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

Moshe Eliyashuv

When a person feels sad because someone did not show him respect or give him approval, he can say to himself, “What will I really gain if this person does show me respect or does approve of me? What do I really lose by his insulting me?” The answer is: Nothing! Both honor and humiliation are very temporary states, and rarely make practical differences in our lives. So why upset yourself because someone failed to honor you? If a person will internalize the truth of this concept, he will never feel sad about lack of honor or approval.

Character | Honor | Nothing | Respect | Truth | Will | Respect |

Albert Einstein

By academic freedom I understand the right to search for truth and to publish and teach what one holds to be true. This right implies also a duty: one must not conceal any part of what one has recognized to be true.

Character | Duty | Freedom | Right | Search | Teach | Truth | Understand |

Albert Einstein

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

Character | Knowledge | Laughter | Truth |

Tyron Edwards

Sincerity is no test of truth - no evidence of correctness of conduct. You may take poison sincerely believing it the needed medicine, but will it save your life?

Character | Conduct | Correctness | Evidence | Life | Life | Sincerity | Truth | Will |

Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski

If the people around you are spiteful and callous and will not hear you, fall down before them and beg their forgiveness; for in truth you are to blame for their not wanting to hear you.

Blame | Character | Forgiveness | People | Truth | Will |

Tyron Edwards

Firmness in adherence to truth and duty is generally most decided when most intelligent and conscientious, and is sometimes mistaken for obstinacy by those who do not comprehend its nature and motive.

Character | Duty | Firmness | Nature | Truth |

Albert Einstein

Whoever is careless with the truth in small matters cannot be trusted with important matters.

Character | Important | Truth | Wisdom |

Irwin Edman

The gift of gaiety may itself be the greatest good fortune, and the most serious step toward maturity.

Character | Fortune | Good |

Benjamin Franklin

They that will not be counseled, cannot be helped. If you do not hear reason she will rap you on the knuckles.

Character | Reason | Will |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

The simplest explanation is not always the right one, truth is very often not simple.

Character | Right | Truth |

Immanual Hermann Fichte

Our system of thought and opinion, is often the only history of our heart. Men do not so much will according to their reason, as reason according to their will.

Character | Heart | History | Men | Opinion | Reason | System | Thought | Will | Thought |

Benjamin Franklin

If Passion drives, let Reason hold the Reins.

Character | Passion | Reason |

Monica Furlong

The best arguments in favor of marriage and family life are not that they promote happiness and reduce loneliness, though at their best they do these things, but that they create a situation in which facing the truth about ourselves - our self-deceiving, touchy, vain, inflated selves - becomes more difficult to avoid than it is anywhere else.

Character | Family | Life | Life | Loneliness | Marriage | Self | Truth | Happiness |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

The reason for so much bad science is not that talent is rare - not at all. What is rare is character.

Character | Reason | Science | Talent |

David P. Gauthier

The individual who needs a reason for being moral which is not itself a moral reason cannot have it. There is nothing surprising about this; it would be much more surprising if such reasons could be found. For it is more than apparently paradoxical to suppose that considerations of advantage could ever of themselves justify accepting a real disadvantage.

Character | Individual | Justify | Nothing | Reason |

Benjamin Franklin

Experience keeps a dear school, but fools will learn in no other, an scarcely in that; for it is true, we may give advice, but we cannot give conduct. Remember this; they that will not be counseled cannot be helped. If you do not hear reason she will rap you over your knuckles.

Advice | Character | Conduct | Experience | Reason | Will | Learn |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

What we give out as scientific truth is only the product of our own needs and desires, as they are formulated under varying external conditions; that is to say, it is illusion once more. Ultimately we find only what we need to find, and see only what we desire to see. We can do nothing else. And since the criterion of truth, correspondence with an external world, disappears, it is absolutely immaterial what views we accept. All of them are equally true and false. And no one has a right to accuse any one else of error.

Character | Desire | Error | Illusion | Need | Nothing | Right | Truth | World |

Harry Emerson Fosdick

We settle things by a majority vote, and the psychological effect of doing that is to create the impression that the majority is probably right. Of course, on any fine issue the majority is sure to be wrong. Think of taking a majority vote on the best music. Jazz would win over Chopin. Or on the best novel. Many cheap scribblers would win over Tolstoy. And any day a prizefight will get a bigger crowd, larger gate receipts and wider newspaper publicity than any new revelation of goodness, truth or beauty could hope to achieve in a century.

Beauty | Character | Day | Hope | Impression | Majority | Music | Revelation | Right | Truth | Will | Wrong | Beauty | Think |

Bernard Gilpin

The habit of virtue cannot be formed in the closet; good habits are formed by acts of reason in a persevering struggle with temptation.

Character | Good | Habit | Reason | Struggle | Temptation | Virtue | Virtue |