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

Sherwood Anderson

The whole object of education is, or should be, to develop mind. The mind should be a thing that works. It should be able to pass judgment on events as they arise, make decisions.

Education | Events | Judgment | Mind | Object | Wisdom |

Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus

Time is like a river made up of the events which happen, and a violent stream; for as soon as a thing has been seen, it is carried away, and another comes in its place, and this will be carried away too.

Events | Time | Will | Wisdom |

Chayim Efrayim Zaichyk

If you have a positive attitude towards the events of your life, even though to an outside observer your life might seem full of suffering, you nevertheless will live a happy life. What to others might seem misfortunes, you will view as opportunities for spiritual growth.

Character | Events | Growth | Happy | Life | Life | Suffering | Will |

Yosef Avraham Wolf

Any time we become discouraged from unfortunate events in our lives, we are reacting prematurely. Our lowest moments can lead to our greatest fortune.

Character | Events | Fortune | Time |

Henry Gardiner Adams

Practical politics consists in ignoring facts.

Politics | Wisdom |

Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL

That God is eternal, is agreed by all who possess reason. What then is eternity?... Eternity is the complete and simultaneous possession of endless life in a single whole... God lives ever in an eternal present, his knowledge transcends all movement of time, and abides in the indivisibility of his present; he grasps the past and the future in all their infinite extent, and with his indivisible cognition he contemplates all events as if they were even now taking place.

Eternal | Eternity | Events | Future | God | Knowledge | Life | Life | Past | Present | Reason | Time | Wisdom | God |

Jerry Brown

Protecting something as wide as this planet is still an abstraction for many. Yet I see the day in our own lifetimes that reverence for the natural systems - the oceans, the rain forests, the soil, the grasslands, and all other living beings - will be so strong that no narrow ideology based upon politics or economics will overcome it.

Day | Economics | Politics | Reverence | Will | Wisdom |

Jean de La Bruyère

There are but three events which concern men: birth, life and death. They are unconscious of their birth, they suffer when they die, and they neglect to live.

Birth | Death | Events | Life | Life | Men | Neglect | Wisdom |

John Christian Bovee

The greatest events of an age are its best thoughts. It is the nature of thought to find its way into action.

Action | Age | Events | Nature | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Albert Cooper, fully Albert Glen Cooper

A true history of human events would show that a far larger proportion of our acts as the results of sudden impulses and accident, than of the reason of which we so much boast.

Accident | Events | History | Reason | Wisdom |

John Dewey

Since changes are going on any way, the great thing is to learn enough about them so that we will be able to lay hold of them and turn them in the direction of our desires. Conditions and events are neither to be fled from nor passively acquiesced in; they are to be utilized and directed.

Enough | Events | Will | Wisdom | Learn |

Donald Davidson

The first principle asserts that at least some mental events interact causally with physical events... The second principle is that where there is causality, there must be a law: events related as cause and effect fall under strict deterministic laws... The third principle is that there are no strict deterministic laws on the basis of which mental events can be predicted and explained... from the fact that there can be no strict psychophysical laws, and without our other two principles, we can infer the truth of a version of the identity theory, that is, a theory that identifies at least some mental events with physical events.

Cause | Events | Law | Principles | Truth | Wisdom |

John Dewey

We are weak today in ideal matters because intelligence is divorced from aspiration. The bare force of circumstance compels us onwards in the daily detail of our beliefs and acts, but our deeper thoughts and desires turn backwards. When philosophy shall have co-operated with the course of events and made clear and coherent the meaning of the daily detail, science and emotion will interpenetrate, practice and imagination will embrace. Poetry and religious feeling will be the unforced flowers of life. To further this articulation and revelation of the meanings of the current course of events is the task and problem of philosophy in days of transition.

Aspiration | Events | Force | Imagination | Intelligence | Life | Life | Meaning | Philosophy | Poetry | Practice | Revelation | Science | Will | Wisdom | Circumstance |

Henry Fielding

Considering the unforeseen events of this world, we should be taught that no human condition should inspire men with absolute despair.

Absolute | Despair | Events | Men | Wisdom | World |

Anatole France, pen name of Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault

That man is wise who neither hopes nor fears anything from the uncertain events of the future.

Events | Future | Man | Wisdom | Wise |

Lawrence K. Frank

We are living the events which for centuries to come will be minutely studied by scholars who will undoubtedly describe these days as probably the most exciting and creative in the history of mankind. But preoccupied with our daily chores, our worries and personal hopes and ambitions, few of us are actually living in the present.

Events | History | Mankind | Present | Will | Wisdom |

George F Gilder

The central event of the twentieth century is the overthrow of matter. In technology, economics, and the politics of nations, wealth in the form of physical resources is steadily declining in value and significance. The powers of mind are everywhere ascendant over the brute force of things.

Economics | Force | Mind | Nations | Politics | Technology | Wealth | Wisdom | Value |