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

Henry Home, Lord Kames

Ridicule, which chiefly arises from pride, a selfish passion, is but at best a gross pleasure, too rough an entertainment for those who are highly polished and refined.

Character | Entertainment | Passion | Pleasure | Pride | Ridicule |

Thomas W. Palmer

Learning, if rightly applied, makes a young man thinking, attentive, industrious, confident and wary; and an old man cheerful and useful. It is an ornament in prosperity, a refuge in adversity, an entertainment at all times; it cheers in solitude, and gives moderation and wisdom in all circumstances.

Adversity | Character | Circumstances | Entertainment | Learning | Man | Moderation | Prosperity | Solitude | Thinking | Wisdom | Moderation | Old |

W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish. This is bad for everyone; the majority lose all genuine taste of their own, and the minority become cultural snobs.

Art | Entertainment | Majority | Taste | Wisdom |

Jeremy Collier

Books are a guide in youth, and an entertainment for age. They support us under solitude, and keep us from becoming a burden to ourselves. They help us to forget the crossness of men and things, composed our cares and our passions, and lay our disappointments asleep. When we are weary of living, we may repair to the dead, who have nothing of peevishness, pride or design in their conversation.

Age | Books | Conversation | Design | Entertainment | Men | Nothing | Pride | Solitude | Wisdom | Youth |

Robert W. Fuller, fully Robert Works Fuller

Not every age is an age of heroes. In order for there to be such larger-than-life figures among us, there must be great social causes, such as just wars or liberation movements that call for extraordinary leadership. Otherwise there are no heroic niches to be filled, and we look elsewhere – to business, sports, entertainment – for people to admire.

Age | Business | Entertainment | Life | Life | Order | People |

Ezriel Tauber

When enjoying life becomes the goal, it ceases producing happiness because the minute you get it you become dissatisfied. The booming entertainment industry is a symptom of a society dedicated toward tranquilizing its members with a lifetime of enjoyments.

Entertainment | Industry | Life | Life | Society | Society | Happiness |

Jay Harris

The 6 o'clock news is a reality-based entertainment devised to titillate more than educate, a cheap confection designed to aggregate eyeballs for advertisers.

Entertainment | News | Reality |

Ralph Waldo Emerson

The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next.

Age | Entertainment | Religion |

Freeman John Dyson

The success of Apollo was mainly due to the fact that the project was conceived and honestly presented to the public as an international sporting event and not as a contribution to science. The order of priorities in Apollo was accurately reflected by the first item to be unloaded after each landing on the Moon's surface, the television camera. The landing, the coming and going of the astronauts, the exploring of the moon's surface, the gathering of Moon rocks and the earthward departure, all were expertly choreographed with the cameras placed in the right positions to make a dramatic show on television. This was to me the great surprise of the Apollo missions. There was nothing surprising in the fact that astronauts could walk on the Moon and bring home Moon rocks. There were no big scientific surprises in the chemistry of the Moon rocks or in the results of magnetic and seismic observations that the astronauts carried out. The big surprise was the quality of the public entertainment that the missions provided. I had never expected that we would see in real time astronauts hopping around in lunar gravity and driving their Rover down the Lincoln- Lee scarp to claim a lunar speed record of eleven miles per hour. Intensive television coverage was the driving force of Apollo. Von Braun had not imagined the possibilities of television when he decided that one kilohertz would be an adequate communication bandwidth for his Mars Project.

Entertainment | Force | Nothing | Order | Public | Right | Success | Television | Time |

George Berkeley, also Bishop Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne

A mind at liberty to reflect on its own observations, if it produce nothing useful to the world, seldom fails of entertainment to itself.

Entertainment | Liberty | Mind | Nothing |

Marshall McLuhan, fully Herbert Marshall McLuhan

Those who make a distinction between education and entertainment don't know the first thing about either.

Distinction | Education | Entertainment |

John Carmack, fully John D. Carmack II

At its best, entertainment is going to be a subjective thing that can't win for everyone, while at worst, a particular game just becomes a random symbol for petty tribal behavior.

Entertainment |

Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman

Universities exist to transmit knowledge and understanding of ideas and values to students not to provide entertainment for spectators or employment for athletes.

Entertainment | Ideas | Knowledge | Understanding |

Joyce Carol Oates

My belief is that art should not be comforting; for comfort, we have mass entertainment and one another. Art should provoke, disturb, arouse our emotions, expand our sympathies in directions we may not anticipate and may not even wish.

Art | Belief | Entertainment | Art |

Judith Martin, née Perlman, pen name Miss Manners

There are three possible parts to a date, of which at least two must be offered: entertainment, food, and affection. It is customary to begin a series of dates with a great deal of entertainment, a moderate amount of food, and the merest suggestion of affection. As the amount of affection increases, the entertainment can be reduced proportionately. When the affection IS the entertainment, we no longer call it dating. Under no circumstances can the food be omitted.

Circumstances | Entertainment |