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

Brown v. Board of Education NULL

Today education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society. It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship. Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.

Awakening | Citizenship | Education | Good | Important | Life | Life | Opportunity | Public | Right | Service | Society | Training | Wisdom | Child |

Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL

Providence is the very divine reason which arranges all things, and rests with the supreme disposer of all; while fate is that ordering which is a part of all changeable things, and by means of which Providence binds all things together in their own order. Providence embraces all things equally, however different they may be, even however infinite: when they are assigned to their own places, forms, and times, Fate sets them in an orderly motion; so that this development of the temporal order, unified in the intelligence of the mind of God, is Providence. The working of this unified development in time is called Fate. These are different, but the one hangs upon the other. For this order, which is ruled by Fate, emanates from the directness of Providence.

Fate | God | Intelligence | Means | Mind | Order | Providence | Reason | Time | Wisdom | Fate |

Jean de La Bruyère

A wise man neither lets himself be governed, nor seeks to govern others; he wishes that reason should govern alone and always.

Man | Reason | Wisdom | Wise | Wishes | Govern |

Brown v. Board of Education NULL

We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of “separate but equal” has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Doctrine | Education | Public | Reason | Wisdom |

Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton

The main reason why silence is so efficacious an element of repute is, first, because of that magnification which proverbially belongs to the unknown; and, secondly, because silence provokes no man's envy, and wounds no man's self-love.

Envy | Love | Man | Reason | Self | Self-love | Silence | Wisdom |

Edgar Cayce, known as the "Sleeping Prophet"

The alternative to recalling and interpreting dreams is not always pleasant. Individuals cannot expect to drift forever. If they do not puzzle out their identity, and the direction of their lives by the aid of their dreams, then they may be brought, by the relentless action of their own pent-up souls, into some crisis which requires that they come to terms with themselves. It may be a medical crisis. It may be the end of a marriage or of a job. It may be depression or withdrawal.

Action | Aid | Depression | Dreams | Marriage | Wisdom | Crisis |

William Ellery Channing

The office of government is not to confer happiness, but to give men opportunity to work out happiness for themselves.

Government | Men | Office | Opportunity | Wisdom | Work | Government | Happiness |

Edgar Cayce, known as the "Sleeping Prophet"

When you are prepared for a thing, the opportunity to use it presents itself.

Opportunity | Wisdom |

Roy D. Chapin, Jr., fully Roy Dikeman Chapin, Jr.

Be ready when opportunity comes. Luck is the time when preparation and opportunity meet.

Luck | Opportunity | Time | Wisdom | Luck |

Samuel Butler

To live is like to love - all reason is against it, and all healthy instinct for it.

Instinct | Love | Reason | Wisdom |

Anne Conway

In every visible Creature there is a Body and a Spirit... or, more Active and more Passive Principle, which may fitly be termed Male and Female, by reason of that Analogy a Husband hath with his Wife. For as the ordinary Generation of Men requires a Conjunction and Co-operation of Male and Female; so also all Generations and Productions whatsoever they be, require an Union, and conformable Operation of those Two Principles, to wit, Spirit and Body; but the Spirit is an Eye or Light beholding its own proper Image, and the Body is a Tenebrosity or Darkness receiving that Image, when the Spirit looks thereinto, as when one sees himself in a Looking-Glass; for certainly he cannot so behold himself in the Transparent Air, nor in any Diaphanous Body, because the reflexion of an Image requires a certain opacity or darkness, which we call a Body: Yet to be a Body is not an Essential property of any Thing; as neither is it a Property of any Thing to be dark; for nothing is so dark that nothing else, neither differs any thing from a Spirit, but in that it is more dark; therefore by how much the thicker and grosser it is become, so much the more remote it is from the degree of Spirit, so that this distinction is only modal and gradual, not essential or substantial.

Body | Darkness | Distinction | Husband | Light | Looks | Men | Nothing | Principles | Property | Reason | Spirit | Wife | Wisdom | Wit |

George William Curtis

Progress begins with the minority. It is completed by persuading the majority, by showing the reason and the advantage of the step forward, and that is accomplished by appealing to the intelligence of the majority.

Intelligence | Majority | Progress | Reason | Wisdom |

Robert Collier

When difficulties confront you, baptize them opportunity and set the man inside you to finding the way to turn them from difficulties into opportunities.

Man | Opportunity | Wisdom |

William Collins

Peace rules the day, where reason rules the mind.

Day | Mind | Peace | Reason | Wisdom |

Cyril Connolly, fully Cyril Vernon Connolly

A life based on reason will always require to be balanced by an occasional bout of violent and irrational emotion, for the instinctual drives must be satisfied.

Life | Life | Reason | Will | Wisdom |

Floyd Dell

There is no human reason why a child should not admire and emulate his teacher's ability to do sums, rather than the village bum's ability to whittle sticks and smoke cigarettes. The reason why the child does not is plain enough - the bum has put himself on an equality with him and the teacher has not.

Ability | Enough | Equality | Reason | Wisdom | Child | Teacher |

Albert Cooper, fully Albert Glen Cooper

A true history of human events would show that a far larger proportion of our acts as the results of sudden impulses and accident, than of the reason of which we so much boast.

Accident | Events | History | Reason | Wisdom |

John Dewey

It is in education more than anywhere else that we have sincerely striven to carry into execution "the Great American Dream": the vision of a longer and fuller life for the ordinary man, a life of widened freedom, of equal opportunity for each to make of himself all that he is capable of becoming.

Education | Freedom | Life | Life | Man | Opportunity | Vision | Wisdom |

Jean-Henri Merle d'Aubigné

Free inquiry, if restrained within due bounds, and applied to proper subjects, is a most important privilege of the human mind; and if well conducted, is one of the greatest friends to truth. But when reason knows neither its office nor its limits, and when employed on subjects foreign to its jurisdiction, it then becomes a privilege dangerous to be exercised.

Important | Inquiry | Mind | Office | Reason | Truth | Wisdom | Friends | Privilege |

Adam Clarke

It is strictly and philosophically true in Nature and reason that there is no such thing as chance or accident; it being evident that these words do not signify anything really existing, anything that is truly an agent ore the cause of any event; but they signify merely men’s ignorance of the real and immediate cause.

Accident | Cause | Chance | Ignorance | Men | Nature | Reason | Wisdom | Words |