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

T. Berry Brazelton, fully Thomas Berry Brazelton

Reading to children at night, responding to their smiles, with a smile, returning their vocalizations with one of your own, touching them, holding them – all of these further a child’s brain development and future potential, even in the earliest months. Research demonstrates that the early responsiveness of caring parents sets the tone for future self-esteem, trust, problem solving, ability to communicate successfully and motivation for future learning.

Ability | Children | Esteem | Future | Learning | Parents | Reading | Research | Self | Self-esteem | Smile | Trust |

Center of Concern NULL

Idolatry is the denial of all hope for the future. The idols of the past were worshipped by people who were afraid of change, who wanted things to remain the same, who did not want a future that was different, who found their security in the status quo. The same is true today.

Change | Future | Hope | Past | People | Security | Afraid |

Charles Darwin, fully Charles Robert Darwin

As for future life, every person must judge for themself between conflicting vague possibilities.

Future | Life | Life |

Will and Ariel Durant

The future never just happened. It was created.

Future |

Albert Einstein

Time is not all what it seems. It does not flow in only one direction, and the future exists simultaneously with the past.

Future | Past | Time |

David Dunn

Every time you give a bit of yourself and you plant a little seed of Future Happiness. All the rest of your life these seeds will keep springing up unexpectedly along your path. When you need a friend to give you a lift in some situation, likely as not along will come a person for whom you did something thoughtful when you were a youngster. Taking up giving-away as a hobby while you are young, and you will live a happy life. What is more, because you do so many wonderful thoughtful things on impulse, you will develop a lively and interesting personality - gracious, friendly, likable.

Friend | Future | Giving | Happy | Impulse | Life | Life | Little | Need | Personality | Rest | Time | Will |

Stephen A. Erickson

An important way to distinguish philosophy from religion is that philosophy, at its best, raises questions, whereas religion provides answers. Answers can sometimes lose their force, however, if the questions to which they provide answers have somehow been lost, muted, or superseded. But philosophy can never end. As long as we live, we are going to ask ourselves about the meaning of life. Some have written about the “end of philosophy.” It has been thought that philosophy exists only if you can construe life as a journey traveling to a new and different dimension. Some have said that the cognitive sciences, linguistics, neuroscience, and so forth will advance so much that traditional technical problems of philosophy will diminish. Insofar as philosophy is a pursuit of the art of living providing (often conflicting) guidance for living, there is a future for philosophy.

Art | Distinguish | Force | Future | Guidance | Important | Journey | Life | Life | Meaning | Philosophy | Problems | Religion | Thought | Will | Guidance | Art | Thought |

Melvin James Evans

The men who build the future are those who know that greater things are yet to come, and that they themselves will help bring them about. Their minds are illuminated by the blazing sun of hope. They never stop to doubt. They haven't time.

Doubt | Future | Hope | Men | Time | Will |

Nancy Forest-Flier

Disciplining one’s appetite may be the biggest spiritual challenge many of us will face this side of dying. In a world where the future of the planet depends on how many of us will agree to say not to excessive lifestyles, fasting can teach us that physical satisfaction is not the purpose of life.

Appetite | Challenge | Future | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Teach | Will | World |

W. R. Forrester, fully William Roxburgh Forrester

Every war of the future will be a war of religion, for no country will go to war till it can give its cause the color of a Crusade and so secure for its maintenance absolute loyalty of a heroic quality in the whole population.

Absolute | Cause | Future | Loyalty | Loyalty | Religion | War | Will |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

The ancient belief that dreams reveal the future is not indeed entirely devoid of truth. By representing a wish as fulfilled the dream certainly leads us into the future.

Belief | Dreams | Future | Truth |

Os Guiness

Does your calculus of success include the bottom line of death, or are you mortgaging your future for the immediate and the short term? Have you been tranquilized by the trivial, or does your sense of life grow from a close attention to reality and time?

Attention | Death | Future | Life | Life | Reality | Sense | Success | Time |

Poul Henningsen, aka PH

The future arrives of its own accord, progress does not.

Future | Progress |

Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley

The doctrine of original sin is a theological perversion of natural fact. It is a fact that all human beings begin life with an equipment of instincts, impulses, and desires, at war with one another and often out of harmony with the realities of eth physical, social, and spiritual world. Sin and the sense of sin will always be with us, to torture and weigh down; but… the religion of the future will try to prevent men’s being afflicted with the sense of sin, rather than encourage it, and then attempt to cure it.

Doctrine | Future | Harmony | Life | Life | Men | Religion | Sense | Sin | Torture | War | Will | World |

Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

Whatever withdraws us from the power of our senses; whatever makes the past, the distant, or the future predominate over the present, advances us in the dignity of thinking beings.

Dignity | Future | Past | Power | Present | Thinking |

Abraham Joshua Heschel

The greatest problem is not how to continue but how to exalt our existence. The cry for a life beyond the grave is presumptuous, if there is not cry for eternal life prior to our descending to the grave. Eternity is not perpetual future but perpetual presence. He has planted in us the seed of eternal life. The world to come is not only a hereafter but also a here-now.

Eternal | Eternity | Existence | Future | Grave | Life | Life | World |

Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

The future is purchased by the present.

Future | Present |