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

Wes Jackson

Instead of production, primarily, we have to think of sustainability. Instead of dominating nature, we have to acknowledge that nature is our source and best teacher. Instead of understanding the world in parts, we need to think about the whole.

Nature | Need | Understanding | Wisdom | World | Think |

Osa Johnson, née Leighty

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost. Now put foundations under them.

Need | Wisdom | Work |

R. D. Laing, fully Ronald David Laing

Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. It is potential liberation and renewal as well as enslavement and existential death.

Death | Madness | Need | Wisdom |

Roger L'Estrange, fully Sir Roger L'Estrange

Parasites and liars have need of good memories.

Good | Need | Wisdom |

Charles F. Kettering, fully Charles Franklin Kettering

We need to teach the highly educated person that it is not a disgrace to fail and that he must analyze every failure to find its cause. He must learn how to fail intelligently, for failing is one of the greatest arts in the world.

Cause | Disgrace | Failure | Need | Teach | Wisdom | World | Failure | Learn |

Gottfried Leibniz, fully Gottfried Wilhalm von Leibniz, Baron von Leibnitz

All things are understood by God a priori, as eternal truths; for he does not need experience, and yet all things are known by him adequately. We, on the other hand, know scarcely anything adequately, and only a few things a priori; most things we know by experience, in the case of which other principles and other criteria must be applied.

Eternal | Experience | God | Need | Principles | Wisdom | God |

Charles Kingsley

We act as though comfort and luxury were the chief requirements of life, when all that we need to make us happy is something to be enthusiastic about.

Comfort | Happy | Life | Life | Luxury | Need | Wisdom |

Abraham Lincoln

The legitimate object of government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done, but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do for themselves in their separate and individual capacities. In all that the people can individually do as well for themselves, government ought not to interfere.

Government | Individual | Need | Object | People | Wisdom | Government |

Neil MacCormick, Sir Donald Neil MacCormick

When we say that law ‘embodies’ values we are talking metaphorically. What does it mean? Values are only ‘embodied’ in law in the sense that and to the extent that human beings approve of the laws they have because of the state of affairs they are supposed to secure, being states of affairs which are on some ground deemed just or otherwise good. This need not be articulated at all.

Good | Law | Need | Sense | Talking | Wisdom |

Maurice Nicoll

We need to get rid of some false meanings that we give to the words eternal and eternity. The psychological idea connected with eternal life cannot be limited to the view that man is changed into another state at death, merely by the act of dying. It would be far more correct to say that it refers, first of all, to some change that man is capable of undergoing now, in this life, and one that is connected with the attainment of unity. The modern term psychology means literally the science of the soul. But in former times there actually existed a science of the soul based upon the idea that man is an imperfect state but capable of reaching a further state... No totality-act is possible; the will is separate from knowledge, the feeling from intellect.

Attainment | Change | Death | Eternal | Eternity | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Means | Need | Psychology | Science | Soul | Unity | Will | Wisdom | Words |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

Wisdom has its excesses, and is in no less need of moderation than folly.

Folly | Moderation | Need | Wisdom | Moderation |

John Middleton Murry

When a man is sure that all he wants is happiness, then most grievously he deceives himself. All men desire happiness, but they need something far different, compared to which happiness is trivial, and in the lack of which happiness turns to bitterness in the mouth. There are many names for that which men need - "the one thing needful" - but the simplest is "wholeness."

Bitterness | Desire | Man | Men | Need | Wants | Wholeness | Wisdom | Happiness |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

A father is very miserable who has no other hold on his children's affection than the need they have of his assistance, if that can be called affection.

Children | Father | Need | Wisdom |

Pierre Nicole

We need a reason to speak, but none to keep silent.

Need | Reason | Wisdom |