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

Albert Einstein

Any power must be an enemy of mankind which enslaves the individual by terror and force whether it arises under the Fascist or the Communist flag. All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded to the individual.

Character | Enemy | Force | Individual | Mankind | Opportunity | Power | Society | Terror | Society |

Lewis L. Dunnington

Every person in the world has it in him to become far more than he is... Great unused reservoirs of power lie buried deep within us all.

Character | Power | World |

Albert Einstein

Whoever undertakes to set himself up as a judge in the field of truth and knowledge is shipwrecked by the laughter of the gods.

Character | Knowledge | Laughter | Truth |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

The reward of one duty is the power to fulfill another.

Character | Duty | Power | Reward |

John Dewey

Genuine intellectual integrity is found in experimental knowing. Until this lesson is fully learned, it is not safe to dissociate knowledge from experiment nor experiment from experience.

Character | Experience | Experiment | Integrity | Knowing | Knowledge | Lesson | Safe |

Benjamin Franklin

To the generous mind the heaviest debt is that of gratitude, when it is not in our power to repay it.

Character | Debt | Gratitude | Mind | Power |

Peter Geach, fully Peter Thomas Geach

The usefulness of historical knowledge in philosophy, here as elsewhere, is that the prejudices of our own period may lose their grip on us if we imaginatively enter into another period, when people’s prejudices were different.

Character | Knowledge | People | Philosophy | Usefulness |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

It seems not to be true that there is a power in the universe, which watches over the well-being of every individual with parental care and brings all his concerns to a happy ending. On the contrary, the destinies of man are incompatible with a universal principle of benevolence or with - what is to some degree contradictory - a universal principle of justice... Dark, unfeeling, and unloving powers determine human destiny; the system of rewards and punishments, which according to religion, governs the world, seems to have no existence.

Benevolence | Care | Character | Destiny | Existence | Happy | Individual | Justice | Man | Power | Religion | System | Universe | World |

Henry Fielding

There is a sort of knowledge beyond the power of learning to bestow, and this is to be had in conversation; so necessary is this to the understanding the characters of men, that none are more ignorant of them than those learned pedants whose lives have been entirely consumed in colleges and among books; for however exquisitely human nature may have been described by writers the true practical system can be learned only in the world.

Books | Character | Conversation | Human nature | Knowledge | Learning | Men | Nature | Power | System | Understanding | World |

Benjamin Franklin

Education begins with life. Before we are aware the foundations of character are laid, and subsequent teaching avails but little to remove or alter them... If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.

Character | Education | Knowledge | Life | Life | Little | Man |

Henry Giles

The silent influence of books, is a mighty power in the world; and there is a joy in reading them known only to those who read them with desire and enthusiasm. Silent, passive, and noiseless though they be, they yet set in action countless multitudes and change the order of nations.

Action | Books | Change | Character | Desire | Enthusiasm | Influence | Joy | Nations | Order | Power | Reading | Wisdom | World |

Benjamin Franklin

Righteousness, or justice, is, undoubtedly of all the virtues, the surest foundation on which to create and establish a new state. But there are two nobler virtues, industry and frugality, which tend more to increase the wealth, power and grandeur of the community, than all the others without them.

Character | Frugality | Industry | Justice | Power | Righteousness | Wealth |

Edgar Z. Friedenberg

So much of learning to be an American is learning not to let your individuality become a nuisance.

Character | Individuality | Learning |

Owen Feltham

Perfection is immutable. But for things imperfect, change is the way to perfect them. It gets the name of willfulness when it will not admit of a lawful change to the better. Therefore constancy without knowledge cannot be always good. In things ill it is not virtue, but an absolute vice.

Absolute | Better | Change | Character | Constancy | Good | Knowledge | Perfection | Virtue | Virtue | Will |

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a.k.a. Charlotte Anna (nee Perkins), Charlotte Perkins Stetson

[Suicide note] - Human life consists in mutual service. No grief, pain, misfortune, or 'broken heart' is excuse for cutting off one's life while any power of service remains. But when all usefulness is over, when one is assured of an unavoidable and imminent death, it is the simplest of human rights to choose a quick and easy death in place of a slow and horrible one.

Character | Death | Grief | Heart | Life | Life | Misfortune | Pain | Power | Rights | Service | Suicide | Usefulness |

Lowell Fillmore

The one and only formative power given to man is thought. By his thinking he not only makes character, but body and affairs, for "as he thinketh within himself, so is he."

Body | Character | Man | Power | Thinking | Thought |