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

Emil M. Cioran

Ambition is a drug that makes its addicts potential madmen.

Ignorance |

Emma Goldman

No sacrifice is lost for a great ideal!

Ignorance | Inhumanity | Man | Means | Protest | Revolution | Spirit | System | Wrong |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

The intense horror of nightmare came over me: I tried to draw back my arm, but the hand clung to it, and a most melancholy voice sobbed, 'Let me in - let me in!' 'Who are you?' I asked, struggling, meanwhile, to disengage myself. 'Catherine Linton,' it replied, shiveringly (why did I think of LINTON? I had read EARNSHAW twenty times for Linton) - 'I'm come home: I'd lost my way on the moor!' As it spoke, I discerned, obscurely, a child's face looking through the window.

Dependence | Ignorance | Land | Right |

Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell

You fight against that devil for love as long as you may; when the time comes, not all the angels in heaven shall save him!

Father | Ignorance | Mother |

Esther Duflo

A big part of my work is to try and shift the conversation from whether aid is good or bad to think about policy or programs instead. Another objective of my work is to think about not just the five percent [of aid], but the 100 percent. [That is], what role this five percent can play in improving the quality of programs. I want to think about the efforts of most private donors…as not being an end in itself, but as being venture capitalism and finding the good ideas in development. In that case, think of each dollar you are spending as being multiplied many, many fold. If these programs help us identify what really works then that can be taken up as a policy on a very large scale. That is the reason for my work and the reason for placing so much emphasis on the evaluation of specific programs.

Consistency | Ignorance | Need | Reality | Think |

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

Neither of the primitive men we have spoken of, nor of those who immediately succeeded them, can we rightly predicate any knowledge of nature.

Circumstances | Day | Evolution | History | Ignorance | Important | Man | Phenomena |

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

Though the great differences in the mental life and the civilisation of the higher and lower races are generally known, they are, as a rule, under-valued, and so the value of life at the different levels is falsely estimated. It is civilisation, and the fuller development of the mind that makes civilisation possible, that raise mans so much above the other animals, even his nearest animal relatives, the mammals. But this is, as a rule, peculiar to the higher races, and is found only in a very imperfect form or not at all among the lower. These lower races (such as the Veddahs or Austrailan negroes) are psychologically nearer to the mammals (apes or dogs) than to civilised Europeans; we must, therefore, assign a totally different value to their lives.

Doctrine | Experiment | Ignorance |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

For myself, I want no advantage over my fellow man, and if he is weaker than I, all the more is it my duty to help him.

Ignorance | Right | Superiority | Will | Trouble | Victim |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Howard's eyes were open and very clear. I'd forgotten what a beautiful gray they were--illness and medicine had regularly glazed them over; now they were bright and attentive, and he was watching me, consciously, through long lashes. Lungs, heart may have stopped but the optic nerves were still sending messages to a brain which, those who should know tell us, does not immediately shut down. So we stared at each other at the end... 'Can you hear me?' I asked him. 'I know you can see me.' Although there was no breath for speech, he now had a sort of wry wiseguy from the Bronx expression on his face which said clearly to me who knew all his expressions, 'So this is the big fucking deal everyone goes on about.

Books | Ignorance | Time |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

The fruits of labor must be enjoyed by the working class.

Beginning | Birth | Crime | Cruelty | Dawn | Ignorance | Poverty | Cruelty |

Eugenio Montale

I learned a truth that few people know: that the ' art bestows its consolations especially the artists failed.

Future | God | Ignorance | Man | God |

Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound

There is no form of platitudes that cannot be easily converted into iambic pentameter. If a person has learned to count to ten, it is not difficult to start a new line with each syllable of the eleventh or repel every second syllable accented.

Ignorance | Present |

Italian Proverbs

To protest and knock one's head against the wall is what everybody can do.

Good | Ignorance | Truth |

Italian Proverbs

With patience you go beyond knowledge.

God | Harm | Ignorance | Power | Time | Truth | Will | Witness | God |

J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

And suddenly first one and then another began to sing as they played, deep-throated singing of the dwarves in the deep places of their ancient homes; and this is like a fragment of their song, if it can be like their song without their music... As they sang the hobbit felt the love of beautiful things made by hands and by cunning and by magic moving through him, a fierce and jealous love, the desire of the hearts of dwarves. Then something Tookish woke up inside him, and he wished to go and see the great mountains, and hear the pine-trees and the waterfalls, and explore the caves, and wear a sword instead of a walking-stick. He looked out of the window. The stars were out in a dark sky above the trees. He thought of the jewels of the dwarves shining in dark caverns. Suddenly in the wood beyond The Water a flame leapt up - probably somebody lighting a wood-fire-and he thought of plundering dragons settling on his quiet Hill and kindling it all to flames. He shuddered; and very quickly he was plain Mr. Baggins of Bag-End, Under-Hill, again. He got up trembling.

Fighting | Ignorance | Money | People | Time |