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

Haile Selassie

Throughout history it has been the inaction of those who could have acted, the indifference of those who should have known better, the silence of the voice of justice when it mattered most, that has made it possible for evil to triumph.

Better | Evil | History | Indifference | Justice | Silence |

George Sand, pen name for Amandine Lucte Aurore Dupin, Baronne Dudevant

One is happy as a result of one's own efforts, once one knows the necessary ingredients of happiness - simple tastes, a certain degree of courage, self-denial top a point, love of work, and above all a clear conscience. Happiness is no vague dream, of that I now feel certain.

Conscience | Courage | Happy | Love | Self | Self-denial | Work | Happiness |

Baird T. Spalding

Forget the past, do not try to project yourself into the future for now is the only acceptable time. You are in eternity now.

Eternity | Future | Past | Time |

Isidor Feinstein Stone

The arms race is based on an optimistic view of technology and a pessimistic view of man. It assumes there is no limit to the ingenuity of science and no limit to the deviltry of human beings.

Ingenuity | Man | Race | Science | Technology | Ingenuity |

Garrett Thomson

The Nine Mistakes [about ways to think about the meaning of life]: (1) Only the infinite has meaning; the finite can only have meaning insofar as it participates in the infinite. (2) The meaning of life consists in some goal or purpose. (3) The meaning of life is happiness. (4) The meaning of life must be invented. (5) Life cannot have a meaning if the universe is entirely composed of matter, as science teaches us. (6) The sole or primary purpose of evaluations is to guide our choice of actions, and value judgments are reducible to reasons for action. (7) The meaning of a person’s life cannot extend to things beyond the boundaries of his or her mode of living. (8) A person’s life does not having meaning because only linguistic items can be meaningful. (9) The meaning of our lives consists in our living in accordance with a self-determined life-plan.

Action | Choice | Life | Life | Meaning | Plan | Purpose | Purpose | Science | Self | Universe | Think | Value |

Mao Tse-tung, alternatively Zedong, Ze dong, aka Chairman Mao

In the world from now on, neutrality is only a word for deceiving people.

Neutrality | People | World |

Obert C. Tanner, fully Obert Clark Tanner

The dominant fact of the twentieth century is that the entire population of the earth is now included within a single community. There are no more ocean barriers, no mountain barriers, no barriers of the north and south poles, no barriers of any kind. Thers is only one race now - it is the human race.

Earth | Human race | Race |

Ralph Waldo Trine

Many will receive great help, and many will be entirely healed by a practice somewhat after the following nature: Wit a mind at peace, and with a heart going out in love to all, go into the quiet of your own interior self, holding the thought - I am one with the Infinite Spirit of Life, the life of my life. I then as spirit, I a spiritual being, can in my own real nature admit of no disease. I now open my body, in w2hich disease has obtained a foothold, I open it fully to the inflowing tide of this Infinite Life, and it now, even now, is pouring in and coursing through my body, and the healing process is going on. Realize this so fully that you begin to feel a quickening and a warming glow imparted by the life forces to the body. Believe the healing process is going on. Believe it, and hold continually to it. Many people greatly desire a certain thing but expect something else. They have greater faith in the power of evil than in the power of good, and hence they remain ill.

Body | Desire | Disease | Evil | Faith | Good | Heart | Life | Life | Love | Mind | Nature | Peace | People | Power | Practice | Quiet | Receive | Self | Spirit | Thought | Will | Wit | Following | Thought |

Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi

I believe that the true welfare of man lies in the fulfillment of the Will of God; and that His will consists in men loving each other, and therefore behaving toward others as they desire that others should behave with them. I believe that the meaning of life of every man, therefore, lies only in the increase of love in himself; that this increase of love leads the individual man in this life toward greater and greater welfare; that after death it gives the greater welfare the more love there be in the man; and that, at the same time, more than anything else, it contributes to the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth, i.e., to an order of life where the discord, deceit, and violence which now reign will be replaced by free agreement, truth, and brotherly love between men.

Death | Deceit | Desire | Earth | Fulfillment | God | Individual | Life | Life | Love | Man | Meaning | Men | Order | Time | Truth | Will | God |

Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi

The highest wisdom has but one science - the science of the whole - the science explaining the whole creation and man's place in it.

Man | Science | Wisdom |

Willy Wonka

A little nonsense now and then, is cherished by the wisest men.

Little | Men | Nonsense |

Stephen Wolfram

Computational irreducibility tends to make infinite questions undecidable. The presence of universality implies that there must at some level be computational irreducibility… This means that today’s mathematics will be viewed as small and surprisingly uncharacteristic sample of what is possible. If a system is computationally irreducible this means that there is in effect a tangible separation between the underlying rules for the system and its overall behavior associated with the irreducible amount of computational work needed to go from one to the other. And it is this separation that the basic origin of the apparent freedom we see in all sorts of system lie – whether those systems are abstract cellular automata or actual living brains.

Abstract | Behavior | Freedom | Mathematics | Means | System | Will | Work |

Marion Woodman

It is our fear of the future that distorts the now that could lead to a different future if we dared to be whole in the present.

Fear | Future | Present |