Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Inactivity

"Upon every hand we meet with those who have some secret resentment that is ever being nurtured within their hearts. They resent the success, or happiness of some one whom they think is less deserving than they are. They resent the just recognition that comes to others from work and long effort to excel. Or, they may resent being born poor - or resent the fact that they were even born!... Strive to excel, strive to achieve, where others have failed, and you will find no space within your mind to lodge resentment. Resentment is the child of selfishness, foolish envy, and inactivity... Our life upon this earth is too valuable for resentment of any kind. There is so much to do, so much to learn - so little time in which to live and work it all out." - George Matthew Adams

"Learning consists in adding one’s stock day by day. The practice of Tao consists in subtracting day by day: subtracting and yet again subtracting until one has reached inactivity." -

"Life is a short day; but it is a working day. Activity may lead to evil, but inactivity cannot lead to good." - Alberto Moravia, Pen name of Alberto Pincherle

"If the government should be taught that the highest wisdom of a state is a wise and masterly inactivity, an invaluable blessing will be conferred." - John Caldwell Calhoun

"Activity back of a very small idea will produce more than inactivity and the planning of genius." -

"For Goebbels, anxiety was a double-edged sword: too much anxiety could produce panic and demoralization, too little could lead to complacency and inactivity. An attempt was constantly made, therefore, to achieve a balance between the two extremes." - Leonard W. Doob, fully Leonard William Doob

"The aim and end of war is murder; the weapons employed in war are espionage, treachery and the encouragement of treachery, the ruining of a country, the plundering and robbing of its inhabitants for the maintenance of the army, and trickery and lying which all appear under the heading of the art of war. The military world is characterized by the absence of freedom – in other words, a rigorous discipline – enforced inactivity, ignorance, cruelty, debauchery, and drunkenness." - Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi

"Get into the habit of being both strict and friendly toward yourself; demand a certain standard of performance; approve of yourself, even reward yourself if you attain it. For too often we pursue just the wrong tactics. When we should be acting, we indulge or excuse ourselves for inactivity; we then upbraid and punish ourselves ruthlessly and futility. The scolding is futile because we somehow feel that, if we have been severe and cutting to ourselves, we have in some way atoned for the fault of non-performance. We have not, of course. We have not done what we planned, and we have discouraged and hurt ourselves in the bargain." - Dorothea Brande

"Life is a short day; but it is a working-day. Activity may lead to evil; but inactivity cannot be led to good." - Hannah More

"Effortlessness means not doing anything, inactivity -- AKARMA. Effort means doing much, activity -- KARMA. Both have to be there. Do much, but don't be a doer -- then you achieve both. Move in the world, but don't be a part of it. Live in the world, but don't let the world live in you. Then the contradiction has been absorbed. Then you are not rejecting anything, not denying anything. Then the whole God has been accepted." - Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL

"Much of the weird behavior kids display is a function of the aperiodic reinforcement schedule. And the endless confinement and inactivity slowly drives children out of their minds. Trapped children, like trapped rats, need close management. Any rat psychologist will tell you that." - John Taylor Gatto

"Once you touch the biographies of human beings, the notion that political beliefs are logically determined collapses like a pricked balloon." - Walter Lippmann