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

Zhang Zai, also Chang Tsai

Heaven is my Father, the earth my mother, and even a tiny creature such as myself finds an intimate place in their midst. In everything that moves throughout the universe, I see my own body, and in everything that governs the universe, my own soul. All men are my brethren, and all things my companions.

Body | Earth | Father | Heaven | Men | Mother | Soul | Universe |

Zhang Zai, also Chang Tsai

Wealth and honor, benefits and blessings shall enrich my life; poverty and failures, grief and anxiety shall help fulfill it. In my life, I will serve heaven and earth; in death I will find peace.

Anxiety | Anxiety | Blessings | Death | Earth | Grief | Heaven | Honor | Life | Life | Peace | Poverty | Wealth | Will |

Thomas Edison, fully Thomas Alva Edison

I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God.

Future | God | Heaven | Hell | Life | Life | Theories |

James R. Flynn, aka Jim Flynn

[Plato's ideal society] guarantees to all people the right to an education that diagnoses and perfects their unique talents, plus a work role that conveys a sense of self-esteem, saving them from the neuroses of megalomania and the lust for power. It forbids privilege and sexism and all other criteria irrelevant to merit. It eliminates conflict of interest from those who hold office and gives the masses a potent checklist they can use to hold their rulers to account. Best of all, it eliminates all traces of "might makes right" and serves as a pattern laid up in heaven to rank actual societies in terms of what corrupts them. Society becomes more corrupt as the struggle for power becomes more brutal.

Education | Esteem | Heaven | Lust | Merit | Office | People | Power | Rank | Right | Self | Self-esteem | Sense | Society | Struggle | Unique | Work | Society | Privilege |

Richard Leakey, fully Richard Erskine Frere Leakey

To have arrived on this earth as a product of a biological accident, only to depart through human arrogance, would be the ultimate irony.

Accident | Arrogance | Earth | Irony |

Abu Sa’id ibn abi Khayr

The veil between God and you is neither earth nor heaven, nor the throne of the footstool; your selfhood and illusions are the veil, and when you remove these, you have attained God.

Earth | God | Heaven | God |

Charles H. Simpkinson

The effects of treating the planet in ways that ignore our inherent inseparability were never more evident. And from the perspective of a consciousness shared by all living beings, the peoples of the Earth are not isolated individuals.

Consciousness | Earth |

Adolph Hitler

By means of shrewd lies, unremittingly repeated, it is possible to make people believe that heaven is hell and hell heaven. The greater the lie, the more readily it will be believed.

Heaven | Hell | Means | People | Will |

Amos Bronson Alcott

We mount to heaven mostly in the ruins of our cherished schemes, finding our failures were successes.

Heaven |

Alfred North Whitehead

The kingdom of heaven is not the isolation of good from evil. It is the overcoming of evil by good. God has in his nature the knowledge of evil, of pain, and of degradation, but it is there as overcome with what is good.

Evil | God | Good | Heaven | Isolation | Knowledge | Nature | Pain | God |