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

Friedrich Engels

With the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by plan-conforming, conscious organization. The struggle for individual existence disappears... Only from that time will man himself, with full consciousness, make his own history - only from that time will the social causes set in movement by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It is the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.

Anarchy | Consciousness | Existence | Freedom | History | Individual | Man | Means | Necessity | Organization | Plan | Society | Struggle | Time | Will | Wisdom |

Joseph Fourier, fully Jean Baptiste Joseph Fourier

Primary causes are unknown to us, but are subject to simple and constant laws, which may be discovered by observation, the study of them being the object of natural philosophy.

Object | Observation | Philosophy | Study | Wisdom |

François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon

Wine is the source of the greatest evils among communities. It causes diseases, quarrels, seditions, idleness, aversion to labor, and family disorders... It is s species of poison that causes madness. It does not make a man die, but it degrades him into a brute. Men may preserve their health and vigor without wine; with wine they run the risk of ruining their health and losing their morals.

Family | Health | Idleness | Labor | Madness | Man | Men | Risk | Wisdom |

Horace Fletcher, nicknamed "The Great Masticator"

Fear is an acid which is pumped into one's atmosphere. It causes mental, moral and spiritual asphyxiation, and sometimes death; death to energy and all growth.

Death | Energy | Fear | Growth | Wisdom |

Henry Ford

What causes war is not patriotism, not that human beings are willing to die in defense of their dearest ones. It is the false doctrine, fostered by the few, that war spells gain.

Defense | Doctrine | Patriotism | War | Wisdom |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

If we may assume as an experience admitting of no exception that everything living dies from causes within itself, and returns to the inorganic, we can only say “the goal of all life is death,” and, casting back, “The inanimate was there before the animate.”

Death | Experience | Life | Life | Wisdom |

David Hume

Upon the whole, necessity is something, that exists in the mind, not in objects; nor is it possible for us ever to form the most distant idea of it, consider’d as a quality in bodies. Either we have no idea of necessity, or necessity is nothing but that determination of the thought to pass from causes to effects and from effects to causes, according to their experienc’d union.

Determination | Mind | Necessity | Nothing | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |

Raymond Holliwell

Understanding reduces the greatest to simplicity, and lack of it causes the least to take on the magnitude of complexity.

Simplicity | Understanding | Wisdom |

David Hume

Notwithstanding the empire of the imagination, there is a secret tie or union among particular ideas, which causes the mind to conjoin them more frequently together, and makes the one, upon its appearance, introduce the other... These principles of association are reduced to three, viz. Resemblance... Contiguity... Causation... as it is by means of thought only that any thing operates upon our passions, and as these are only ties of our thought, they are really to us the cement of the universe, and all the operations of the mind must, in a great measure, depend on them.

Appearance | Association | Ideas | Imagination | Means | Mind | Principles | Thought | Universe | Wisdom | Association | Thought |

Thomas Jefferson

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Earth | Events | God | Government | Mankind | Men | Nature | People | Respect | Right | Wisdom | Government | Respect | God | Truths |

Gottfried Leibniz, fully Gottfried Wilhalm von Leibniz, Baron von Leibnitz

Souls act according to the laws of final causes through appetitions, ends, and means. Bodies act according to the laws of efficient causes or motions. And the two realms, that of efficient causes and that of final causes, are in harmony with one another.

Ends | Harmony | Means | Wisdom |

John Leslie "J. L." Mackie

Our problem is that once we have accepted an irreducible distinction between mental and physical facts and properties, and have allowed that physical facts and properties constitute sufficient causes of actions, we seem to be forced to admit that mental facts and properties are epiphenomenal, causally idle; yet this conclusion is itself implausible.

Distinction | Wisdom |

Jacques Maritain

The search for causes is indeed the business of philosophers.

Business | Search | Wisdom | Business |

Thomas Merton

Instead of hating the people you think are war-makers, hate the appetites and the disorder in your own soul, which are the causes of war.

Hate | People | Soul | War | Wisdom | Think |

Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne

It is not the last step that causes weariness: it only declares it.

Wisdom |

Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

Familiarity in one's superiors causes bitterness, fir it may not be returned.

Bitterness | Familiarity | Wisdom |