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

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

It is necessary, therefore, that at least an important part of the development effort should by-pass the big cities and be directly concerned with the creation of an "agro-industrial structure" in the rural and small-town areas.

Growth | Power | World |

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

The illusion of unlimited powers, nourished by astonishing scientific and technological achievements, has produced the concurrent illusion of having solved the problem of production. The latter illusion is based on the failure to distinguish between income and capital where this distinction matters most. Every economist and businessman is familiar with the distinction, and applies it conscientiously and with considerable subtlety to all economic affairs – except where it really matters: namely, the irreplaceable capital which man has not made, but simply found, and without which he can do nothing.

Heart | Poverty | World |

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

The effort needed to sustain a way of life which seeks to attain the optimal pattern of consumption is likely to be much smaller than the effort needed to sustain a drive for maximum consumption.

Effort | Labor | Machines | Means | Nothing | People |

Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara

The university cannot be an ivory tower, far away from the society, removed from the practical accomplishments of the Revolution. If such an attitude is maintained, the university will continue giving our society lawyers that we do not need.

Important |

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

It is, however, a most astonishing but incontestable fact, that the history of the evolution of man as yet constitutes no part of general education. Indeed, our so-called “educated classes" are to this day in total ignorance of the most important circumstances and the most remarkable phenomena which Anthropogeny has brought to light.

Better | Evolution | History | Honor | Struggle |

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

The real cause of personal existence is not the favor of the Almighty, but the sexual love of one's earthly parents.

Antithesis | Courage | Desire | Faith | Knowledge | Man | Men | Mind | Nature | Purpose | Purpose | Reality | Religion | Soul | Thinking | World |

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

From an economic point of view, the central concept of wisdom is permanence. We must study an economics of permanence.

Important | Means | People | Surrender | Truth |

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

What is to take the place of the soul and life-destroying metaphysics inherited from the nineteenth century? The task of our generation, I have no doubt, is one of metaphysical reconstruction… Our task – and the task of all education – is to understand the present world, the world in which we live and make our choices.

Meaning | People |

Erving Goffman

When persons are present to one another they can function not merely as physical instruments but also as communicative ones. This possibility, no less than the physical one, is fateful for everyone concerned and in every society appears to come under strict normative regulation, giving rise to a kind of communication traffic order...

Reality | World |

Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger

In this communication I wish first to show in the simplest case of the hydrogen atom (nonrelativistic and undistorted) that the usual rates for quantization can be replaced by another requirement, in which mention of ‘whole numbers’ no longer occurs. Instead the integers occur in the same natural way as the integers specifying the number of nodes in a vibrating string. The new conception can be generalized, and I believe it touches the deepest meaning of the quantum rules.

Atheism | Experience | God | Good | Nothing | Pain | Price | Reason | Science | Sense | Space | World | God |

Ester and Jerry Hicks

Children coming forth today have a greater capacity to deal with the greater variety of information that is coming forth than you did.

Better | Will | World |

Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara

Perhaps one day tired of circling the world I'll return to Argentina and settle in the Andean lakes if not indefinitely then at least for a pause while I shift from one understanding of the world to another.

World |

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

In the course of individual development, inherited characters appear, in general, earlier than adaptive ones, and the earlier a certain character appears in ontogeny, the further back must lie in time when it was acquired by its ancestors.

Important | Life | Life | Order | Study |

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

This demand, that the doctrine of descent should be grounded on experiment, is so perverse and shows such ignorance of the very essence of our theory, that though we have never been surprised at hearing it continually repeated by ignorant laymen, from the lips of a Virchow it has positively astounded us. What can in this case be proved by experiment, and what can experiment prove?

Evolution | History | Inquiry | Light | Science | Study |

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

Man talks of a battle with Nature, forgetting that if he won the battle, he would find himself on the losing side.

Age | Civilization | Courage | Fear | Good | Nothing | Question | Strength |

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

If our intellectual leaders treat work as nothing but a necessary evil soon to be abolished as far as the majority is concerned, the urge to minimize it right away is hardly a surprising reaction, and the problem of motivation becomes insoluble.

Envy | Greed | Inevitable | Man | Nothing | Power | Problems |

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

Now, one does not have to be a believer in total equality, whatever that may mean, to be able to see that the existence of inordinately rich people in any society today is a very great evil.

Man | Means | Peace | Question | Regard |

Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger

The great revelation of the quantum theory was that features of discreteness were discovered in the Book of Nature, in a context in which anything other than continuity seemed to be absurd according to the views held until then.

World |

Ernest Shurtleff Holmes

To believe in a just law of cause and effect, carrying with it a punishment or a reward, is to believe in righteousness.

Man | Time | World |

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

We need but mention the mighty influence which irrational dogmas still exercise on the elementary education of our youth, we need but mention that the state yet permits the existence of cloisters and of celibacy, the most immoral and baneful ordinance of the “only-saving” church; we need but mention that the civilized state yet divides the most important parts of the civil year in accordance with church festivals; that in many countries it allows the public order to be disturbed by church processions, and so on.

Evolution | Law | Following |