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

Norman Geschwind

One must remember that practically all of us have a number of significant learning disabilities. For example, I am grossly unmusical and cannot carry a tune. We happen to live in a society in which the child who has trouble learning to read is in difficulty. Yet we have all seen dyslexic children who have either superior visual-perception or visual-motor skills. My suspicion would be that in an illiterate society such a child would be in little difficulty and might in fact do better because of his superior visual-perception talents, while many of us who function here might do poorly in a society in which a quite different array of talents was needed in order to be successful. As the demands of society change will we acquire a new group of "minimally brain damaged?"

Better | Change | Children | Difficulty | Example | Learning | Little | Order | Perception | Society | Suspicion | Will | Wisdom | Society | Trouble | Child |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Go to the place where the thing you wish to know is native; your best teacher is there. Where the thing you wish to know is so dominant that you must breathe its very atmosphere, there teaching is most thorough, and learning is most easy. You acquire a language most readily in the country where it is spoken; you study mineralogy best among miners; and so with everything else.

Language | Learning | Study | Wisdom | Teacher |

Gersonides, abbreviation of first letters as RalBaG from Levi ben Gerson NULL

A peace that comes from fear and not from the heart is the opposite of peace.

Fear | Heart | Peace | Wisdom |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

This age of childhood, in which the sense of shame is unknown, seems a paradise when we look back upon it alter, and paradise itself is nothing but the mass-phantasy of the childhood of the individual. This is why in paradise men are naked and unashamed, until the moment arrives when shame and fear awaken; expulsion follows, and sexual life and cultural development begin.

Age | Childhood | Fear | Individual | Life | Life | Men | Nothing | Paradise | Sense | Shame | Wisdom |

Benjamin Franklin

Money never made a man happy yet, nor will it. There is nothing in its nature to produce happiness. The more a man has, the more he wants. Instead of its filling a vacuum, it makes one. If it satisfies one want, it doubles and trebles that want another way. That was a true proverb of the wise man, rely upon it; "Better is little with the fear of the Lord, than great treasure, and trouble therewith."

Better | Fear | Happy | Little | Lord | Man | Money | Nature | Nothing | Wants | Will | Wisdom | Wise | Trouble |

Erle Stanley Gardner

Where ignorance is bliss, a little learning is a dangerous thing.

Ignorance | Learning | Little | Wisdom |

Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare

The most rational cure after all for the inordinate fear of death is to set a just value on life.

Death | Fear | Life | Life | Wisdom | Value |

S. G. Goodrich, fully Samuel Griswold Goodrich, pen name Peter Praley

Moral courage is a virtue of higher cast and nobler origin than physical. It springs from a consciousness of virtue, and renders a man, in the pursuit of defense of right, superior to the fear of reproach, opposition, or contempt.

Consciousness | Contempt | Courage | Defense | Fear | Man | Opposition | Right | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom |

David Hume

To be happy, the temperament must be cheerful and gay, not gloomy and melancholy. A propensity to hope and joy, is real riches; one to fear and sorrow is real poverty.

Fear | Happy | Hope | Joy | Melancholy | Poverty | Riches | Sorrow | Wisdom |

Thomas Hobbes

The end of worship amongst men is power. For where a man seeth another worshipped, he supposeth him powerful, and is the readier to obey him; which makes his power greater. But God has no ends: the worship we do him proceeds from our duty and is directed according to our capacity by those rules of honor that reason dictateth to be done by the weak to the more potent men, in hope of benefit, for fear of damage, or in thankfulness for good already received from them.

Capacity | Duty | Ends | Fear | God | Good | Honor | Hope | Man | Men | Power | Reason | Thankfulness | Wisdom | Worship | God |

Hitopadesa or The Hitopadesa or Hitopadesha NULL

Amongst all things, knowledge is truly the best thing: from its not being liable ever to be stolen, from its not being purchasable, and from its being imperishable...Learning is superior to beauty; learning is better than hidden treasure; learning is a companion on a journey to a strange country; learning is strength inexhaustible.

Beauty | Better | Journey | Knowledge | Learning | Strength | Wisdom |

Philip J. Hilts, fully Philip James Hilts

In all human activities, it is not ideas or machines that dominate; it is people. I have heard people speak of “the effect of personality on science.” But this is a backward thought. Rather, we should talk about he effect of science on personalities. Science is not the dispassionate analysis of impartial data. It is the human, and thus passionate, exercise of skill and sense on such date. Science is not an exercise in objectivity, but, more accurately, an exercise in which objectivity is prized.

Ideas | Machines | Objectivity | People | Personality | Science | Sense | Skill | Thought | Wisdom |