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

David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins

The evolution of consciousness requires a wide range of opportunities and a playing field that affords almost unlimited options for development. If human life represents a learning process, then society is the ideal school that affords an extremely wide range of options for numerous levels of consciousness to develop, progress, define, identify, and grasp endless subtleties as well as learn more gross lessons. The ego is extremely tenacious and therefore often seems to require extreme conditions before it lets go of a positionality. It often takes the collective experience of millions of people over many centuries to learn even what appears upon examination to be a simple and obvious truth, namely, that peace is better than war or love is better than hate.

Better | Consciousness | Ego | Evolution | Experience | Extreme | Hate | Learning | Life | Life | Love | Peace | People | Progress | Society | Truth | War | Society | Learn |

David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins

The common element of most fears is that they are based on the illusion that happiness is dependent on externals and therefore vulnerable… Cessation of fear is the result of learning that the source of happiness and joy is from within. It stems from recognizing that its source is the joy of one’s own existence, which is continuous and not dependent on externals. This results from surrendering expectations and demands on one’s self, the world, and others. The thought “I can only be happy if I win or get what I want” is a guarantee of worry, anxiety, and unhappiness.

Anxiety | Anxiety | Existence | Fear | Guarantee | Happy | Illusion | Joy | Learning | Self | Thought | Unhappiness | World | Worry | Happiness | Thought |

Kenneth Hanson, aka Ken Hanson

To study is to live… The discipline of learning provides cohesion, a clear and compelling reason for being.

Discipline | Learning | Reason | Study |

Allan J Hamilton

Could the mind have an existence entirely independent of the central nervous system?... Scientific evidence that not only was her brain not working, it specifically demonstrated the absence of all cortical activity when these conversations actually took place. So where could these brand-new memories have been created?... Imagine the implications of the notion that quanta of conscious energy could exist independently in the Universe, able to enter from anywhere, at any time.

Absence | Energy | Evidence | Existence | Mind | System | Time | Universe |

Václav Havel

We are living at a time when humankind can face whatever threatens it only if we, by which I mean each of us, manage to revive, with new energy and new ethos, a sense of responsibility for the rest of the world.

Energy | Responsibility | Rest | Sense | Time | World |

Gerald Heard

Prayer… is… a technique for contacting and learning to know Reality… the exploration of Reality by exploring the Beyond, which is within.

Learning | Prayer | Reality |

Hillel NULL

It is not learning but doing that is the most important thing.

Important | Learning |

David Hockey

The first molecular complex able to sustain an energy-transfer process unchanged, using energy extracted exclusively from the external environment, became the first living entity.

Energy |

Bakola wa Ilunga

Sexuality is a force to be controlled and transformed; its energy must be channeled and educated.

Energy | Force |

David Hockey

Learning, then controlling, is limited by only two things: by our mind’s capabilities and the constraints of the universe. Learning how to progressively exploit our environment will not stop until life itself ceases… life explores and exploits its inherited options.

Exploit | Learning | Life | Life | Mind | Universe | Will |

Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

The fountain of contentment must spring up in the mind. He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief which he proposes to remove.

Contentment | Grief | Human nature | Knowledge | Life | Life | Little | Mind | Nature | Waste | Will | Happiness |

Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief which he proposes to remove.

Grief | Human nature | Knowledge | Life | Life | Little | Nature | Waste | Will | Happiness |

David Hockey

The transformation from non-living to living requires two steps. First, environmental sources must provide the energy needed to add an atom or two (also taken from the environment) to a molecular complex. The second step, the process is reversed; the added atoms and energy have to be returned to the environment – otherwise nothing more than a chemical activity is occurring. Thus, right at life’s beginning, natural selection seems inevitable.

Beginning | Energy | Inevitable | Life | Life | Nothing | Right |

Sharon R. Kaufman

An individual does not comprehend his or her self as a linear sequence – a succession of roles or a trajectory of “socialize” beings, learning and then acting out (or deviating from) a set of socially appropriate rules of behavior. Moreover, identity in old age is not merely the sum of the parts, whether roles, achievements, losses, or social norms. Instead, people dynamically integrate a wide range of experience – unique situations, structural forces, values, cultural pathways, knowledge of an entire life span – to construct a current and viable identity.

Age | Behavior | Experience | Individual | Knowledge | Learning | Life | Life | Old age | People | Self | Unique | Old |

Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze

This is the nature of the unenlightened mind: the sense organs, which are limited in scope and ability, randomly gather information. This partial information is arranged into judgments, which are based on previous judgments, which are usually based on someone’s else’s foolish ideas. These false concepts and ideas are then stored in a highly selective memory system. Distortion upon distortion: the mental energy flows constantly through contorted and inappropriate channels, and the more one uses the mind, the more confused one becomes.

Ability | Energy | Ideas | Memory | Mind | Nature | Sense | System |

Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze

The true master understands that enlightenment is not the end but the means. Realizing that virtue is her goal, she accepts the long and often arduous cultivation that is necessary to attain it. She doesn’t scheme to become a leader, but quietly shoulders whatever responsibilities fall to her. Unattached to her accomplishments, taking credit for nothing at all, she guides the whole world by guiding the individuals who come to her. she share her divine energy with her students, encouraging them, creating trials to strengthen them, scolding them to awaken them, directing the streams of their lives toward the infinite ocean of the Tao.

Credit | Cultivation | Energy | Enlightenment | Means | Nothing | Trials | Virtue | Virtue | World |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

The greater the tension, the greater is the potential. Great energy springs from a correspondingly great tension of opposites.

Energy |