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

William James

Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly.

Effort | Means | Metaphysics | Nothing | Wisdom | Think |

Karl Jaspers, fully Karl Theodor Jaspers

All forms of the corporeal world are transitory, [but] for pure existence there is only a passing away of which it has no knowledge. Foundering requires knowledge, and than a reaction to it... Man alone can founder, and this capacity is to him not unequivocal: it challenges him to react to it.

Capacity | Existence | Knowledge | Man | Wisdom | World |

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

Political sovereignty is but a mockery without the means of meeting poverty and illiteracy and disease. Self-determination is but a slogan if the future holds no hope.

Determination | Disease | Future | Hope | Means | Mockery | Poverty | Self | Self-determination | Wisdom |

William James

Genius, in truth, means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way.

Genius | Little | Means | Truth | Wisdom |

William James

Believe that life is worth living and your belief will help you create the fact.

Belief | Life | Life | Will | Wisdom | Worth |

Ken Kesey

Although the exact number may vary, the Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon means that when only a limited number of people know of a new way, it may remain the conscious property of these people. But there is a point at which if only one more person tunes in to a new awareness, a field is strengthened so that this awareness is picked up by almost everyone!

Awareness | Means | People | Property | Wisdom | Awareness |

William James

The world of our consciousness consists at all times of two parts, an objective and a subjective part, of which the former may be incalculably more extensive than the latter, and yet the latter can never be omitted or suppressed. The objective part is the sum total of whatsoever at any given time we may be thinking of, the subjective part is the inner ‘state’ in which the thinking comes to pass. What we think of may be enormous - the cosmic times and spaces, for example - whereas the inner state may be the most fugitive and paltry activity of the mind. Yet the cosmic objects, so far as the experience yields them, are but ideal pictures of something whose existence we do not inwardly possess but only point outwardly, while the inner state is our very experience itself; its reality and that of our experience are one.

Consciousness | Example | Existence | Experience | Mind | Reality | Thinking | Time | Wisdom | World | Think |

Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla

Old disease patterns keep replicating themselves when the old thought patterns stay the same. All healing techniques serve to bring about a change in consciousness, which means a new expectancy of wholeness. What you expect at the deepest level is what you get. Your body loves to hear the truth about itself. Your body cannot help but respond to an awareness of and an expectancy of wholeness.

Awareness | Body | Change | Consciousness | Disease | Means | Thought | Truth | Wholeness | Wisdom | Awareness | Old | Thought |

Rockwell Kent

Art must unquestionably have a social value; that is, as a potential means of communication it must be addressed, and in comprehensible terms, to the understanding of mankind.

Art | Mankind | Means | Understanding | Wisdom |

Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

Perfect love means to love the one through whom one became unhappy.

Love | Means | Wisdom |

Robert Leighton

God hath many sharp-cutting instruments and rough files for the polishing of His jewels; and those He especially loves and means to make the most resplendent, He hath oftenest His tools upon.

God | Means | Wisdom |

Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

All coming into existence takes place with freedom, not by necessity. Nothing comes into existence by virtue of a logical ground, but only by a cause. Every cause terminates in a freely effecting cause.

Cause | Existence | Freedom | Necessity | Nothing | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom |

Gottfried Leibniz, fully Gottfried Wilhalm von Leibniz, Baron von Leibnitz

By means of the soul or form there is a true unity which corresponds to what is called the I in us.

Means | Soul | Unity | Wisdom |

Rudyard Kipling

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master; If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same;... If you can fill the unforgiving minute With Sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

Dreams | Earth | Man | Wisdom | Worth | Think |

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

Ends | Means | Men | Power | Wisdom |

John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes of Tilton

Lenin was right. There is no subtler, no surer means of overturning the existing basis of society than to debauch the currency.

Means | Right | Society | Wisdom | Society |