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

David Hume

Among well-bred people a mutual deference is affected, contempt of others is disguised; authority concealed; attention given to each in his turn; and an easy stream of conversation maintained without vehemence, without interruption, without eagerness for victory, and without any airs of superiority.

Attention | Authority | Contempt | Conversation | Deference | People | Superiority | Vehemence | Wisdom |

Robert Hutchins, fully Robert Maynard Hutchins

All truths cannot be equally important. It is true that a finite whole is greater than any of its parts. It is also true, in the common-sense use of the word, that the New Haven telephone book is smaller than that of Chicago. The first truth is infinitely more fertile and significant than the second.

Important | Sense | Truth | Wisdom | Truths |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

An unexciting truth may be eclipsed by a thrilling lie.

Truth | Wisdom |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

There is no light without shadow and no psychic wholeness without imperfection. To round itself out, life calls not for perfection but for completeness; and for this the 'thorn in the flesh' is needed, the suffering of defects without which there is no progress and no ascent.

Defects | Imperfection | Life | Life | Light | Perfection | Progress | Suffering | Wholeness | Wisdom |

Firuz Kazemzadeh

The problem of our purpose is a religious problem... Our purpose is derived from faith and is imposed onto reality by our own souls. But faith and religious truth themselves are not absolute. They are relative. Thus the answers one gives to questions about the purpose of life must necessarily be relative to a time, a place, a tradition... To know and worship God means, in Baha’ullah’s words, to promote the unity of the human race and to foster the spirit of love and fellowship amongst men”... Someday there will be a global society in which humanity will realize its spiritual and moral potential... The destiny of mankind, actually, is the ultimate creation of the world civilization. It is only in the service of such a cause that I find the meaning and purpose of life.

Absolute | Cause | Civilization | Destiny | Faith | Global | God | Human race | Humanity | Life | Life | Love | Mankind | Meaning | Means | Men | Purpose | Purpose | Race | Reality | Service | Society | Spirit | Time | Tradition | Truth | Unity | Will | Wisdom | Words | World | Worship | Society | God |

Thomas Jefferson

It is error alone which needs the support of government. Truth can stand by itself.

Error | Government | Truth | Wisdom |

Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla

Old disease patterns keep replicating themselves when the old thought patterns stay the same. All healing techniques serve to bring about a change in consciousness, which means a new expectancy of wholeness. What you expect at the deepest level is what you get. Your body loves to hear the truth about itself. Your body cannot help but respond to an awareness of and an expectancy of wholeness.

Awareness | Body | Change | Consciousness | Disease | Means | Thought | Truth | Wholeness | Wisdom | Awareness | Old | Thought |

William James

There is no worse lie than a truth misunderstood by those who hear it.

Truth | Wisdom |

Thomas Jefferson

I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical. Unsuccessful rebellions, indeed, generally establish the encroachments on the rights of the people which have produced them. An observation of this truth should render honest republican governors so mild in the punishment of rebellions as not to discourage them too much. It is a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.

Good | Government | Health | Little | Observation | People | Punishment | Rebellion | Rights | Sound | Truth | Wisdom | World |

William James

The truth of an idea is not a stagnant property in it. Truth happens to an idea. It becomes true, is made true by events. Its verity is in fact an event, a process: the process namely of its verifying itself, its veri-fication. Its validity is the process of its valid-ation.

Events | Property | Truth | Wisdom |

Thomas Jefferson

The man who never looks into a newspaper is better informed than he who reads them, inasmuch as he who knows nothing is nearer the truth than he whose mind is filled with falsehoods and errors.

Better | Looks | Man | Mind | Nothing | Truth | Wisdom |

John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

The great enemy of truth is very often not the lie - deliberate, contrived, and dishonest - but the myth - persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic.

Enemy | Myth | Truth | Wisdom |