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

Alfred Adler

There is a law that man should love his neighbor as himself. In a few hundred years it should be as natural to mankind as breathing or the upright gait; but if he does not learn it he must perish.

Law | Love | Man | Mankind | Learn |

Alexander Hamilton

It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood; if they be repealed or revised before they are promulgated, and undergo such incessant changes that no man, who knows what the law is today, can guess what it will be tomorrow. Law is defined to be a rule of action; but how can that be a rule which is little known and less fixed?

Action | Choice | Incoherent | Law | Little | Man | Men | People | Rule | Tomorrow | Will |

Alfred Adler

Striving for superiority is the fundamental law of human life, a something without which life would be unthinkable.

Law | Life | Life | Superiority |

Alexander Hamilton

When occasions present themselves, in which the interests of the people are at variance with their inclinations, it is the duty of the persons whom they have appointed to be the guardians of those interests, to withstand the temporary delusion, in order to give them time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection.

Delusion | Duty | Opportunity | Order | People | Present | Reflection | Time |

Alfred North Whitehead

It is the duty of the future to be dangerous.

Duty | Future |

Alfred Whitney Griswold

Could Hamlet have been written by a committee, or the Mona Lisa painted by a club? Could the New Testament have been composed as a conference report? Creative ideas do not spring from groups. They spring from individuals. The divine spark leaps from the finger of God to the finger of Adam, whether it takes ultimate shape in a law of physics or a law of the land, a poem or a policy, a sonata or a mechanical computer.

Computer | God | Ideas | Land | Law | Policy | God | New Testament | Poem |

Aristotle NULL

Man perfected by society is the best of all animals; he is the most terrible of all when he lives without law and without justice. If he finds himself an individual who cannot live in society, or who pretends he has need of only his own resources, do not consider him as a member of humanity; he is a savage beast or a god.

God | Humanity | Individual | Justice | Law | Man | Need | Society | Society |

André Gide, fully André Paul Guillaume Gide

All choice, when one comes to think of it is terrifying; liberty where there is no duty to guide it, terrifying.

Choice | Duty | Liberty | Think |

Aristotle NULL

Law is a form of order, and good law must necessarily mean good order.

Good | Law | Order |

Archibald Alexander

Virtue consists in doing our duty in the several relations we sustain in respect to ourselves, to our fellow-men, and to God, as known from reason, conscience and revelation.

Conscience | Duty | God | Men | Reason | Respect | Revelation | Virtue | Virtue | Respect |

Arthur Koestler

The pursuit of science in itself is never materialistic. It is a search for the principles of law and order in the universe, and as such an essentially religious endeavor.

Law | Order | Principles | Science | Search | Universe |

Author Unknown NULL

It is a law of human life, as certain as gravity: to live fully, we must learn to use things and love people . . . not love things and use people.

Law | Life | Life | Love | People | Learn |

Arthur Schopenhauer

Man is at bottom a wild and terrible animal. We know him only as what we call civilization has tamed and trained him; hence we are alarmed by the occasional breaking out of his true nature. But whenever the locks and chains of law and order are cast off, and anarchy comes in, he shows himself for what he really is.

Anarchy | Civilization | Law | Man | Nature | Order |

Arthur W Osborn

Life is a process, a seamless garment, and there is a universal nexus connecting all phenomena so that every part pulsates sensitively to every other part. The truth is inexpressibly deeper than a harmony-between-parts relationship, but this can only be experienced mystically. Pragmatically, on the plane of our sensory experiencing, love is the witness of the unseen yet ever potent law of unity. The root of all sins is to be blind to this fundamental fact regarding the inner nature of the universe. If love rules us, no sins can be committed. En passant we may say that the doctrine of karma is a phenomenal expression of the organic unity of the universe. The individual cannot gain at the cost of the whole. Pain and suffering check us when harmony is disturbed. Love restores harmony and registers through us a deep compassion which dissolves our separative carapaces and releases our energies for impersonal service.

Compassion | Cost | Doctrine | Harmony | Individual | Law | Life | Life | Love | Nature | Organic | Pain | Phenomena | Relationship | Service | Suffering | Truth | Unity | Universe | Witness |

Arthur W Osborn

Life is a process, a seamless garment, and there is a universal nexus connecting all phenomena so that every part pulsates sensitively to every other part. The truth is inexpressibly deeper than a harmony-between-parts relationship, but this can only be experienced mystically. Pragmatically, on the plane of our sensory experiencing, love is the witness of the unseen yet ever potent law of unity. The root of all sins is to be blind to this fundamental fact regarding the inner nature of the universe. IF love rules us, no sins can be committed. En passant we may say that the doctrine of karma is a phenomenal expression of the organic unity of the universe. The individual cannot gain at the cost of the whole. Pain and suffering check us when harmony is disturbed. Love restores harmony and registers through us a deep compassion which dissolves our separative carapaces and releases our energies for impersonal service.

Compassion | Cost | Doctrine | Harmony | Individual | Law | Life | Life | Love | Nature | Organic | Pain | Phenomena | Relationship | Service | Suffering | Truth | Unity | Universe | Witness |

Author Unknown NULL

Self-preservation is the first law of nature; self-sacrifice the highest rule of grace.

Grace | Law | Nature | Rule | Sacrifice | Self | Self-preservation | Self-sacrifice |

Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, known as Dean Stanley

To labor and not see the end of our labors, to sow and not to reap, to be removed from this earthly scene before our work has been appreciated… is a law so common in the highest characters of history, that none can be said to be altogether exempt from its operation.

History | Labor | Law | Work |

Author Unknown NULL

There is a wonderful, mystical law of nature that the three things we crave most in life--happiness, freedom, and peace of mind--are always attained by giving them to someone else.

Freedom | Giving | Law | Life | Life | Mind | Mystical | Nature | Peace |

Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell

Government can easily exist without law, but law cannot exist without government.

Government | Law |