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

Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

As my prayer became more attentive and inward I had less and less to say. I finally became completely silent. I started to listen - which is even the further removed from speaking. I first thought that praying entailed speaking. I then learnt that praying is hearing, not merely being silent. This is how it is. To pray does not mean to listen to oneself speaking. Prayer involves becoming silent, and being silent, and waiting until God is heard.

Character | God | Prayer | Thought | Waiting | God | Thought |

Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

One should not think slightly of the paradoxical; for the paradox is the source of the thinker’s passion, and the thinker without a paradox is like a love without feeling... The supreme paradox of all thought is the attempt to discover something that thought cannot think.

Character | Love | Paradox | Passion | Thought | Think | Thought |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

The experience of another is not valid for the understanding of reality. But the organized religions throughout the world are based on the experience of another and, therefore, are not liberating man but only binding him to a particular pattern that sets man against man. Each one of us has to start anew, afresh, for what we are, the world is. The world is not different from you and me. This little world of our problems, extended, becomes the world and the problems of the world.

Character | Experience | Little | Man | Problems | Reality | Understanding | World |

Petra Kelly, fully Petra Karin Kelley

Since human beings have a moral conscience, a spiritual self and a physical self, we can choose among various options. And we are responsible for the consequences of our choices. We can put the common interests of humankind above the conflicts of ideological, racial, religious and national groups. We can bring together thought and feeling, politics and moral values, women and men, the underprivileged and the privileged.... The essence of life is to search for happiness. To realize this end, we must become one with the human family, one with the universe... We should live as if we were to die today. We should die as if we live forever.

Character | Conscience | Consequences | Family | Life | Life | Men | Politics | Search | Self | Thought | Universe | Thought |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Right thinking, surely, is entirely different from right thought. Right thought is static... Right thinking is the understanding of relationship from moment to moment, which uncovers the whole process of the self.

Character | Relationship | Right | Self | Thinking | Thought | Understanding | Thought |

Anthony Kenny, fully Sir Anthony John Patrick Kenny

It is characteristic of our age to endeavour to replace virtues by technology. That is to say, wherever possible we strive to use methods of physical or social engineering to achieve goals which our ancestors thought attainable only by the training of character. Thus we try so far as possible to make contraception take the place of chastity, and anesthetics to take the place of fortitude; we replace resignation by insurance policies and munificence by the Welfare state. It would be idle romanticism to deny that such techniques and institutions are often less painful and more efficient methods of achieving the goods and preventing the evils which unaided virtue once sought to achieve and avoid. But it would be an equal and opposite folly to hope that the take-over of virtue by technology may one day be complete.

Age | Character | Chastity | Day | Folly | Fortitude | Goals | Hope | Munificence | Resignation | Technology | Thought | Training | Virtue | Virtue | Thought |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

Character | Understanding |

Louis Kronenberger

With intellectuals, moral thought is often less a tonic that quickens ethical action than a narcotic that deadens it.

Action | Character | Thought | Thought |

Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

What I really lack is to be clear in my mind what I am to do, not what I am to know, except in so far as to a certain understanding must precede every action. The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do; the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die.

Action | Character | God | Mind | Truth | Understanding | Wishes | God | Understand |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Reality comes into being only when the mind is still, not made still. Therefore, there must be no disciplining of the mind to be still. When you discipline yourself, it is merely a projected desire to be in a particular state. Such a state is not the state of passivity... Liberation is from moment to moment in the understanding of what is, when the mind is free, not made free. It is only a free mind that can discover, not a mind molded by a belief or shaped according to a hypothesis. Such a mind cannot discover. There can be no freedom is there is conflict, for conflict is the fixing of the self in relationship.

Belief | Character | Desire | Discipline | Freedom | Hypothesis | Mind | Reality | Relationship | Self | Understanding |

John Locke

Nothing being so beautiful to the eye as truth is to the mind; nothing so deformed and irreconcilable to the understanding as a lie.

Character | Mind | Nothing | Truth | Understanding |

Chief Luther Standing Bear

Praise, flattery, exaggerated manners, and fine, high-sounding words were no part of Lakota politeness. Excessive manners were put down as insincere, and the constant talker was considered rude and thoughtless. Conversation was never begun at once, or in a hurried manner. No one was quick with a question, no matter how important, and no one was pressed for an answer. A pause giving time for thought was the truly courteous way of beginning and conducting a conversation.

Beginning | Character | Conversation | Flattery | Giving | Important | Manners | Praise | Question | Thought | Time | Words | Thought |

Morris Lichtenstein

The Divine Mind communicates with the human mind through the imagination. A prayer, therefore, should be offered in the form of a mental image. Man must visualize the thing he desires, he must use his imaginative powers to form his petition in terms clearly outlined in his own mind. The profound concentration of attention and thought which this form of prayer requires fills also the heart with deep earnestness and devotion. Man must pray whole-heartedly as well as wholemindedly; he must believe in his heart that his well-being depends completely upon his prayer.

Attention | Character | Devotion | Earnestness | Heart | Imagination | Man | Mind | Prayer | Thought | Thought |

Moshe Chayim Luzzatto, also Moses Hayyim Luzzato, known by Hebrew acronym RaMCHal

You will be able to overcome desires without excessive difficulty when you become aware of their illusory nature. The pleasure of eating, for example, is really of very short duration. You feel the pleasure for only the short amount of time the food is in your mouth. As soon as you have swallowed the food, it is already forgotten... All physical pleasures are similar. Give the matter sufficient thought and you will realize that even the illusory good lasts only a short time. On the other hand, the negative consequences of physical pleasures can be severe and long lasting. A thinking person will definitely not want to place himself in a situation fraught with dangers for momentary pleasures. By habitually thinking about this truth, one will gradually be able to free himself from the prison of foolishly pursuing physical pleasures.

Character | Consequences | Difficulty | Example | Good | Nature | Pleasure | Prison | Thinking | Thought | Time | Truth | Will | Thought |