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

François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

No human power can force the intrenchments of the human mind: compulsion never persuades; it only makes hypocrites.

Force | Mind | Power | Wisdom |

Euripedes NULL

Your very silence is confession.

Silence | Wisdom |

Henry Ford

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is the probably reason why so few engage in it.'

Reason | Thinking | Wisdom | Work |

Benjamin Franklin

Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech; which is the right of every man as far as by it he does not hurt or control the right of another; and this is the only check it ought to suffer and the only bounds it ought to know... Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freedom of speech, a thing terrible to traitors.

Control | Freedom of speech | Freedom of thought | Freedom | Liberty | Man | Public | Right | Speech | Thought | Wisdom |

George F Gilder

The central event of the twentieth century is the overthrow of matter. In technology, economics, and the politics of nations, wealth in the form of physical resources is steadily declining in value and significance. The powers of mind are everywhere ascendant over the brute force of things.

Economics | Force | Mind | Nations | Politics | Technology | Wealth | Wisdom | Value |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

A man should not strive to eliminate his complexes but to get into accord with them: they are legitimately what directs his conduct in the world.

Conduct | Man | Wisdom | World |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Let us not dream that reason can ever be popular. Passions, emotions, may be popular. Passions, emotions, may be made popular; but reason remains ever the property of an elect few.

Emotions | Property | Reason | Wisdom |

Joseph Gerrald

Those who are versed in the history of their country, in the history of the human race, must know that rigorous state prosecutions have always preceded the era of convulsion; and this era, I fear, will be accelerated by the folly and madness of our rulers. If the people are discontented, the proper mode of quieting their discontent is, not by instituting rigorous and sanguinary prosecutions, but by redressing their wrongs and conciliating their affections. Courts of justice, indeed, may be called in to the aid of ministerial vengeance; but if once the purity of their proceedings is suspected, they will cease to be objects of reverence to the nation; they will degenerate into empty and expensive pageantry, and become the partial instruments of vexatious oppression. Whatever may become of me, my principles will last forever. Individuals may perish; but truth is eternal. The rude blasts of tyranny may blow from every quarter; but freedom is that hardy plant which will survive the tempest and strike an everlasting root into the most unfavorable soil.

Aid | Discontent | Era | Eternal | Folly | Freedom | History | Madness | People | Principles | Purity | Reverence | Truth | Tyranny | Will | Wisdom |

Kurt Gödel, also Goedel

I don’t see any reason why we should have less confidence in this kind of perception, I.e., in mathematical intuition, than in sense perception, which induces us to build up physical theories and to expect that future sense perceptions will agree with them and, moreover, to believe that a question not decidable now has meaning and may be decided in the future.

Confidence | Future | Intuition | Meaning | Perception | Question | Reason | Sense | Theories | Will | Wisdom |

George F Gilder

When I began to examine just how wealth is created, it seemed to me plain that it arises not from taking, but from giving. People get rich by giving rather than by taking, and this seemed to me to be a very important perception, because the reason for the crisis in capitalism today, it seems to me, is not its practical achievements, but rather the perception of its moral character.

Capitalism | Character | Giving | Important | People | Perception | Reason | Wealth | Wisdom | Crisis |

Léon Gambetta

Despotism and freedom of the press cannot exist together.

Freedom | Wisdom |