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

Christian Nestell Bovee

Ideas are, like matter, infinitely divisible. It is not given to us to get down, so to speak, to their final atoms, but to their molecular groupings the way is never ending, and the progress infinitely delightful and profitable.

Ideas | Progress | Wisdom |

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

"Know thyself," said the old philosopher, "improve thyself," saith the new. Our great object in time is not to waste our passions and gifts on the things external that we must leave behind, but that we cultivate within us all that we can carry into the eternal progress beyond.

Eternal | Know thyself | Object | Progress | Time | Waste | Wisdom | Old |

Christian Nestell Bovee

The great obstacle to progress is prejudice.

Prejudice | Progress | Wisdom | Obstacle |

John Christian Bovee

Intellectually, as well as politically, the direction of all true progress is toward greater freedom, and along an endless succession of ideas.

Freedom | Ideas | Progress | Wisdom |

William E. Borah

It seems perfectly clear to me that we can never make any real progress toward permanent peace so long as well recognize the institution of war as legitimate and clothe it with glory.

Glory | Peace | Progress | War | Wisdom |

John Christian Bovee

The greatest obstacle to progress is prejudice.

Prejudice | Progress | Wisdom | Obstacle |

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

Wherever progress ends, decline in variably begins; but remember that the healthful progress of society is like the natural life of man - it consists in the gradual and harmonious development of all its constitutional powers, all its component parts, and you introduce weakness and disease into the whole system whether you attempt to stint or to force its growth.

Disease | Ends | Force | Growth | Life | Life | Man | Progress | Society | System | Weakness | Wisdom | Society |

Bruce Burton

It would do the world good if every man in it would compel himself occasionally to be absolutely alone. Most of the world's progress has come out of such loneliness.

Good | Loneliness | Man | Progress | Wisdom | World |

Vernon Carter

The teaching of any science, for purposes of liberal education, without linking it with social progress and teaching its social significance, is a crime against the student mind. It is like teaching a child how to pronounce words but now what they mean.

Crime | Education | Mind | Progress | Science | Wisdom | Words | Child |

Samuel Butler

All progress is based on a universal innate desire on the part of every organism to live beyond its income.

Desire | Progress | Wisdom |

William Ellery Channing

The world is governed much more by opinion than by laws. It is not the judgment of courts, but the moral judgment of individuals and masses of men, which is the chief wall of defense around property and life. With the progress of society, this power of opinion is taking the place of arms.

Defense | Judgment | Life | Life | Men | Opinion | Power | Progress | Property | Society | Wisdom | World |

Tyron Edwards

Change of opinion is often only the progress of sound thought and growing knowledge; and though sometimes regarded as an inconsistency, it is but the noble inconsistency natural to a mind ever ready for growth and expansion of thought, and that never fears to follow where truth and duty may lead the way.

Change | Duty | Growth | Inconsistency | Knowledge | Mind | Opinion | Progress | Sound | Thought | Truth | Wisdom | Thought |

Albert Einstein

True human progress is based less on the inventive mind than on the conscience.

Conscience | Mind | Progress | Wisdom |

Thomas Dreier

All progress is made by men of faith who believe in what is right and, what is more important, actually do what is right in their own private affairs. You cannot add to the peace and goodwill of the world if you fail to create an atmosphere of harmony and love right where you live and work.

Faith | Harmony | Important | Love | Men | Peace | Progress | Right | Wisdom | Work | World |

Clarence Edwin Flynn

Aristotle said that all creative people are dissatisfied because they are looking for happiness in perfection and seeking for things that do not exist. This is one of the hopes of the world. There is no progress where people are satisfied. Discontent is perhaps the most potent challenge to improvement.

Challenge | Discontent | Improvement | People | Perfection | Progress | Wisdom | World | Happiness |

William Maxwell Evarts

Tracing the progress of mankind in the ascending path of civilization, and moral and intellectual culture, our fathers found that the divine ordinance of government, in every stage of ascent, was adjustable on principles of the common reason to the actual condition of a people, and always had for its objects, in the benevolent councils of the divine wisdom, the happiness, the expansion, the security, the elevation of society, and the redemption of man. They sought in vain for any title of authority of man over man, except of superior capacity and higher morality.

Authority | Capacity | Civilization | Culture | Government | Man | Mankind | Morality | People | Principles | Progress | Reason | Redemption | Security | Society | Title | Wisdom |

Martha Gellhorn, fully Martha Ellis Gellhorn

I hold the relay race theory of history: progress in human affairs depends upon accepting, generation after generation, the individual duty to oppose the evils of the time.

Duty | History | Individual | Progress | Race | Time | Wisdom |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse on all inaction.

Nature | Progress | Wisdom |