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

Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL

Laughing at his own son, who got his mother, and by his mother's means his father also, to indulge him, he told him that he had the most power of any one in Greece: "For the Athenians command the rest of Greece, I command the Athenians, your mother commands me, and you command your mother."

Father | Means | Mother | Power | Rest | Will |

Ralph Washington Sockman

The test of religion is whether it fits us to meet emergencies. A man has not more character than he can command in time of crisis.

Character | Man | Religion | Time |

Ralph Washington Sockman

A man has no more character than he can command in a time of crisis.

Character | Man | Time |

Talmud or The Talmud NULL

God did not create woman from man's head, that he should command her, nor from his feet that she should be his slave, but rather from his side, that she should be near his heart.

God | Heart | Man | Woman |

Thomas Wilson

He that will not command his thoughts... will soon lose the command of his actions.

Will |

William McDougall

Only he can command who has the courage to disobey.

Courage |

William Hazlitt

Those who can command themselves command others.

Niels Bohr, fully Aage Niels Bohr

Any development of knowledge of the rules of nature which may help to give greater command of the powers of nature holds the hope of improving the living conditions of mankind; but also holds dangers which put our entire civilization to a serious test. The responsibilities, however, that these dangers are defeated in the right way, rests not only upon the scientist but must be shared by all circles of every nation.

Civilization | Hope | Knowledge | Mankind | Nature | Right |

David Eli Lilienthal, "Mr. TVA"

Whether happiness or unhappiness, freedom or slavery, in short whether good or evil results from an improved environment depends largely upon how the change has been brought about, upon the methods by which the physical results have been reached, and in what spirit and for what purpose the fruits of that change are used. Because a higher standard of living, a greater productiveness and a command over nature are not good in and of themselves do not mean that we cannot make good of them, that they cannot be a source of inner strength.

Change | Evil | Freedom | Good | Nature | Purpose | Purpose | Slavery | Spirit | Strength | Unhappiness | Happiness |

Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger

You may ask — you are bound to ask me now: What, then, is in your opinion the value of natural science? I answer: Its scope, aim and value is the same as that of any other branch of human knowledge. Nay, none of them alone, only the union of all of them, has any scope or value at all, and that is simply enough described: it is to obey the command of the Delphic deity: gnothi seauton... get to know yourself!

Enough | Opinion | Value |

Ferdinand Foch

The power to command has never meant the power to remain mysterious.

Power |

Henri Frédéric Amiel

Order is light, peace, inward liberty, free command over oneself; it is power... It is aesthetic and moral beauty, it is well-being, it is man's greatest need.

Aesthetic |

Hyman George Rickover

Always use the chain of command to issue orders, but if you use the chain of command for information, you’re dead.

Henry P. Van Dusen

But there is only one avenue of access to that higher life. It is through a radical purging of inner unreality and the full and final surrender of one's whole self, all that one is and all that one possesses, to the imperious command of the Living God. From that surrender, when complete and unreserved, will follow release from defeat or ennui and the gift of utterly new joy and strength. The old life will be cast away; the old harrowing problems will dissolve; one will stand free from the shackles of temptation, self-consciousness, selfishness; for the first time in one's life, one will know the meaning of spiritual freedom. All that one has heard with the hearing of the ears about the life of religion, all that one has dismissed as the familiar exaggeration of religious propagandists or naïve faith no longer possible for intelligent moderns — all this will come vividly alive within one's own soul. One now knows, with a certainty for which there is no parallel, the truth of religion's claims — the absolutely unique character of the dedicated life, the vivid and continuous awareness of God's presence, the priceless worth of complete fellowship with Him, the service which is perfect freedom.

Awareness | Character | Defeat | Ennui | Exaggeration | Faith | Joy | Life | Life | Meaning | Problems | Service | Surrender | Time | Truth | Unique | Will | Worth | Awareness | Old |

James Allen

A man has to learn that he cannot command things, but that he can command himself; that he cannot coerce the wills of others, but that he can mold and master his own will: and things serve him who serves Truth; people seek guidance of him who is master of himself.

Guidance | Man | People | Wills | Guidance | Learn |

James Allen

He who would be useful, strong, and happy, must cease to be a passive receptacle for the negative, beggardly, and impure streams of thought; and as a wise householder commands his servants and invites his guests, so must he learn to command his desires, and to say, with authority, what thought he shall admit into the mansion of his soul.

Thought | Wise | Learn | Thought |

John Dewey

Within even the most social group there are many relations that are not as yet social. A large number of human relationships in any social group are still upon the machine-like plane. Individuals use one another so as to get desired results, without reference to the emotional and intellectual disposition and consent of those used. Such uses express physical superiority of position, skill, technical ability, and command of tools, mechanical or fiscal. So far as the relations of parent and child, teacher and pupil, employer and employee, governor and governed, remain upon this level, they form no true social group, no matter how closely their respective activities touch one another. Giving and taking of orders modifies actions and results, but does not of itself effect a sharing of purposes, a communication of interests.

Giving | Superiority | Parent | Teacher |

Lewis H. Lapham

From authors whom I read more than once I learn to value the weight of words and to delight in their meter and cadence -- in Gibbon's polyphonic counterpoint and Guedalla's command of the subjunctive, in Mailer's hyperbole and Dillard's similes, in Twain's invectives and burlesques with which he set the torch of his ferocious wit to the hospitality tents of the world's colossal humbug . . . I know no other way out of what is both the maze of the eternal present and the prison of the self except with a string of words.

Eternal | Hospitality | Present | Prison | Self | Wit | Words | Learn | Value |