Great Throughts Treasury

"Perhaps the most valuable result of all education is the ability to make yourself do the thing you have to do, when it ought to be done, whether you like it or not; it is the first lesson that ought to be learned, and however early a person's training begins, it is probably the last lesson that they learn thoroughly." - Thomas Henry Huxley, aka T.H. Huxley and Darwin's Bulldog

"Panic plays no part in the training of a nurse." - Elizabeth Kenny

"It is a fundamental truth that the responsibilities of motherhood cannot be successfully delegated. No, not to day-care centers, not to schools, not to nurseries, not to babysitters. We become enamored with men’s theories such as the idea of preschool training outside the home for young children. Not only does this put added pressure on the budget, but it places young children in an environment away from mother’s influence. Too often the pressure for popularity, on children and teens, places an economic burden on the income of the father, so mother feels she must go to work to satisfy her children’s needs. That decision can be most shortsighted. It is mother’s influence during the crucial formative years that forms a child’s basic character. Home is the place where a child learns faith, feels love, and thereby learns from mother’s loving example to choose righteousness. How vital are mother’s influence and teaching in the home—and how apparent when neglected!" - Ezra Taft Benson

"We have the heaviest concentration of lawyers on Earth—one for every five-hundred Americans; three times as many as are in England, four times as many as are in West Germany, twenty-one times as many as there are in Japan. We have more litigation, but I am not sure that we have more justice. No resources of talent and training in our own society, even including the medical care, is more wastefully or unfairly distributed than legal skills. Ninety percent of our lawyers serve 10 percent of our people. We are over-lawyered and under-represented." - Jimmy Carter, fully James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr.

"No religious act is properly fulfilled unless it is done with a willing heart and a craving soul. You cannot worship Him with your body if you do not know how to worship Him with your soul. The relationship between deed and inner devotion must be understood in terms of polarity. Observance must not be reduced to external compliance with the law. Agreement of the heart with the spirit, not only with the letter of the law, is itself a requirement of the law. The goal is to live beyond the dictates of the law; to fulfill the eternal suddenly; to create goodness out of nothing, as it were... All observance is training in the art of love... Every act of man is an encounter of the human and the holy." - Abraham Joshua Heschel

"The true and adequate end of intellectual training and of a university is not learning or aquirement, but rather is thought or reason exercised upon knowledge, or what may be called philosophy." - John Henry Newman, aka Cardinal Newman and Blessed John Henry Newman

"The experience of helping a fellow man in danger, or even of training in a realistic manner to be ready to give this help, tends to change the balance of power in a youth's inner life with the result that compassion can become the master motive." - Kurt Hahn, fully Kurt Martin "the rod" Hahn

"Art is not an amusement, nor a distraction, nor is it, as many men maintain, an escape from life. On the contrary, it is a high training of the soul, essential to the soul's growth, to its unfoldment. " - Lawren Harris, fully Lawren Stewart Harris

"Give vocational training to the manually minded, and the children's courts of the future will have less to do." - Lewis Edward Lawes

"Friends, I tell you this: there is no Buddha, no spiritual path to follow, no training and no realization. What are you so feverishly running after? Putting a head on top of your own head, you blind idiots? Your head is right where it should be. The trouble lies in your not believing in yourselves enough. Because you don't believe in yourselves you are knocked here and there by all the conditions in which you find yourselves. Being enslaved and turned around by objective situations, you have no freedom whatever, you are not masters of yourselves. Stop turning to the outside and don't be attached to my words either. Just cease clinging to the past and hankering after the future. This will be better than ten years' pilgrimage." - Lin-chi, also Lin-chi Yi-sen, Lin-chi I-hsuan, Rinzai, Rinzai Gigen, Linji, Línjì Yìxuán NULL

"The best training any parent can give a child is to train the child to train himself." - Adolph P. Gouthey

"My training in physics has taught me that there is no such thing as coincidence." -

"The training of the teacher who is to help life is something far more than the learning of ideas. It includes the training of character; it is a preparation of the spirit." - Maria Montessori

" We must return teaching to the heart of the educational enterprise. Teaching needs to be supported, not only by rewarding excellence in teaching, but by placing the training of teachers at the center of our higher education system. If teaching is to become a prestigious profession, teachers must undergo rigorous training and hold prestigious degrees." - Elizabeth Dole, fully Mary Elizabeth Alexander Hanford "Liddy" Dole

"It might sound a paradoxical thing to say --for surely never has a generation of children occupied more sheer hours of parental time --but the truth is that we neglected you. We allowed you a charade of trivial freedoms in order to avoid making those impositions on you that are in the end both the training ground and proving ground for true independence. We pronounced you strong when you were still weak in order to avoid the struggles with you that would have fed your true strength. We proclaimed you sound when you were foolish in order to avoid taking part in the long, slow, slogging effort that is the only route to genuine maturity of mind and feeling. Thus, it was no small anomaly of your growing up that while you were the most indulged generation, you were also in many ways the most abandoned to your own meager devices by those into whose safe-keeping you had been given." - Midge Decter, fully Midge Rosenthal Decter

"The materialistic. realistic, and collectivist conception of freedom, as opposed to the idealistic, is this: Man becomes conscious of himself and his humanity only in society and only by the collective action of the whole society. He frees himself from the yoke of external nature only by collective and social labor, which alone can transform the earth into an abode favorable to the development of humanity. Without such material emancipation the intellectual and moral emancipation of the individual is impossible. He can emancipate himself from the yoke of his own nature, i.e. subordinate his instincts and the movements of his body to the conscious direction of his mind, the development of which is fostered only by education and training. But education and training are preeminently and exclusively social ... hence the isolated individual cannot possibly become conscious of his freedom. To be free ... means to be acknowledged and treated as such by all his fellowmen. The liberty of every individual is only the reflection of his own humanity, or his human right through the conscience of all free men, his brothers and his equals. I can feel free only in the presence of and in relationship with other men. In the presence of an inferior species of animal I am neither free nor a man, because this animal is incapable of conceiving and consequently recognizing my humanity. I am not myself free or human until or unless I recognize the freedom and humanity of all my fellowmen. Only in respecting their human character do I respect my own." - Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin

"Today I know that physical training should have as much place in the curriculum as mental training." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

"The purpose of training is to tighten up the slack, toughen the body, and polish the spirit. " - Morihei Ueshiba

"Be grateful even for hardship, setbacks, and bad people. Dealing with such obstacles is an essential part of training in Aikido. " - Morihei Ueshiba

"Do not stare into the eyes of your opponent: he may mesmerize you. Do not fix your gaze on his sword: he may intimidate you. Do not focus on your opponent at all: he may absorb your energy. The essence of training is to bring your opponent completely into your sphere. Then you can stand where you like. " - Morihei Ueshiba

"In your training do not be in a hurry, for it takes a minimum of ten years to master the basics and advance to the first rung. Never think of yourself as an all-knowing, perfected master; you must continue to train daily with your friends and students and progress together in Aikido. " - Morihei Ueshiba

"Practice the Art of Peace sincerely, and evil thoughts and deeds will naturally disappear. The only desire that should remain is the thirst for more and more training in the Way." - Morihei Ueshiba

"I begin by asking people to lie on their backs (after the same principle of reducing gravity) and learn to scan themselves. That is, they examine attentively the contact of their bodies with the floor and gradually learn to detect considerable differences – points where the contact is feeble or non-existent and others where it is full and distinct. This training develops awareness of the location of muscles producing weak contact through permanent excessive tension, thus holding parts of the body up off the floor. Some improvement in tension reduction can be achieved through muscular awareness alone, but beyond that no improvement will be carried over into normal live unless people increase their awareness of the skeleton and its orientation." - Moshé Feldenkreis, fully Moshé Pinchas Feldenkrais

"Make your training a habit. If you choose a convenient time, you will be able to abide by regular exercises. If you make it difficult, you will soon find a-hundred-and-one alternatives instead. Occasionally break the regularity. Do not make your habit a compulsion." - Moshé Feldenkreis, fully Moshé Pinchas Feldenkrais

"I regard it as a duty which I owed, not just to my people, but also to my profession, to the practice of law, and to the justice for all mankind, to cry out against this discrimination which is essentially unjust and opposed to the whole basis of the attitude towards justice which is part of the tradition of legal training in this country. I believed that in taking up a stand against this injustice I was upholding the dignity of what should be an honorable profession." - Nelson Mandela, fully Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela

"Life attracts life… Life can seem either very long or very short, according to how you live it… Life does not play with marked cards. Winning or losing is part of it… Life has many ways of testing a person's will, either by having nothing happen at all or by having everything happen all at once… Life is a constant risk, and anyone who forgets this will be unprepared for the challenges that fate may have in store… Life is a game that is spinning faster to dizziness; life is a skydiving game; it gives us the opportunity, we flying and soaring up again; life is a hiking trip; it wants to climb to the pinnacle of your best and feeling angry, upset when you do not control it… Life is an act of faith… Life is falling down 7 times and getting up 8… Life is like a garden, you reap what you sow… Life is like cooking: before choosing what you love, try everything… Life is made of our attitudes. And there are certain things that the gods oblige us to live through. Their reason for this does not matter, and there is no action we can take to make them pass us by… Life is one long training session, in preparation for what will come. Life and death lose their meaning, there are only challenges to be met with joy and overcome with tranquility… Life is short. Kiss slowly, laugh insanely, love truly and forgive quickly… Life is too short to waste time complaining… Life is the moment we're living right now… Life sometimes separates people so that they can realize how much they mean to each other… Life without cause is a life without effect. " - Paulo Coelho

"The Catholic priest in America--and in the West generally--is more of a cultural phenomenon than he is a Gospel man. He is nationalistic, white supremacist, and uncritical toward affluence and its source. His training reflects nuances of these cultural fixations, but, beyond that, it schools him merely in neutrality toward life. By that I mean, he tends to take a purely institutional view of threats to life, whether they be its abuse or destruction." - Philip Berrigan

"Musical training is a more potent instrument than any other, because rhythm and harmony find their way into the inward places of the soul; on which they mightily fasten, imparting grace, and making the soul of him who is rightly educated graceful, or of him who is ill-educated ungraceful; and also because he who has received this education of the inner being will most shrewdly perceive omissions or faults in art and nature, and with a true taste, while he praises and rejoices over and receives into his soul the good, and becomes noble and good, he will justly blame and hate the bad, now in the days of his youth, even before he is able to know the reason why; and when reason comes he will recognize and salute the friend with whom his education has made him long familiar." - Plato NULL

"Naturally, I do not believe that a course of formal training is any guarantee of a therapist’s infallibility and integrity. But I do think that such training is absolutely indispensable. Without supervision and membership of a reputable professional association defining the ethical standards it expects its members to live up to and empowering an ethics commission to uphold those standards, therapists can indulge more or less at will in the abuse of the patients dependent upon them." - Alice Miller, née Rostovski

"Taking a closer look, we no longer find the meaning of the word egoism so clear-cut and unequivocal. It will be much the same when we examine respect for others, which is often said to be missing in self-centered people. If a mother respects both herself and her child from his very first day onward, she will never need to teach him respect for others. He will, of course, take both himself and others seriously-he couldn't do otherwise. But a mother who, as a child, was herself not taken seriously by her mother as the person she really was will try to get it by training him to give it to her. The tragic fate that is the result of such training and such respect is described in this book." - Alice Miller, née Rostovski

"To be sure, I had no memories at all of the first five years of my life, and even those of the following years were very sparse. Although this is an indication of a strong repression – something that never occurs without good reason – it did not prevent me from clinging to the belief that my parents had provided me with loving care and had made every effort to give me everything I needed as a child. That was the way my mother would have described it had anyone asked her about my childhood. I had accepted her version all these years, in spite of the fact that my professional training had included two analyses and even though I should have been struck by the many similarities between my own history and the case histories of my patients." - Alice Miller, née Rostovski

"Because the medical system does not yet understand the full range of human needs it wounds people - both doctors and patients. It does not recognize the full range of human strengths, either. What is needed for the healing of the medical system is what is needed for the healing of the culture. Because we are wounded in the same way as our institutions, when you are trained by an institution your wounds increase. In our training we are actually rewarded for our woundedness and punished for our wholeness. Medical training at the moment is like a disease. We have to recover from it, and many people never do. I am a recovering physician. The medical system does not trust process. The whole concept of fixing and broken suggests an insensitivity to the process nature of the world. The essential word of process is yet. Yet is seeing with feminine eyes. We are all works in process. That means that judgment is really inappropriate, or premature, because none of us are finished... yet." - Rachel Naomi Remen

"Suffering is part of our training program for becoming wise." - Ram Dass, aka Baba Ram Dass, born Richard Alpert

"I tell you this: There is no Buddha, no Dharma, no training and no realization. What are you so hotly chasing? Putting a head on top of your head, you blind fools? Your head is right where it should be. What are you lacking?" - Rinzai, aka Lin- Chi Yi-Sen, Lin-chi I-hsuan, Rinzai Gigen, Venerable Master Lin Chi NULL

"I tell you this: There is no Buddha, no Dharma, no training and no realization. What are you so hotly chasing? Putting a head on top of your head, you blind fools? Your head is right where it should be. What are you lacking?" - Rinzai, aka Lin- Chi Yi-Sen, Lin-chi I-hsuan, Rinzai Gigen, Venerable Master Lin Chi NULL

"The kinds of spiritual practices we can undertake are limitless. However, ultimately the form is less important than these factors: the commitment to practice, the ability to keep returning to the intention, the attitude one brings to the uncontrollable and the ability to transfer the benefits of the practice into how we live our lives, how we relate to ourselves and others, how free we become to embody the values and ideals we embrace in our minds, how we deal with temptations of all sorts. In other words we practice to live with the wisdom and compassion, which we already possess. We practice to actualize the pure soul, which God has planted with us." - Sheila Peltz Weinberg

"How anybody dresses is indicative of his self-concept. If students are dirty and ragged, it indicates they are not interested in tidying up their intellects either." - S. I. Hayakawa, fully Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa

"The Japanese were masters at using classical conditioning with their soldiers. Early in World War II, Chinese prisoners were placed in a ditch on their knees with their hands bound behind them. And one by one, a select few Japanese soldiers would go into the ditch and bayonet "their" prisoner to death. This is a horrific way to kill another human being. Up on the bank, countless other young soldiers would cheer them on in their violence. Comparatively few soldiers actually killed in these situations, but by making the others watch and cheer, the Japanese were able to use these kinds of atrocities to classically condition a very large audience to associate pleasure with human death and suffering. Immediately afterwards, the soldiers who had been spectators were treated to sake, the best meal they had had in months, and to so-called comfort girls. The result? They learned to associate committing violent acts with pleasure." - S. L. A. Marshall, Samuel Lyman Atwood Marshall

"I believe that you can combine biblical principles and good business practices. I testified before Congress…on how to be honest and successful at the same time." - S. Truett Cathy

"Perhaps the day will come when all the things bestowed upon mankind for its benefit and liberation will become corrupted into their very antithesis. Mankind, instead of assuring its members their legitimate rights of development ... will serve them the tear-drenched bread of slaves and the worm-wood of bitterness.... At such time, science, too, will become solely destructive ... will frantically blind itself with its own brightness ....Mankind will vainly exhaust its strength in a blind upsurge of uncurbed desires." - Samson Raphael Hirsch

"'Cause grace and virtue are within Prohibited degrees of kin; And therefore no true saint allows They shall be suffer'd to espouse." - Samuel Butler

"Property, marriage, the law; as the bed to the river, so rule and convention to the instinct; and woe to him who tampers with the banks while the flood is flowing." - Samuel Butler

"Biographies of great, but especially of good men, are most instructive and useful as helps, guides, and incentives to others. Some of the best are almost equivalent to gospels - teaching high living, high thinking, and energetic actions for their own and the world's good." - Samuel Smiles

"The brave man is an inspiration to the weak, and compels them, as it were, to follow him." - Samuel Smiles

"Patience and perseverance are never more thoroughly Christian graces than when features of prayer." - Samuel I. Prime, fully Samuel Irenaeus Prime

"If you want to be truly successful invest in yourself to get the knowledge you need to find your unique factor. When you find it and focus on it and persevere your success will blossom." - Sidney Madwed

"Never value the valueless. The trick is to know how to recognize it." - Sidney Madwed

"The biggest obstacle to changing ourselves is discouragement." - Simcha Zissel of Kelm, fully Rabbi imcha Zissel Ziv Broida, aka the Elder of Kelm

"But I must admit I didn´t like that idea; do the same thing as everyone else. Eating to live, living to eat - that had been the nightmare of my adolescence. If it meant going back to that, if would be just as well to turn on the gas at once. But I suppose everyone thinks of things like that: let´s turn on the gas at once. And you don´t turn it on." - Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir

"Geologists have not been slow to admit that they were in error in assuming that they had an eternity of past time for the evolution of the earth's history. They have frankly acknowledged the validity of the physical arguments which go to place more or less definite limits to the antiquity of the earth. They were, on the whole, disposed to acquiesce in the allowance of 100 millions of years granted to them by Lord Kelvin, for the transaction of the whole of the long cycles of geological history. But the physicists have been insatiable and inexorable. As remorseless as Lear's daughters, they have cut down their grant of years by successive slices, until some of them have brought the number to something less than ten millions. In vain have the geologists protested that there must somewhere be a flaw in a line of argument which tends to results so entirely at variance with the strong evidence for a higher antiquity, furnished not only by the geological record, but by the existing races of plants and animals. They have insisted that this evidence is not mere theory or imagination, but is drawn from a multitude of facts which become hopelessly unintelligible unless sufficient time is admitted for the evolution of geological history. They have not been able to disapprove the arguments of the physicists, but they have contended that the physicists have simply ignored the geological arguments as of no account in the discussion." - Archibald Geikie, fully Sir Archibald Geikie