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

Susan Sontag

All aesthetic judgment is really cultural evaluation.

Beginning | Daring | Knowing | Life | Life | Logic | Majority | Nothing | Position | Progress | Reality | Time | Universe | Will | Words | Learn |

William Cobbett

But I do not remember ever having seen a newspaper in the house; and, most certainly, that privation did not render us less industrious, happy, or free.

Attention | Genius | Life | Life | Progress | Science | Time | Will |

William Carleton

Hearses coffins, long funeral processions, and all the dark emblems of mortality, were reflected, as it were, on the sky, from the terrible works of pestilence and famine which were going on the earth beneath it.

Blessings | Creed | God | Happy | Heart | Ignorance | Industry | Knowledge | Order | People | Principles | Progress | Religion | Right | Society | Spirit | Vengeance | Worship | Youth | Society | Youth | God |

Wilhelm von Humboldt, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt

It is a truly sublime spectacle when in the stillness of the night, in an unclouded sky, the stars, like the world's choir, rise and set, and as it were divide existence into two portions,--the one, belonging to the earthly, is silent in the perfect stillness of night; whilst the other alone comes forth in sublimity, pomp, and majesty. Viewed in this light, the starry heavens truly exercise a moral influence over us; and who can readily stray into the paths of immorality if he has been accustomed to live amidst such thoughts and feelings, and frequently to dwell upon them? How are we entranced by the simple splendors of this wonderful drama of nature!

Age | Old age | Progress | Time | Old |

Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers

We don’t have to worry about anything. No nation in the history of the world was ever sitting as pretty. If we want anything, all we have to do is go and buy it on credit.

Progress | Talking |

Werner Heisenberg, fully Werner Karl Heisenberg

In the history of science, ever since the famous trial of Galileo, it has repeatedly been claimed that scientific truth cannot be reconciled with the religious interpretation of the world. Although I an now convinced that scientific truth is unassailable in its own field, I have never found it possible to dismiss the content of religious thinking as simply part of an outmoded phase in the consciousness of mankind, a part we shall have to give up from now on, Thus in the course of my life I have repeatedly been compelled to ponder on the relationship of these two regions of though, for I have never been able to doubt the reality of that to which they point.

Happy | Progress |

Wernher von Braun, fully Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun

Don't tell me that man doesn't belong out there. Man belongs wherever he wants to go - and he'll do plenty well when he gets there.

Inevitable | Man | Progress | Space | Thought | Work | Thought |

Wes Jackson

Ecosystem agriculturalists will take advantage of huge chunks of what works. They will be taking advantage of the natural integrities of ecosystems worked out over the millennia.

Beginning | Humanity | Progress | Will |

Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson

The secret of greatness is simple: do better work than any other man in your field - and keep on doing it.

Hero | Life | Life | Men | Progress | Reason |

Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

I hear America singing, the varied carols I hear, those of mechanics, each one singing his as it should be blithe and strong, the carpenter singing his as he measures his plank or beam, the mason singing his as he makes ready for work, or leaves off work, the boatman singing what belongs to him in his boat, the deckhand singing on the steamboat deck, the shoemaker singing as he sits on his bench, the hatter singing as he stands, the wood-cutter’s song, the ploughboy’s on his way in the morning, or at noon intermission or at sundown, the delicious singing of the mother, or of the young wife at work, or of the girl sewing or washing, each singing what belongs to him or her and to none else, the day what belongs to the day — at night the party of young fellows, robust, friendly, singing with open mouths their strong melodious songs.

Eternal | Humanity | Judgment | Progress | Question | Time | Weakness | Wickedness | Will | World | Old |

Walter Hilton

Because you do not understand your own soul, you neglect your inner life and seek outward consolations.

Looks | Progress | Will |

Walter Lippmann

This is one of the paradoxes of the democratic movement -- that it loves a crowd and fears the individuals who compose it -- that the religion of humanity should have no faith in human beings.

Progress | Think |

Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha

Berkshire's board has fully discussed each of the three CEO candidates and has unanimously agreed on the person who should succeed me if a replacement were needed today. The directors know now - and will always know in the future - exactly what they will do when the need arises.

Progress | Sense | Time |

Washington Irving

Even in the loveliest looks they wore.

Progress |

Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

When you become certain that nothing is impossible for you, you'll attain everything you desire.

Awareness | Focus | Miracles | Position | Progress | Will | Awareness |

Wendell Berry

The passive American consumer, sitting down to a meal of pre-prepared food, confronts inert, anonymous substances that have been processed, dyed, breaded, sauced, gravied, ground, pulped, strained, blended, prettified, and sanitized beyond resemblance to any part of any creature that ever lived. The products of nature and agriculture have been made, to all appearances, the products of industry. Both eater and eaten are thus in exile from biological reality.

Better | Cause | Doctrine | Innovation | Progress | Value |

W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy

When the personality or ego begins to take charge of dreams and possesses the dynamics ….a mishandling of the Holy Forces occurs. Really…the ego is the witness to the Self/Ego/Shadow development.

Defeat | Ego | Power | Progress |

W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer

My concern has always been to promote joy in mathematics for all-ability pupils, and the driving force has been a feeling that must be shared by anyone who has derived great pleasure from any subject - intense regret that the subject in question is so often presented in a way that produces dislike, worry and a sense of failure.

Progress | Teacher |

Vivienne Westwood, born Vivienne Isabel Swire

There's something really awful about the way people dress now. Everyone looks the same. Everyone wants to look neutral.

Progress |

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

To accept anything on trust, to preclude critical application and development, is a grievous sin; and in order to apply and develop, "simple interpretation" is obviously not enough.

Freedom | Progress | Science |