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

Erving Goffman

The issue becomes not whether a person has experience with a stigma of his own, because he has, but rather how many varieties he has had his own experience with.

Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara

I know you are here to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man.

Doctrine | Enemy | Humanity | Spirit | Will |

E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

We have indeed labored to make some of the capital which today helps us to produce – a large fund of scientific, technological, and other knowledge; an elaborate physical infrastructure; innumerable types of sophisticated capital equipment, etc. – but all this is but a small part of the total capital we are using. Far larger is the capital provided by nature and not by man – and we do not even recognize it as such. This larger part is now being used up at an alarming rate, and that is why it is an absurd and suicidal error to believe, and act on the belief, that the problem of production has been solved.

Convictions | Faith | Heart | Ideas | Mind | Reason | War |

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

The real cause of personal existence is not the favor of the Almighty, but the sexual love of one's earthly parents.

Antithesis | Courage | Desire | Faith | Knowledge | Man | Men | Mind | Nature | Purpose | Purpose | Reality | Religion | Soul | Thinking | World |

E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

All the indications are that the present structure of large-scale industrial enterprise, in spite of heavy taxation and an endless proliferation of legislation, is not conducive to the public welfare.

Experience | History | Mind |

Erving Goffman

Stigma is a process by which the reaction of others spoils normal identity.

Individual | Right | Will | Value |

E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

It might be said that energy is for the mechanical world what consciousness is for the human world. If energy fails, everything fails.

Men |

E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

There is nothing in the experience of the last twenty-five years to suggest that modern technology, as we know it, can really help us to alleviate world poverty, not to mention the problem of unemployment…we had better fact the question of technology - what does it do and that should it do? Can we develop a technology which really helps us to solve our problems – a technology with a human face?

People |

Ernest Shurtleff Holmes

I do not believe that God has imposed suffering upon anyone to punish them or to teach them a lesson.

Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara

Far more important than a good remuneration is the pride of serving one's neighbor.

Heart | Truth | Will |

Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara

I knew that when the great guiding spirit cleaves humanity into two antagonistic halves, I would be with the people. I know this, I see it printed in the night sky that I, eclectic dissembler of doctrine and psychoanalyst of dogma, howling like one possessed, will assault the barricades or the trenches , will take my bloodstained weapon, and consumed with fury, slaughter any enemy who falls into my hands.

Humanity | Spirit |

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

We may now give the following more precise expression to our chief law of biogeny:— The evolution of the foetus (or ontogenesis) is a condensed and abbreviated recapitulation of the evolution of the stem (orphylogenesis); and this recapitulation is the more complete in proportion as the original development (orpalingenesis) is preserved by a constant heredity; on the other hand, it becomes less complete in proportion as a varying adaptation to new conditions increases the disturbing factors in the development (or cenogenesis).

Life | Life | Mind | Value |

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

Yet it is an astonishing fact that the science of the evolution of man does not even yet form part of the scheme of general education. In fact, educated people even in our day are for the most part quite ignorant of the important truths and remarkable phenomena which anthropogeny teaches us.

Light | Man | Understand |

E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

In other words, everybody claims to achieve freedom by his own "system" and accuses every other "system" as inevitably entailing tyranny, totalitarianism, or anarchy leading to both.

Labor | Purpose | Purpose |

E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

Pollution must be brought under control and mankind's population and consumption of resources must be steered towards a permanent and sustainable equilibrium.

Faith | Knowledge | Mind | Nothing | Will | Happiness |

Erving Goffman

Knowing that his audiences are capable of forming bad impressions of him, the individual may come to feel ashamed of a well-intentioned honest act merely because the context of its performance provides false impressions that are bad. Feeling this unwarranted shame, he may feel that his feelings can be seen; feeling that he is thus seen, he may feel that his appearance confirms these false conclusions concerning him. He may then add to the precariousness of his position by engaging in just those defensive maneuvers that he would employ were he really guilty. In this way it is possible for all of us to become fleetingly for ourselves the worst person we can imagine that others might imagine us to be.

Alienation | Experience | Individual | Self |

Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger

Multiplicity is only apparent, in truth, there is only one mind.

Art | Consolation | Life | Life | Light | Nothing | Speech | Work | World | Writing | Art |

Ester and Jerry Hicks

No sickness would exist on this planet it your contrast hadn't carved out wellness...that you're NOT allowing.

Experience | Mind | Will |

Esther Perel

Trouble looms when monogamy is no longer a free expression of loyalty but a form of enforced compliance.

Sense | Wonder |

Ester and Jerry Hicks

It is so easy to make the finding of the path so much more complicated than it really needs to be because from within you know if you have been willing to tune yourself to feeling good, no matter what, so that that's what matters most to you...then in your natural quest for joy you'll just keep being on your path...your path unfolds.

Attention | Example | Practice | Will | Value |