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

Hans Hoffman

Everything rhythmically organic is true. Everything, which results from the proper feeling for rhythmically organized spiritual units, is true and alive ? alive within itself. When we lose the sense for such true beauty we lose our natural sense for the rich flavor of life, which is the basis for all inspirational work.

Man |

Hannah Arendt

Today we ought to add to these terms the latest and perhaps most formidable form of such dominion, bureaucracy or the rule by an intricate system of bureau in which no men, neither one nor the best, neither the few nor the many can be held responsible and which could be properly called the rule by Nobody.

Hans Reichenbach

Carnap calls such concepts as point, straight line, etc., which are given by implicit definitions, improper concepts. Their peculiarity rests on the fact that they do not characterize a thing by its properties, but by its relation to other things. Consider for example the concept of the last car of a train. Whether or not a particular car falls under this description does not depend on its properties but on its position relative to other cars. We could therefore speak of relative concepts, but would have to extend the meaning of this term to apply not only to relations but also to the elements of the relations.

Hannah Arendt

The possibilities of being different from what one is are infinite. Once one has negated oneself, however, there are no longer any particular choices.

Need |

Hans Reichenbach

Clocks are inherently four-dimensional instruments, since the endpoints of their unit distances are events. Measuring rods, on the other hand, are three-dimensional measuring instruments; their end points are space points and they can be changed into four-dimensional measuring instruments only if events are produced at their end points according to a special rule.

Hans Hoffman

The relative meaning of two physical facts in a emotionally controlled relation always creates the phenomenon of a third fact of a higher order, just as two musical sounds, heard simultaneously create the phenomenon of a third, fourth or fifth. The nature of this higher third is non-physical. In a sense it is magic. Each such phenomenon always overshadows the material qualities and the limited meaning of the basic factors from which it has sprung. For this reason Art expresses the highest quality of the spirit when it is surreal in nature; or, in terms of the visual arts, when it is of a surreal plastic nature.

Need | Friends |

Hans Reichenbach

Absolute time would exist in a causal structure for which the concept indeterminate as to time order lends to a unique simultaneity, i.e., for which there is no finite interval of time between the departure and return of a first-signal...

Hans Reichenbach

Common to the two geometries is only the general property of one-to-one correspondence, and the rule that this correspondence determines straight lines as shortest lines as well as their relations of intersection.

Italian Proverbs

One may buy gold too dear.

Faith |

Italian Proverbs

Sometimes the lees are better than the wine.

Little | Means | Will |

Italian Proverbs

No book was so bad, but some good might be got out of it.

Need |

Italian Proverbs

One who speaks fair words feeds you with an empty spoon.

Attention | Change | Conversation | Global | Land | Need |

Italian Proverbs

Nothing improves the taste of pasta more than a good appetite.

Control | People |

Italian Proverbs

Of this world each man has as much as he takes.

Life | Life | Men |

Italian Proverbs

Tell me the company you keep, and I will tell you who you are.

Need |

Italian Proverbs

The father a saint the son a devil.

Culture | Means |

Italian Proverbs

One good morsel and a hundred vexations.

Mind | Need | People |

Italian Proverbs

None so deaf as those who will not hear.

Beauty | Gloom | Humanity | Power | Soul | Spirit | Will | Beauty |

Italian Proverbs

The buyer has need of a hundred eyes, the seller of but one.

Design |

Italian Proverbs

Much water passes by the mill that the miller perceives not.

Need | War |