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

Dubner Magid, name for Rabbi Jacob ben wolf Krantz

It is a wise man’s good sense to be slow to anger, and his glory to pass over a transgression.

Anger | Character | Glory | Good | Man | Sense | Wise |

Albert Einstein

I am absolutely convinced that no wealth in the world can help humanity forward, even in the hands of the most devoted worker in this cause. The example of great and pure personages is the only thing that can lead us to fine ideas and noble deeds. Money only appeals to selfishness and always irresistibly tempts its owners to abuse it.

Abuse | Cause | Character | Deeds | Example | Humanity | Ideas | Money | Selfishness | Wealth | World |

Morris Franklin

There is too much stress today on material things. I try to teach my children not so much the value of cents, but the sense of values.

Character | Children | Sense | Teach | Value |

Henry Ford

There are two fools in this world. One is the millionaire who thinks that by hoarding money he can somehow accumulate real power, and the other is the penniless reformer who thinks that if only he can take the money from one class and give it to another, all the world’s ills will be cured.

Character | Money | Power | Will | World |

Friedrich Gentz, aka Friedrich von Gentz

Two principles govern the moral and intellectual world. One is perpetual progress, the other the necessary limitations to that progress. If the former alone prevailed, there would be nothing steadfast and durable on earth, and the whole of social life would be the sport of winds and waves. If the alter had exclusive sway, or even if it obtained a mischievous preponderancy, every thing would petrify or rot. The best ages of the world are those in which these two principles are the most equally balanced. In such ages every enlightened man ought to adopt both principles, and with one hand develop what he can, with the other restrain and uphold what he ought.

Character | Earth | Life | Life | Man | Nothing | Principles | Progress | World | Govern |

Paul Fleming, also spelled Flemming

Much has been said about the relative happiness; but write it on your heart that happiness is the cheapest thing in the world - when we buy it for someone else.

Character | Heart | World | Happiness |

Owen Feltham

The greatest results in life are usually attained by simple means and the exercise of ordinary qualities. These for the most part be summed in these two - common sense and perseverance.

Character | Common Sense | Life | Life | Means | Perseverance | Qualities | Sense |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

The only thing that brings a mother undiluted satisfaction is her relation to a son; it is quite the most complete relationship between human beings, and the one that is the most free from ambivalence. The mother can transfer to her son all the ambition which she has had to surpress in herself, and she can hope to get from him the satisfaction of all that has remained to her of her masculinity complex. Even a marriage is not firmly assured until the woman has succeeded in making her husband into her child and in acting the part of a mother towards him.

Ambition | Character | Hope | Husband | Marriage | Mother | Relationship | Woman | Ambition | Child |

William Feather

He that succeeds makes an important thing of the immediate task.

Character | Important | Wisdom |

J. G. Fichte, fully Johann Gottlieb Fichte

What sort of philosophy one chooses depends, therefore, on what sort of man one is; for a philosophical system is not a dead piece of furniture that we can reject or accept as we wish; it is rather a thing animated by the soul of the person who holds it. A person indolent by nature or dulled and distorted by mental servitude, learned luxury, and vanity will never raise himself to the level of idealism.

Character | Idealism | Luxury | Man | Nature | Philosophy | Servitude | Soul | System | Will |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

Our best hope for the future is that the intellect - the scientific spirit, reason - should in time establish a dictatorship over the human mind. The very nature of reason is a guarantee that it would not fail to concede to human emotions, and to all that is determined by them, the position to which they are entitled. But the common pressure exercised by such a domination of reason would prove to be the strongest unifying force among men, and would prepare the way for further unifications. Whatever, like the ban laid upon thought by religion, opposes such a development is a danger for the future of mankind.

Character | Danger | Emotions | Force | Future | Guarantee | Hope | Mankind | Men | Mind | Nature | Position | Reason | Religion | Spirit | Thought | Time | Danger | Intellect | Thought |

Nancy Gibbs

Of all ennobling sentiments, patriotism may be the most easily manipulated. On the one hand, it gives powerful expression to what is best in a nation’s character: a commitment to principle, a willingness to sacrifice, a devotion to the community by the choice of the individual. But among its toxic fruits are intolerance, belligerence and blind obedience, perhaps because it blooms most luxuriantly during times of war.

Character | Choice | Commitment | Devotion | Individual | Intolerance | Obedience | Patriotism | Sacrifice | War |

Thomas Hobbes

Continual success in obtaining those things which a man form time to time desireth, that is to say, continual prospering, is that men call felicity; I mean the felicity of this life. For there is no such thing as perpetual tranquillity of mind, while we live here; because life itself is but motion, and can never be without desire, nor without fear, no more than without sense.

Character | Desire | Fear | Life | Life | Man | Men | Mind | Sense | Success | Time | Tranquility |

Ernest Shurtleff Holmes

Why do we look old? Because we remember the weight of the burden of last year's experiences. There is no other reason. Instead of lifting our faces, we should discover that the thing to lift is our thought. It is the mind, not the physical body, which has the stamp of age and reflects it in the body.

Age | Body | Character | Mind | Reason | Thought |

Mark Hopkins

Education in its widest sense includes everything that exerts a formative influence, and causes a young person to be, at a given point, what he is.

Character | Education | Influence | Sense |

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

Apologizing - a very desperate habit - one that is rarely cured. Apology is only egotism wrong side out.

Apology | Character | Habit | Wrong |

Herbert Hoover, fully Herbert Clark Hoover

No public man can be a little crooked. There is no such thing as a no-man's-land between honesty and dishonesty.

Character | Dishonesty | Honesty | Land | Little | Man | Public |