society. It is the only instrument by means of which our wills and thoughts communicate, it is the interpreter of our soul. If it fails us, we have no more hold on each other, no more knowledge of each other. If it deceives us, it breaks up all our relations and dissolves all the bonds of our society.

Character | Knowledge | Lying | Means | Society | Soul | Ugly | Understanding | Wills | Words |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Greatness of soul is not so much mounting high and pressing forward, as knowing how to put oneself in order and circumscribe oneself. It regards as great all that is enough and shows its elevation by preferring moderate things to eminent ones. There is nothing so beautiful and just as to play the man well and fitly, nor any knowledge so arduous as to know how to live this life well and naturally; and of all our maladies the most barbarous is to despise our being.

Character | Despise | Enough | Greatness | Knowing | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Nothing | Order | Play | Soul |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

In truth, knowledge is a great and very useful quality; those who despise it give evidence enough of their stupidity. But yet I do not set its value at that extreme measure that some attribute to it, like Herillus the philosopher, who placed in it the sovereign good, and held that it was in its power to make us wise and content. That I do not believe, nor what others have said, that knowledge is the mother of all virtue, and all vice is produced by ignorance. If that is true, it is subject to a long interpretation.

Character | Despise | Enough | Evidence | Extreme | Good | Ignorance | Knowledge | Mother | Power | Stupidity | Truth | Virtue | Virtue | Wise | Value | Vice |

John F. Milburn

Fear is like fire: If controlled it will help you; if uncontrolled, it will rise up and destroy you. Men's actions depend a great deal upon fear. We do things either because we enjoy doing them or because we are afraid not to do them. This sort of fear has not relation to physical or moral courage. It is inspired by the knowledge that we are not adequately prepared to face the future and the events it may bring - poverty perhaps, or injury, or death.

Character | Courage | Death | Destroy | Events | Fear | Future | Knowledge | Men | Poverty | Will | Afraid |

Joseph Fort Newton

Zeal without knowledge is like expedition to a man in the dark.

Character | Knowledge | Man | Zeal |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Many persons, after they become learned cease to be good; all other knowledge is hurtful to him who has not the science of honesty and good nature.

Character | Good nature | Good | Honesty | Knowledge | Nature | Science |

Cecil F. Poole

Until man places on tolerance and open-mindedness a value equal to the value that he places on material possessions, he will continue to be stranded on an island surrounded by his own prejudices, ideas, preconceived opinions, and knowledge that is limited by the horizon of his own ignorance.

Character | Ideas | Ignorance | Knowledge | Man | Possessions | Will | Wisdom | Value |

Plotinus NULL

Knowledge has three degrees: opinion, science, illumination. The means or instrument of the first is sense; of the second, dialectic; of the third, intuition. To the last I subordinate reason. It is absolute knowledge founded on the identity of the mind knowing with the object known.

Absolute | Character | Intuition | Knowing | Knowledge | Means | Mind | Object | Opinion | Reason | Science | Sense |