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

Margaret Jenkins

Every pupil you have carries in his mind or heart or conscience a bit of you. Your influence, your example, your ideas and values keep marching on - how far into the future and into what realms of our spacious universe you will never know.

Conscience | Example | Future | Heart | Ideas | Influence | Mind | Universe | Will | Wisdom |

Gloria D. Karpinski

The single most potent force you have is your will.

Force | Will | Wisdom |

Harold S. Kahm

Chain reaction is popularly associated with the atomic bomb, but it is no less gigantic a force in your daily life. Every word you speak, every action you perform sets up a chain of reaction that can end in a damaging explosion or a shower of blessings.

Action | Atomic bomb | Blessings | Force | Life | Life | Wisdom |

W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy

Let life teach you what spirit it... By conforming to spiritual ideals imposed from the outside through the force of tradition, people often channel themselves into models of behavior that violate their inner essence. We are all guaranteed realization when we strip away our pre-conceived notions about spiritual perfection, give up striving form some idealized end-point called 'enlightenment,' and discover the magnificence of what we already are and live that fully.

Behavior | Enlightenment | Force | Ideals | Life | Life | People | Perfection | Spirit | Teach | Tradition | Wisdom |

John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

We live in a hemisphere whose own revolution has given birth to the most powerful force of the modern age - the search for the freedom and self-fulfillment of man.

Age | Birth | Force | Freedom | Fulfillment | Man | Revolution | Search | Self | Wisdom |

R. D. Laing, fully Ronald David Laing

When the Copernican Revolution superseded the ancient Polemic world view, the earth took its rightful place as one planet among many. Man was no longer the center of the universe and though his self-image was deflated, he grew in maturity. In the same way, we must take our rightful place in nature - not as its self-centered and profligate "master" with the divine right of kings to exploit and despoil, but as one species living in harmony with the whole.

Earth | Exploit | Harmony | Man | Nature | Revolution | Right | Self | Universe | Wisdom | World |

Walter Savage Landor

Taken as a whole, the universe is absurd.

Absurd | Universe | Wisdom |

R. D. Laing, fully Ronald David Laing

Violence attempts to constrain the other's freedom, to force him to act in the way we desire, but with ultimate lack of concern, with indifference to the other's own existence or destiny.

Desire | Destiny | Existence | Force | Freedom | Indifference | Wisdom |

George T. Lucas, fully George Walton Lucas, Jr.

Life cannot be explained. The only reason for life is life. There is no why. We are. Life is beyond reason. One might think of life as a large organism, and we are but a small, symbiotic part of it. It is possible that on a spiritual level we are all connected in a way that continues beyond the comings and goings of various life forms. My best guess is that we share a collective spirit or life force or consciousness that encompasses and goes beyond individual life forms.

Consciousness | Force | Individual | Life | Life | Reason | Spirit | Wisdom | Think |

Maurice Nicoll

The universe is infinite response. Mentally understood, it is all possibilities. Every point of view is possible, and because it ‘exists’ it is right... The universe gives more than we give... Unless one sees the world differently, unless new ideas touch our consciousness we cannot rise to any apprehension of the second system. To all that we know naturally we must add something, and in this volume this addition is taken in terms of adding first the dimension of Time to our own lives and considering what this means for oneself.

Consciousness | Ideas | Means | Right | System | Time | Universe | Wisdom | World |

John Morley, 1st Viscount Morely of Blackburn, Lord Morley

Evolution is not a force but a process, not a cause but a law.

Cause | Evolution | Force | Law | Wisdom |

Maurice Nicoll

To live unto eternity is to live unto aeon, unto unity, unto wholeness, completeness, unto the integration of all the life. And this is now. The enemy to now is the illusion of passing-time... When we reach the now the world is turned the other way round. We are at the centre of things. The responsibility is ours. Had we now in our lives we would cease to blame.... Universe evolves out of one’s own mind... because the WORLD is a series of possible mental transformations

Blame | Enemy | Eternity | Illusion | Integration | Life | Life | Mind | Responsibility | Time | Unity | Universe | Wholeness | Wisdom | World |

Maurice Nicoll

What is the standpoint of materialism?... We look outwards (via the senses) for the explanation and cause of everything. We start from phenomena as absolute truth... Materialism gives sense and physical matter priority over mind or idea... The customary standpoint of scientific materialism is that primary matter is dead - and the universe is dead and nature is dead - and a dead nature can, of course, aim at nothing. It cannot be teleological.

Absolute | Cause | Materialism | Mind | Nature | Nothing | Phenomena | Sense | Truth | Universe | Wisdom |

Guiseppe Mazzini

Music is the harmonious voice of creation, an echo of the invisible world, one note of the divine concord which the entire universe is destined one day to sound.

Day | Music | Sound | Universe | Wisdom | World |

Clifford Odets

In my opinion, the universe is governed by a committee; one Man couldn't have made so many mistakes.

Man | Opinion | Universe | Wisdom |

Thomas Paine

Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles; he can only discover them.

Man | Principles | Science | System | Universe | Wisdom |

Harold W. Percival, fully Sir Harold Waldwin Percival

Every thing existing on the physical plain is an exteriorization of a thought which must be balanced through the one who issued the thought and in accordance with that one's responsibility at the conjunction of time, condition and place. This law of thought is Destiny. Thinking is the basic factor in shaping human destiny. The machinery of the law is nature. The purpose of the universe is to make all units of matter conscious of progressively higher degrees.

Destiny | Law | Nature | Purpose | Purpose | Responsibility | Thinking | Thought | Time | Universe | Wisdom | Thought |