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

Blaise Pascal

For we must not misunderstand ourselves; we are as much automatic as intellectual; and hence it comes that the instrument by which conviction is attained is not demonstrated alone. How few things are demonstrated! Proofs only convince the mind. Custom is the source of our strongest and most believed proofs. It bends the automaton, which persuades the mind without its thinking about the matter.

Custom | Mind | Thinking |

Edward Gibbon

Every age, however destitute of science or virtue, sufficiently abounds with acts of blood and military renown.

Age | Science | Virtue | Virtue |

Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

Mere customary life (the watch wound up and going on of itself) is that which brings on natural death. Custom is activity without opposition, for which there remains only a formal duration; in which the fullness and zest that originally characterized the aim of life are out of the question - a merely external sensuous existence which has ceased to throw itself enthusiastically into its object.

Custom | Death | Existence | Life | Life | Object | Opposition | Question |

George F. Kennan

I wonder whether even in the past total victory was not really an illusion from the standpoint of the victors. In a sense, there is not total victory short of genocide, unless it be a victory over the minds of men. But the total military victories are rarely victories over the minds of men.

Illusion | Men | Past | Sense | Wonder |

Holbrook Jackson, fully George Holbrook Jackson

Every custom was once an eccentricity; every idea was once an absurdity.

Custom | Eccentricity |

Henry Steele Commager

Who are the really disloyal? Those who inflame racial hatreds, who sow religious and class dissensions. those who subvert the Constitution by violating the freedom of the ballot box. Those who make a mockery of majority rule by the use of the filibuster. Those who impair democracy by denying equal educational facilities. Those who frustrate justice by lynch law or by making a farce of jury trials. Those who deny freedom of speech and of the press and of assembly. Those who demand special favors against the interest of the commonwealth. Those who regard public office as a source of private gain. Those who exalt the military over the civil. Those who for selfish and private purposes stir up national antagonisms and expose the world to the ruin of war.

Democracy | Freedom of speech | Freedom | Justice | Law | Majority | Mockery | Office | Public | Regard | Rule | Speech | Trials | War | World |

Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger

Throughout history the political influence of nations has been roughly correlative to their military power.

History | Influence | Nations | Power |

Howard Zinn

We should take our example not from our political and military leaders shouting “Retaliate!” and “War!” but from the doctors and nurses and medical students and firefighters and police officers who have been saving lives in the midst of mayhem – whose first thoughts are not violence, but healing; not vengeance, but compassion.

Compassion | Example | Vengeance | War |

Howard Zinn

The money, technology, and human energy now devoted to the military could perform miracles in cleaning up the earth we live on. But the cost of the arms race is not only the enormous waste of resources. There is a psychic cost - the creation of an atmosphere of fear all over the world.

Cost | Earth | Energy | Fear | Miracles | Money | Race | Technology | Waste | World |

Howard Zinn

Yes, we have in this country, dominated by corporate wealth and military power and two antiquated political parties, what a fearful conservative characterized as “a permanent adversarial culture” challenging the present, demanding a new future. It is a race in which we can all choose to participate, or to just watch. But we should know that our choice will help determine the outcome.

Choice | Culture | Future | Power | Present | Race | Wealth | Will |

Howard Zinn

Should we welcome the huge growth of the military budget at the expense of health, education, the needs of children, one fifth of whom grow up in poverty? I suggest that a patriotic American who cares for his or her country might act on behalf of a different vision. Instead of being feared for our military prowess, we should want to be respected for our dedication to human rights.

Children | Dedication | Education | Growth | Health | Poverty | Prowess | Rights | Vision |

Howard Zinn

Instead of sending troops and planes and aircraft carriers, we could send food and medicine. That's what I mean by our becoming a humanitarian superpower instead of a military superpower.

John Stuart Mill

The progressive principle is antagonistic to the sway of custom. The contest between these two principles, custom and progress, constitutes the chief interest of the history of mankind.

Custom | History | Mankind | Principles | Progress |

John Stuart Mill

The despotism of custom is everywhere the standing hindrance to human advancement.

Custom |

Joseph Campbell

The elementary idea, likewise, of the Promised Land cannot originally have referred to a part of this earth to be conquered by military right, but to a place of spiritual peace in the heart, to be discovered through contemplation.

Contemplation | Earth | Heart | Land | Peace | Right |

Joseph Joubert

Morality is made up of customs and habits. Custom makes public morality, and habit individual morality.

Custom | Habit | Individual | Morality | Public |

Joseph Joubert

The sound of the drum drives out thought; for that very reason it is the most military of instruments.

Reason | Sound | Thought |

Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, born Mahesh Prasad Varma

All occurrences of violence, negativity, conflict crisis, or problems in any society are just the expression of growth of stress in collective consciousness. When the level of stress becomes sufficiently great, it bursts out into large-scale violence, war, and civil uprising necessitating military action.

Action | Consciousness | Growth | Problems | Society | War | Society |