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

Elizabeth Klarer

Akon says to Elizabeth: “We found the pyramidal type of construction most suitable for Earth and Mars where many earthquakes plagued us and radiations remained a hazard. The pyramids were constructed by us and used by later civilizations for places of worship and for burial. They are cosmic libraries, and in time, will point the way to the stars. The human race of Earth will find an escape route to the stars and away from the violence within the Sun’s system created by its variable nature.”

Earth | Human race | Race | System | Will | Worship |

Elizabeth Klarer

Our Universe is everlasting, creating the light of eternity within its electromagnetic field, creating light in the atmospheres of planets, heat and life, in the velocity of rotation and speed in orbit about the metagalaxy, a prodigious system within the depths of intergalactic void, the limitless reaches of outer space where the minimum-temperature controls the lives of galaxies, as they orbit in continuous momentum, in ever widening circles, about the nucleus, or electromagnetic hub of the metagalaxy.

Eternity | Light | Space | System | Universe |

Elizabeth Klarer

Akon says to Elizabeth: The beauty and violence of our Galactic system harbours millions of others similar to such as these of the Sun’s System, where the cosmic rays emanating from the vast nucleus create life throughout, as in the countless other galaxies.”

Beauty | Life | Life | System | Beauty |

William Enfield, aka "The Enquirer"

The system of morality which Socrates made it the business of his life to teach was raised upon the firm basis of religion. The first principles of virtuous conduct which are common to all mankind are, according to this excellent moralist, laws of God; and the conclusive argument by which he supports this opinion is, that no man departs from these principles with impunity.

Argument | Business | Conduct | Life | Life | Man | Mankind | Morality | Opinion | Principles | System | Teach | Business |

Felix Frankfurter

The dynamo of our economic system is self-interest which may range from mere petty greed to admirable types of self-expression.

Greed | Self-interest | System |

E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

The system of nature, of which man is a part, tends to be self-balancing, self-adjusting, self-cleansing. Not so with technology.

Man | System |

Felix Frankfurter

Convictions following the admission into evidence of confessions which are involuntary, i.e., the product of coercion, either physical or psychological, cannot stand. This is so not because such confessions are unlikely to be true but because the methods used to extract them offend an underlying principle in the enforcement of our criminal law: that ours is an accusatorial and not an inquisitorial system — a system in which the State must establish guilt by evidence independently and freely secured and may not by coercion prove its charges against an accused out of his own mouth.

Coercion | Evidence | Guilt | System | Following |

Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm

If human beings are ever to become free and to cease feeding industry by pathological consumption, a radical change in the economic system is necessary: we must put an end to the present situation where a healthy economy is possible only at the price of unhealthy human beings.

Change | Industry | Present | Price | System |

Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm

The pace of science forces the pace of technique. Theoretical physics forces atomic energy on us; the successful production of the fission bomb forces upon us the manufacture of the hydrogen bomb. We do not choose our problems, we do not choose our products; we are pushed, we are forced — by what? By a system which has no purpose and goal transcending it, and which makes man its appendix.

Energy | Man | Purpose | Purpose | Science | System | Theoretical |

Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm

One social structure will be conducive to cooperation and solidarity another social structure to competition, suspiciousness, avarice; another to child-like receptiveness, another to destructive aggressiveness. All empirical forms or human needs and drives have to be understood as results of the social practice (in the last analysis based on the productive forces, class structure, etc., etc.) but they all have to fulfill the functions which are inherent in man’s nature in general, and that is to permit him to relate himself to others and share a common frame of reference, etc. The existential contradiction within man (to which I would now add also the contradiction between limitations which reality imposes on his life, and the virtually limitless imagination which his brain permits him to follow) is what I believe to be one of the motives of psychological and social dynamics. Man can never stand still. He must find solutions to this contradiction, and ever better solutions to the extent to which reality enables him. The question then arises whether there is an optimal solution which can be inferred from man’s nature, and which constitutes a potential tendency in man. I believe that such optimal solutions can be inferred from the nature of man, and I have recently found it quite useful to think in terms of what in sociology and economy is now often called »system analysis«. One might start with the idea, in the first place, that human personality — just like society — is a system, that is to say, that each part depends on every other, and no part can be changed unless all or most other parts are also changed. A system is better than chaos. If a society system disintegrates or is destroyed by blows from the outside the society ends in chaos, and a completely new society is built upon its ruins, often using the elements of the destroyed system to build the new. That has happened many times in history. But, what also happens is that the society is not simply destroyed but that the system is changed, and a new system emerges which can be considered to be a transformation of the old one.

Better | Contradiction | Cooperation | Ends | Imagination | Man | Motives | Nature | Personality | Practice | Question | Reality | Society | System | Will | Society | Old | Think |

Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm

Briefly, then, intellectualization, quantification, abstractification, bureaucratization, and reification--the very characteristics of modern industrial society, when applied to people rather than to things, are not the principles of life but those of mechanics. People living in such a system become indifferent to life and even attracted to death.

Life | Life | People | Principles | System |

Eugène Ionesco, born Eugen Ionescu

No society has been able to abolish human sadness, no political system can deliver us from the pain of living, from our fear of death, our thirst for the absolute. It is the human condition that directs the social condition, not vice versa.

Fear | Pain | Society | System | Society | Vice |

Frederick William Faber

There is hardly ever a complete silence in our soul. God is whispering to us well-nigh incessantly. Whenever the sounds of the world die out in the soul, or sink low, then we hear these whisperings of God.

God | Silence | World | God |

Florynce R. Kennedy

When a system of oppression has become institutionalized it is unnecessary for individuals to be oppressive.

Oppression | System |

Francis Beaumont

It is more noble by silence to avoid an injury than by argument to overcome it.

Argument | Silence |

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

The coldness of our love is the silence of our hearts toward God. Without this we may pronounce prayers, but we do not pray; for what shall lead us to mate upon the laws of God, if it be not love of Him who has made these laws? Let our hearts be full of love then, and they will pray.

Love | Silence | Will |

Fidel Castro, fully Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz

My idea, as the whole world knows, is that the capitalist system now doesn't work either for the United States or the world, driving it from crisis to crisis, which are each time more serious

System | Time | Work | World | Crisis |

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

We cease to pray to God as soon as we cease to love Him, as soon as we cease to thirst for His perfections. The coldness of our love is the silence of our hearts toward God. Without this we may pronounce prayers, but we do not pray; for what shall lead us to mate upon the laws of God if it be not the love of Him who has made these laws? Let our hearts be full of love, then, and they will pray.

God | Love | Silence | Will | God |

Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

The universe as a circle consisting in a definite number of changes which continually recurs... activity is eternal, the number of the products and states is limited.

Universe |

Fidel Castro, fully Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz

With what moral authority can they speak of human rights — the rulers of a nation in which the millionaire and beggar coexist; the Indian is exterminated; the black man is discriminated against; the woman is prostituted; and the great masses of Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and Latin Americans are scorned, exploited, and humiliated? How can they do this — the bosses of an empire where the mafia, gambling, and child prostitution are imposed; where the CIA organizes plans of global subversion and espionage, and the Pentagon creates neutron bombs capable of preserving material assets and wiping out human beings; an empire that supports reaction and counter-revolution all over the world; that protects and promotes the exploitation by monopolies of the wealth and the human resources of whole continents, unequal exchange, a protectionist policy, an incredible waste of natural resources, and a system of hunger for the world?

Authority | Global | Hunger | Man | Rights | System | Waste | Wealth | Woman | Child |