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

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

This demand, that the doctrine of descent should be grounded on experiment, is so perverse and shows such ignorance of the very essence of our theory, that though we have never been surprised at hearing it continually repeated by ignorant laymen, from the lips of a Virchow it has positively astounded us. What can in this case be proved by experiment, and what can experiment prove?

Evolution | History | Inquiry | Light | Science | Study |

Ernst Toller

Most people have no imagination. If they could imagine the sufferings of others, they would not make them suffer so. What separated a German mother from a French mother?

Men |

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 |

Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger

Conditions are admittedly such that we can always manage to make doing each concrete individual case without the two different aspects leading to different expectations as to the result of certain experiments. We cannot, however, manage to make do with such old, familiar, and seemingly indispensable terms as "real" or "only possible"; we are never in a position to say what really is or what really happens, but we can only say what will be observed in any concrete individual case. Will we have to be permanently satisfied with this...? On principle, yes. On principle, there is nothing new in the postulate that in the end exact science should aim at nothing more than the description of what can really be observed. The question is only whether from now on we shall have to refrain from tying description to a clear hypothesis about the real nature of the world. There are many who wish to pronounce such abdication even today. But I believe that this means making things a little too easy for oneself.

Knowledge | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Research | Science | Space |

Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara

To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the paredón [execution wall].

Children | Kill | Men | Rights |

Ernst Toller

And suddenly, like light in darkness, the real truth broke in upon me; the simple fact of Man, which I had forgotten, which had lain deep buried and out of sight; the idea of community, of unity.

Death | Man | Mourning |

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 |

Ester and Jerry Hicks

The reason for desires, goals, for finding those decisions or points of focus, is because they are the life-giving things of the Universe. Without objects of attention, or objects of desire, Life-Force does not come through any of us.

Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose |

Ester and Jerry Hicks

You cannot receive vibrationally something that you are not a vibrational match to. And so, bless those who are finding abundance. And in your blessing of them and their abundance, you will become abundant too.

Awareness | Death | Experience | Good | Joy | Life | Life | Plenty | Promise | Awareness | Value |

Estonian Proverbs

When God gives a child, he also gives the clothing.

Death | Man | Money |

Etty Hillesum, formally Ester "Etty" Hillesum

Greed probably figures in my intellectual life as well, as I attempt to absorb a massive amount of information with consequent mental indigestion.

Death | Impulse | Nothing | Space |

Etel Adnan

It may be telling the truth sometimes the smartest formula for communicating erroneous information.

Purpose | Purpose |

Ethiopian Proverbs

Even over cold pudding, the coward says: It will burn my mouth.

Death |

Eugene Peterson

A community of faith flourishes when we view each other with this expectancy, wondering what God will do today in this one, that one.

Bride | Good | History |

Eugen Drewermann

It seems to me that we in our time indulge in a strange, structured and organized inner conflict, by one-sidedly furthering the intellect, but fearing emotions. We seriously believe that rationality is the only legitimate access path that is able to open up reality. I regard that as a serious error.

History | Theology | Value |

Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson

The great curse of modern philosophy is the almost universally prevailing rebellion against intellectual self-discipline. Where loose thinking obtains, truth cannot possibly be grasped, whence the conclusion naturally follows that there is no truth.

History | Skepticism | Study |

Eugene Peterson

Song and dance are the result of an excess energy. When we are normal we talk, when we are dying we whisper, but when there is more in us than we contain we sing. When we are healthy we walk, when we are decrepit we shuffle, but when we are beyond ourselves with vitality we dance.

Death | Neutrality | Will |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

I hate doctors! They'll do anything — anything to keep you coming to them. They'll sell their souls! What's worse, they'll sell yours, and you never know it till one day you find yourself in hell!

Death |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

The fog was where I wanted to be. Halfway down the path you can’t see this house. You’d never know it was here. Or any of the other places down the avenue. I couldn’t see but a few feet ahead. I didn’t meet a soul. Everything looked and sounded unreal. Nothing was what it is. That’s what I wanted—to be alone with myself in another world where truth is untrue and life can hide from itself. Out beyond the harbor, where the road runs along the beach, I even lost the feeling of being on land. The fog and the sea seemed part of each other. It was like walking on the bottom of the sea. As if I had drowned long ago. As if I was the ghost belonging to the fog, and the fog was the ghost of the sea. It felt damned peaceful to be nothing more than a ghost within a ghost.

Men | Poverty | Child |

Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson

There are rational proofs by which we can know with certitude that God exists; but the certitude of faith, which is based on the infallibility of the word of God, is infinitely more reliable than all knowledge acquired by natural reason alone, no matter how evident it may be. In matters of revelation, error is absolutely impossible because the source of the knowledge of faith is God Himself, who is the Truth.

God | Men | God |