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

Charles Caleb Colton

The author, however, who has thought more than he has read, read more than he has written, and written more than he has published, if he does not command success, has at least deserved it.

Success | Thought | Thought |

Edmund Burke

If we command our wealth, we shall be rich and free; if our wealth commands us, we are poor indeed.

Wealth |

English Proverbs

Riches serve a wise man but command a fool.

Man | Riches | Wise |

Francis Bacon

We cannot command Nature except by obeying her.

Nature |

François Rabelais

How shall I be able to rule over others, that have not full power and command of myself?

Power | Rule |

Francis Bacon

Men suppose their reason has command over their words; still it happens that words in return exercise authority on reason.

Authority | Men | Reason | Words |

French Proverbs

The happiness of the human race in this world does not consist in our being devoid of passions, but in our learning to command them.

Human race | Learning | Race | World | Happiness |

Greek Proverbs

Who would learn to command well must first of all learn to obey.

Learn |

George Washington Carver

When you can do the common things of life in an uncommon way you will command the attention of the world.

Attention | Life | Life | Will | World |

Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger

One of the paradoxical lessons of the nuclear age is that at the moment when we are acquiring an unparalleled command over nature, we are forced to realize as never before that the problems of survival will have to be solved above all in the minds of men. In this task the fate of the mammoth and the dinosaur may serve as a warning that brute strength does not always supply the mechanism in the struggle for survival.

Age | Fate | Men | Nature | Problems | Strength | Struggle | Survival | Warning | Will | Fate |

Immanuel Kant

Virtue... in so far as it is based on internal freedom, contains a positive command for man, namely, that he should bring all his powers and inclinations under his rule (that of reason); and this is a positive precept of command over himself which is additional to the prohibition, namely, that he should not allow himself to be governed by his feelings and inclinations (the duty of apathy); since, unless reason takes the reins of government into its own hands, the feelings and inclinations play the master over the man.

Apathy | Duty | Feelings | Freedom | Government | Man | Play | Precept | Reason | Rule | Virtue | Virtue | Government |

Immanuel Kant

What action would promote happiness of a rational being is completely insoluble, and consequently no imperative respect it is possible which should, in the strict sense, command to do what makes happy; because happiness is not an ideal of reason but of imagination, resting solely on empirical grounds, and it is vain to expect that these should define an action by which one could attain the totality of a series of consequences which is really endless.

Action | Consequences | Happy | Imagination | Reason | Respect | Sense | Respect | Happiness |

James Bryant Conant

Public education is a great instrument of social change... Education is a social proceeds, perhaps the most important process in determining the future of our country; it should command a far larger portion of our national income than it does today.

Change | Education | Future | Important | Public |

John Kenneth Galbraith, aka "Ken"

The culture of organization runs strongly to the shifting of problems to others – to an escape from personal mental effort and responsibility. This, in turns, becomes the larger public attitude. It is for others to do the worrying, take the action. In the world of the great organization, problems are not solved but passed on. And there is a further effect. The delegation process just cited adds ineluctably to the layers of command and to the prestige associated with command. That prestige is regularly measured by the number of individual subordinates.

Action | Culture | Effort | Individual | Organization | Problems | Public | Responsibility | World |

John Stuart Mill

The true virtue of human beings is fitness to live together as equals; claiming nothing for themselves but what they as freely concede to everyone else; regarding command of any kind as an exceptional necessity, and in all cases a temporary one.

Necessity | Nothing | Virtue | Virtue |

Lord Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield

An absolute command of your temper, so as not to be provoked to passion, upon any account; patience, to hear frivolous, impertinent, and unreasonable applications; with address enough to refuse, without offending, or, by your manner of granting, to double the obligation; dexterity enough to conceal a truth without telling a lie; sagacity enough to read other people’s countenances; and serenity enough not to let them discover anything by your; a seeming frankness with a real reserve. There are the rudiments of a politician.

Absolute | Enough | Frankness | Obligation | Passion | Patience | People | Reserve | Sagacity | Serenity | Temper | Truth |

Max Lerner, fully Maxwell "Max" Alan Lerner, aka Mikhail Lerner

A religion which has lost its basic conviction about the interconnection of men with men in their common struggles for the human, will never command belief in the realm of the superhuman.

Belief | Men | Religion | Will |

Pythagoras, aka Pythagoras of Samos or Pythagoras the Samian NULL

No one is free who has not obtained the empire of himself. No man is free who cannot command himself.

Man |