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

Sydney J. Harris

The idea of growth for its own sake is precisely the philosophy of the cancer cell.

Growth | Philosophy |

B. H. Liddell Hart, fully Captain B. H. Liddell

For collective action it suffices if the mass can be managed; collective growth is only possible through the freedom and enlargement of individual minds.

Action | Freedom | Growth | Individual |

Tom Gregory

The purpose of growth: to maximize our ability to be loving, joyful and creative… Growth is not just about striving to be better. It is also about enjoying the moment and accepting yourself as you are (knowing that you are or will do your best to change what you can).

Ability | Better | Change | Growth | Knowing | Purpose | Purpose | Will |

Allan J Hamilton

Could the mind have an existence entirely independent of the central nervous system?... Scientific evidence that not only was her brain not working, it specifically demonstrated the absence of all cortical activity when these conversations actually took place. So where could these brand-new memories have been created?... Imagine the implications of the notion that quanta of conscious energy could exist independently in the Universe, able to enter from anywhere, at any time.

Absence | Energy | Evidence | Existence | Mind | System | Time | Universe |

Václav Havel

I believe that, for the rest of the world, contemporary America is an almost symbolic concentration of all the best and the worst of our civilization. On the one hand, there are its profound commitment to enhancing civil liberty and to maintaining the strength of its democratic institutions, and the fantastic developments in science and technology which have contributed so much to our well-being; on the other, there is the blind worship of perpetual economic growth and consumption, regardless of their destructive impact on the environment, or how subject they are to the dictates of materialism and consumerism, or how they, through the omnipresence of television and advertising, promote uniformity, and banality instead of a respect for human uniqueness.

Advertising | Civilization | Commitment | Growth | Liberty | Materialism | Omnipresence | Respect | Rest | Science | Strength | Technology | Television | Uniformity | World | Worship | Respect |

David Starr Jordan

The infinite expanse of the universe, its growth through immeasurable periods of time, the boundless range of its changes, and the rational order that pervades it all, seems to demand an infinite intelligence behind its manifestations.

Growth | Intelligence | Order | Time | Universe |

Ron Leifer, fully Ronald Leifer

Refusal to cooperate with the [hospital] psychiatrist, rather than being within his rights under the Fifth Amendment, may be construed as evidence of a “paranoid illness” for which [the patient] requires further psychiatric hospitalization.

Evidence | Rights |

Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze

Understand that true growth comes from meeting and solving the problems of life in a way that is harmonizing to yourself and to others. If you can follow these simple old ways, you will be continually renewed.

Growth | Life | Life | Problems | Will | Old |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

Nothing so promotes the growth of consciousness as [the] inner confrontation of opposites.

Consciousness | Growth | Nothing |

Bob Marley

It takes a revolution to make a solution.

Revolution |

Edwin Lewis

What did Resurrection mean but victory over death and therefore victory over sin and therefore evidence of a new power at work in the world and therefore the opening of the gates of a new life?

Death | Evidence | Life | Life | Power | Sin | Work | World |

John Macmurray

The plainest historical evidence for the effectiveness of religion as a positive social form lies in the history of the Jews.

Evidence | History | Religion |

Jayaprakash Narayan, known as JP Narayan, Jayaprakash or Loknayak

A violent revolution has always brought forth a dictatorship of some kind or another… After revolution, a new privileged class of rulers and exploiters grows up in the course of time to which the people at large is once again subject.

People | Revolution | Time |

Arno Allan Penzias

Today’s dogma holds that matter is eternal. The dogma comes from the intuitive belief of people who don’t want to accept the observational evidence that the universe was created – despite the fact that the creation of the universe is supported by all the observable data astronomy has produced so far. As a result, the people who reject the data can arguably be described as having a religious belief that matter must be eternal… Since scientists prefer to operate in the belief that the universe must be meaningless – that reality consists of nothing more than the sum of the world’s tangible constituents – they cannot confront the idea of creation easily, or take it lightly.

Belief | Dogma | Eternal | Evidence | Nothing | People | Reality | Universe | World |

Maximilien Robespierre, fully Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre

If virtue be the spring of popular government in times of peace, the spring of that government during a revolution is virtue combined with terror: virtue, without which terror is destructive; terror, without which virtue is impotent. Terror is the only justice prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a natural consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing wants of the country.

Democracy | Government | Justice | Peace | Revolution | Terror | Virtue | Virtue | Wants | Government |

Zou Rong

Revolution is a universal rule of evolution. Revolution is a universal principle of the world. Revolution is the essence of the struggle for survival or destruction in a time of transition… Revolution turns slaves into masters.

Evolution | Revolution | Rule | Struggle | Survival | Time | World |