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

Jean de La Bruyère

There are but three events which concern men: birth, life and death. They are unconscious of their birth, they suffer when they die, and they neglect to live.

Birth | Death | Events | Life | Life | Men | Neglect | Wisdom |

John Christian Bovee

The greatest events of an age are its best thoughts. It is the nature of thought to find its way into action.

Action | Age | Events | Nature | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

Wherever progress ends, decline in variably begins; but remember that the healthful progress of society is like the natural life of man - it consists in the gradual and harmonious development of all its constitutional powers, all its component parts, and you introduce weakness and disease into the whole system whether you attempt to stint or to force its growth.

Disease | Ends | Force | Growth | Life | Life | Man | Progress | Society | System | Weakness | Wisdom | Society |

Joan Brown Campbell

The violence that surrounds us in our streets and in our homes and in our world is evidence that we have succumbed to the temptation of the desert. We face and deep and profound spiritual crisis.

Evidence | Temptation | Wisdom | World | Temptation |

Joyce Cary

The most effective teacher will always be biased, for the chief force in teaching is confidence and enthusiasm.

Confidence | Enthusiasm | Force | Will | Wisdom | Teacher |

William Ellery Channing

All that man does outwardly is but the expression and completion of his inward thought. To work effectually, he must think clearly; to act nobly, he must think nobly. Intellectual force is a principal element of the soul's life, and should be proposed by every man as the principal end of his being.

Force | Life | Life | Man | Soul | Thought | Wisdom | Work | Think |

François-René de Chateaubriand, fully François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand

Atheism can benefit no class of people; neither the unfortunate, whom it bereaves of hope, nor the prosperous, whose joys it renders insipid, nor the soldier, of whom it makes a coward, nor the woman whose beauty and sensibility it mars, nor the mother, who has a son to lose, nor the rulers of men, who have no surer pledge of the fidelity of their subjects than religion.

Atheism | Beauty | Fidelity | Hope | Men | Mother | People | Religion | Sensibility | Wisdom | Woman | Beauty |

Rumi Da, born Ron Carlson

Love is the cohering, primary force of the universe.

Force | Love | Universe | Wisdom |

Carl von Clausewitz, fully Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz, also Karl von Clausewitz

War is an act of force, and to the application of that force there is no limit. Each of the adversaries forces the hand of the other, and a reciprocal action results which in theory can have no limit.

Action | Force | War | Wisdom |

Albert Cooper, fully Albert Glen Cooper

A true history of human events would show that a far larger proportion of our acts as the results of sudden impulses and accident, than of the reason of which we so much boast.

Accident | Events | History | Reason | Wisdom |

John Dewey

Since changes are going on any way, the great thing is to learn enough about them so that we will be able to lay hold of them and turn them in the direction of our desires. Conditions and events are neither to be fled from nor passively acquiesced in; they are to be utilized and directed.

Enough | Events | Will | Wisdom | Learn |

Donald Davidson

The first principle asserts that at least some mental events interact causally with physical events... The second principle is that where there is causality, there must be a law: events related as cause and effect fall under strict deterministic laws... The third principle is that there are no strict deterministic laws on the basis of which mental events can be predicted and explained... from the fact that there can be no strict psychophysical laws, and without our other two principles, we can infer the truth of a version of the identity theory, that is, a theory that identifies at least some mental events with physical events.

Cause | Events | Law | Principles | Truth | Wisdom |

Everett Dirksen, fully Everett McKinley Dirksen

There is no force so powerful as an idea whose time has come.

Force | Time | Wisdom |

Harold Willis Dodds

It's an old adage that the way to be safe is never to be secure... Each one of us requires the spur of insecurity to force us to do our best.

Force | Insecurity | Safe | Wisdom | Old |

Albert Einstein

The cosmic religious experience is the strongest and the noblest driving force behind scientific research.

Experience | Force | Research | Wisdom |

Albert Einstein

Unless the cause of peace based on law gathers behind it the force and zeal of a religion, it hardly can hope to succeed.

Cause | Force | Hope | Law | Peace | Religion | Wisdom | Zeal |