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

Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

Is there any man, is there any woman, let me say any child here that does not know that the seed of war in the modern world is industrial and commercial rivalry?

Nations | Sympathy | Understanding |

Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

The most conservative persons I ever met are college undergraduates. The radicals are the men past middle life.

Method | Science | Understanding |

Tom Hayden, fully Thomas Emmet "Tom" Hayden

Fonda was neither wrong nor unconscionable in what she said and did in North Vietnam.

Means | People | Reform | Success | System |

William Shakespeare

And when I love thee not, chaos is come again.

Understanding | Will |

William Godwin

It is absurd to expect the inclinations and wishes of two human beings to coincide, through any long period of time. To oblige them to act and live together is to subject them to some inevitable potion of thwarting, bickering, and unhappiness.

Absolute | Action | Feelings | Impression | Judgment | Man | Reason | Sacred | Sense | Understanding | Intellect |

Dalia Mogahed

Muslim women do not regard Islam as an obstacle to their progress; indeed, many may see it as a crucial component of that progress.

Appreciation | Cause | Diversity | Justice | Law | Question | Tradition | Understanding | Appreciation |

William Godwin

One of the prerogatives by which man is eminently distinguished from all other living beings inhabiting this globe of earth, consists in the gift of reason.

Enough | Understanding |

William Godwin

Liberty is one of the best of all sublunary advantages. I would willingly therefore communicate knowledge, without infringing, or with as little possible violence to, the volition and individual judgment of the person to be instructed.

Accident | Consideration | Contradiction | Control | Experiment | Father | Indulgence | Little | Man | Means | Mind | Nothing | Passion | Persuasion | Power | Trust | Will | Happiness |

William James

Every man who possibly can should force himself to a holiday of a full month in a year, whether he feels like taking it or not.

Absolute | Eternal | Important | Insight | Little | Nature | Rest | Shame | Truth | Understanding | Truths |

William Godwin

Nor is there any reason to believe that sound conviction will be less permanent in its influence than sophistry and error.

Existence | Influence | Man | Men | Morality | Passion | Past | System | Teach | Thinking | Trust | Understanding | Will |

William Godwin

The proper method for hastening the decay of error is not by brute force, or by regulation which is one of the classes of force, to endeavor to reduce men to intellectual uniformity; but on the contrary by teaching every man to think for himself.

William James

Modern war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a better avenue to plunder; but modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity and all the love of glory of his ancestors.

Abstract | Divinity | God | Object | Scandal | Worship | God |

William Godwin

Once annihilate the quackery of government, and the most homebred understanding might be strong enough to detect the artifices of the state juggler that would mislead him.

Better | Conduct | Consideration | Family | Father | Improvement | Justice | Justify | Life | Life | Lying | Magic | Man | Sense | Truth | Understanding | Will | Work | Worth | Vice |

William Hamilton, fully Sir William Hamilton, 9th Baronet

I would employ the word noetic to express all those cognitions which originate in the mind itself.

Meaning | Understanding | Intellect |

William Law

God seeth different abilities and frailties of men, which may move His goodness to be merciful to their different improvements in virtue.

God | Good | Life | Life | Men | Nature | Obedience | People | Present | Soul | Strength | Work | God |

William James

The function of ignoring, of inattention, is as vital a factor in mental progress as the function of attention itself.

Apology | Devotion | Important | Object | Sense | Intellect |

William James

To suggest personal will and effort to one all sicklied o'er with the sense of irremediable impotence is to suggest the most impossible of things. What he craves is to be consoled in his very powerlessness, to feel that the spirit of the universe recognizes and secures him, all decaying and failing as he is.

Abnormal | Study | Understanding |

William James

The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.

Change | Discovery | Revolution | Discovery |

William Matthews

What matters it that a soldier has a sword of dazzling finish, of the keenest edge, and finest temper, if he has never learned the art of fence.

Progress | Understanding |

William Law

The one supreme, unchangeable rule of love, which is a law to all intelligent beings of all worlds and will be a law to all eternity, is this, viz., that God alone is to be loved for Himself, and all other beings only in Him and for Him. Whatever intelligent creature lives not under this rule of love is so far fallen from the order of his creation, and is, till he returns to this eternal law of love, an apostate from God and incapable of the kingdom of Heaven. Now, if God is alone to be loved for Himself, then no creature is to be loved for itself; and so all self-love in every creature is absolutely condemned. And if all created beings are only to be loved in and for God, then my neighbor is to be loved as I love myself, and I am only to love myself as I love my neighbor or any other created being that is, only in and for God.

Earth | Heaven | Men | Obedience |