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

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

What we have today, in modern industrial society, is not romantic and certainly not utopianÂ…But it is in very deep trouble and holds no promise of survival. We jolly well have to have the courage to dream if we want to survive and give our children a chance of survival.

Education | Metaphysics | Present | Soul | World | Understand |

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

The printing press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse of modern times, sometimes one forgets which it is.

Children | Present | Society | World | Society |

Erwin Rommel, fully Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel

Anyone who has to fight, even with the most modern weapons, against an enemy in complete command of the air, fights like a savage against modern European troops, under the same handicaps and with the same chances of success.

Giving | Present | Society | Society |

Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger

Quantum physics thus reveals a basic oneness of the universe.

Need | Present | Science | Thinking |

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

Although we are in possession of all requisite knowledge, it still requires a systematic, creative effort to bring this technology into active existence and make it generally visible and available. It is my experience that it is rather more difficult to recapture directness and simplicity than to advance in the direction of ever more sophistication and complexity.

Present | Public |

Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger

The scientist only imposes two things, namely truth and sincerity, imposes them upon himself and upon other scientists.

Present |

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

Music must naturally have been criticized in proportion as it improved, especially if its progress was considerable and subitaneous: for then it differs most from the sounds to which our ear is accustomed. But if we begin to be used to it, then it pleases, and it is prejudice any longer to oppose it.

Circumstances | Order | Power | Present |

Eugene Peterson

The Bible is not a script for a funeral service, but it is the record of God always bringing life where we expected to find death. Everywhere it is the story of resurrection.

People | Present |

Eugen Herrigel

This, then, is what counts: a lightning reaction which has no further need of conscious observation. In this respect at least the pupil makes himself independent of all conscious purpose.

Aims | Art | Awareness | Experience | Individual | Meaning | Means | Mind | Nothing | Power | Practice | Present | Reflection | Spirit | Work | Art | Awareness |

Eugen Herrigel

Don't think of what you have to do, don't consider how to carry it out! he exclaimed. The shot will only go smoothly when it takes the archer himself by surprise.

Aptitude | Awareness | Cult | Danger | Ego | Existence | Life | Life | Present | Reason | Right | Spirit | Success | Time | Witness | Worth | Talent | Danger | Awareness | Teacher |

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

It is easy to distinguish two ideas absolutely simple; but in proportion as they become more complex, the difficulties increase. Then as our notions resemble each other in more respects, there is reason to fear lest we take many of them for one only, or at least that we do not distinguish them as much as we might. This frequently happens in. metaphysics and morals. The subject which we have actually in hand, is a very sensible proof of the difficulties that are to be surmounted. On these occasions we cannot be too cautious in pointing out even the minutest differences.

Imagination | Present |

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

With regard to natural cries, this man shall form them, as soon as he feels the passions to which they belong. However they will not be signs in respect to him the first time; because instead of reviving .his perceptions, they will as yet be no more than consequences of those perceptions.

Character | Necessity | Order | Present | Words |

Eugene Peterson

Intimacy [with God] does not preclude reverence. True intimacy does not eliminate a sacred awe.

Life | Life | Need | Present |

Eudora Welty

For all I know, writing comes out of a superior devotion to reading.

Art | Awareness | Mortal | Past | Present | Art | Awareness |

Eugene Peterson

That's why I tell stories: to create readiness, to nudge the people toward receptive insight. In their present state they can stare till doomsday and not see it, listen till they're blue in the face and not get it.

Bible | Control | Enough | God | Mystery | Parents | Present | Reading | Receive | Relationship | Trust | God | Bible | Learn | Think | Understand |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

The behavior of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions.

Good | Little | Past | Present | Thought | World | Thought |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.

Labor | Land | Present | Right | Will |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

We have ceased to be a nation under law but instead a homeland where the withered Bill of Rights, like a dead trumpet vine, clings to our pseudo-Roman columns.

Battle | Criticism | Day | Life | Life | Literature | Nothing | Order | Present | Will |

Eugenio Montale

The poet does not know - often he will never know - whom he really writes for.

Life | Life | Looks | Man | Present | Old |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

To know and love one other human being is the root of all wisdom.

Change | Defeat | Future | Life | Life | Nothing | Present | Child |