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

Tyron Edwards

Most of our censure of others is only oblique praise of self, uttered to show the wisdom and superiority of the speaker. It has all the invidiousness of self-praise, and all the ill-desert of falsehood.

Censure | Falsehood | Praise | Self | Self-praise | Superiority | Wisdom |

Georges Duhamel, Pen name Denis Thevenin

Great ideas have such radiant strength. They cross space and time like avalanches: they carry along with them whatever they touch. They are the only riches that one shares without ever dividing them.

Ideas | Riches | Space | Strength | Time | Wisdom | Riches |

Freeman John Dyson

There are three reasons why, quite apart from scientific considerations, mankind needs to travel in space. The first reason is garbage disposal; we need to transfer industrial processes into space so that the earth may remain a green and pleasant place for our grandchildren to live in. The second reason is to escape material impoverishment; the resources of this planet are finite, and we shall not forgo forever the abundance of solar energy and minerals and living space that are spread out all around us. The third reason is our spiritual need for an open frontier. The ultimate purpose of space travel is to bring to humanity, not only scientific discoveries and an occasional spectacular show on television, but a real expansion of our spirit.

Abundance | Earth | Energy | Humanity | Mankind | Need | Purpose | Purpose | Reason | Space | Spirit | Television | Wisdom |

Stefania Follini

I believe in the dignity of being and, even more so, of becoming... Death may not be an end but only a passage, a dimensional leap. And what if, once free of the slavery of three and four dimensions, once released from space and time, we were to discover unimaginable realities beyond our poor five senses?

Death | Dignity | Slavery | Space | Time | Wisdom |

Romain Gary, born Roman Kacew

Humor is an affirmation of dignity, a declaration of man's superiority to all that befalls him.

Dignity | Humor | Man | Superiority | Wisdom |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

I simply believe that some part of the human Self or Soul is not subject to the laws of space and time.

Self | Soul | Space | Time | Wisdom |

William James

The same space of time seems shorter as we grow older - that is, the days, the months, and the years do so; whether the hours do so is doubtful, and the minutes and seconds to all appearance remain about the same... In youth we may have an absolutely new experience, subjective or objective, every hour of the day. Apprehension is vivid, retentiveness strong, and our recollection of that time, like those of a time spent in rapid and interesting travel, are of something intricate, multitudinous, and long-drawn-out. But as each passing year converts some of this experience into automatic routine which we hardly notice at all, the days and the weeks smooth themselves out in recollection to contentless units, and the years grow hollow and collapse.

Appearance | Day | Experience | Space | Time | Wisdom | Youth | Youth |

Kisho Kurokawa

Architecture (is) a theater stage setting where the leading actors are the people, and to dramatically direct the dialogue between these people and space is the technique of designing.

People | Space | Wisdom |

James Russell Lowell

Have you ever rightly considered what the mere ability to read means? That it is the key which admits us to the whole world of thought and fancy and imagination? to the company of the saint and sage, of the wisest and the wittiest at their wisest and wittiest moment? That it enables us to see with the keenest eyes, hear with the finest ears, and listen to the sweetest voices of all time? More than that, it annihilates time and space for us.

Ability | Imagination | Means | Space | Thought | Time | Wisdom | World | Thought |

Guglielmo Marconi

Every day sees humanity more victorious in the struggle with space and time.

Day | Humanity | Space | Struggle | Time | Wisdom |

Marya Mannes

The great omission in American life is solitude; not loneliness, for this is an alienation that thrives most in the midst of crowds, but that zone of time and space free from outside pressure which is the incubator of the spirit.

Alienation | Life | Life | Loneliness | Solitude | Space | Spirit | Time | Wisdom |

Newton Minow, fully Newton Norman Minow

Ours has been called the jet age, the atomic age, the space age. It is also, I submit, the television age. And just as history will decide whether the leaders of today’s world employed the atom to destroy the world or rebuild it for mankind’s benefit, so will history decide whether today’s broadcasters employed their powerful voice to enrich the people or debase them.

Age | Destroy | History | Mankind | People | Space | Television | Will | Wisdom | World |

Maurice Nicoll

Visible creation in time, or nature... does not exist of itself. It is not the cause of itself, but is an ever-changing copy of something which lies behind appearances. The recipient, or mother, is three-dimensional space, which must be empty of all properties in order to receive the impress of the model. The copy is in time. The model (idea) is outside our space and time.

Cause | Model | Mother | Nature | Order | Receive | Space | Time | Wisdom |

Maurice Nicoll

What, then, is the nature of the reality that we believe in evidentially? Transiency is the main reality. We appear to live in an ever-perishing world. It seems that our life is confined to a single instant at a time. We see everything passing away - for ever, as we say, without having the slightest idea of what we mean by this expression. Where does everything go - for ever? Where do our lives go? Certainly they are not contained in a space of three dimensions. We witness, apparently, events, people, and things disappearing into total extinction, into an absolute nothingness, as the result of passing-time. This is the reality of appearances as registered by our senses. There goes with it a particular understanding of life.

Absolute | Events | Life | Life | Nature | People | Reality | Space | Time | Understanding | Wisdom | Witness | World |

Domingo Moles

Life is a conscious space between two eternities. It is a canyon separating never from forever. It is the realm where feelings are born in both sprit and flesh. Life only gives meaning to the time a man lives. Only the living have meaning... The projection of man in his work is the meaning of life. Unless a man creates something outside himself, the meaning of his life will vanish at the instant of his death.

Death | Feelings | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Space | Time | Will | Wisdom | Work |

Maurice Nicoll

If we start with the visible, then in order to explain it we must pass into its parts. If we seek to explain man by his organs, his organs by the cells composing them, the atoms by electrons, we lose sight of the man as a whole. Under the microscope the man himself completely disappears... The idea behind organised matter is overlooked. That which is manifest in time and space engages its attention, and so it cannot help looking for causal origin in the smaller constituent parts of any organism - and also in preceding time, i.e. in the past.

Attention | Man | Order | Past | Space | Time | Wisdom |