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

Victor Weisskopf, fully Victor "Viki" Frederick Weisskopf

Most forms of human creativity have one aspect n common: the attempt to give some sense to the various impressions, emotions, experiences, and actions that fill our lives, and thereby to give some meaning and value to our existence... The crisis of our time in the Western world is that the search for meaning has become meaningless for many of us.

Character | Creativity | Emotions | Existence | Meaning | Search | Sense | Time | World | Crisis | Value |

Francois-Noel Babeuf

The ends justify the means. To reach a certain goal, one must vanquish everything that stands in the way.

Ends | Justify | Means | Wisdom |

Albert Einstein

To make clear fundamental ends and valuations, and to set them for the fast in the emotional life of an individual, seems to me precisely the most important function which religion has to perform in the social life of a man... They come into being not through demonstration but through revelation, through the medium of powerful personalities.

Ends | Important | Individual | Life | Life | Man | Religion | Revelation | Wisdom |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Whenever I hear people talking about "liberal ideas," I am always astounded that men should love to fool themselves with empty sounds. An idea should never be liberal; it must be vigorous, positive, and without loose ends so that it may fulfill its divine mission and be productive. The proper place for liberality is in the realm of the emotions.

Emotions | Ends | Ideas | Love | Men | Mission | People | Talking | Wisdom |

Matthew Hale, fully Sir Matthew Hale

Laziness grows on people; it begins in cobwebs and ends in iron chains. The more business a man has to do the more he is able to accomplish, for he learns to economize his time.

Business | Ends | Laziness | Man | People | Time | Wisdom | Business |

John Heywood

All is well that ends well.

Ends | Wisdom |

Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos

The answer to the accumulating casualties of the welfare state’s “war” on poverty is the home-grown, grass-roots, all-volunteer army of ordinary people armed with food, books, skills and a determination to make a difference. The entrepreneurial creativity that catapulted this nation to a position of global leadership can now be harnessed to do for community what it did for productivity. When we provide imaginative, entrepreneurial alternatives to the welfare state, we won’t need to confront it. It will simply wither away. And the rewards of this work are a bounty of spiritual renewal: an abundance of love, meaning and connectedness.

Abundance | Books | Creativity | Determination | Global | Love | Meaning | Need | People | Position | Poverty | War | Will | Wisdom | Work | Leadership |

Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos

Religion may begin with our love of God, but true science ends there. In the very process of demystifying the world, we discover a new mystery, recognizing and celebrating God in everything.

Ends | God | Love | Mystery | Religion | Science | Wisdom | World | God |

James Henry Leigh Hunt

Did you ever observe that immoderate laughter always ends in a sigh?

Ends | Laughter | Wisdom |

Martin Luther King, Jr.

The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

Ends | Means | Men | Power | Wisdom |

Samuel David Luzzatto, aka by acronym of SHaDaL or SHeDaL

Society's preservation and man's happiness depend on illusion. Nature itself, which certainly represents the will of God, deludes us in many respects, as when it leads us by the cords of love to reproduce the race. If a youth would consider the trouble in rearing a family, not one in a thousand would marry, but nature closes our eyes to the future (and indeed, wherever popular knowledge rises, the birth rate declines). The same is true of the other passions, which nature utilizes to deceive man and goad them toward the attainment of ends which, when attained, turn out to be but vanity.

Attainment | Birth | Ends | Family | Future | God | Illusion | Knowledge | Love | Man | Nature | Race | Society | Will | Wisdom | Youth | Youth | Trouble | Happiness |

Kathleen Norris

There is a divinity that shapes our ends - but we can help by listening for Its voice.

Divinity | Ends | Listening | Wisdom |

Philo, aka Philo of Alexandria, Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia, "Philon", and Philo the Jew NULL

God is withdrawn from both ends of time, for his life is not Time, but Eternity, the archetype of time. And in Eternity there is no past and future, only present.

Ends | Eternity | Future | God | Life | Life | Past | Present | Time | Wisdom |

William Shenstone

A liar with making falsehood appear like truth, and ends with making truth itself appear like falsehood.

Ends | Falsehood | Truth | Wisdom |