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

Robert Hall

It has always struck me that there is a far greater distinction between man and man than between many men and most other animals.

Character | Distinction | Man | Men |

David Hume

The distinction of vice and virtue is not founded merely on the relations of objects, nor is perceiv’d by reason.

Character | Distinction | Reason | Virtue | Virtue | Vice |

Robin Lakoff, fully Robin Tolmach Lakoff

The distinction between men’s and women’s language is a symptom of a problem in our culture, not the problem itself. Basically it reflects the fact that men and women are expected to have different interests and different roles, hold different types of conversations, and react differently to other people.

Character | Culture | Distinction | Language | Men | People |

Garbriel Honoré Marcel

Everything really comes down to the distinction between what we have and what we are.

Character | Distinction |

Alexander Smith

To have to die is a distinction which no man is proud.

Character | Distinction | Man |

John Anderson

The general conclusion is that all the objects of science, including minds and goods, are things occurring in space and time... and that we can study them in virtue of the fact that we come into spatial and temporal relations with them. And therefore all ideals, ultimates, symbols, agencies and the like are to be rejected, and no such distinction as that of facts and principles, or facts and values, can be maintained. There are only facts, i.e., occurrences in space and time.

Distinction | Ideals | Principles | Science | Space | Study | Time | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom |

Niels Bohr, fully Aage Niels Bohr

One of the favorite maxims of my father was the distinction between the two sorts of truths, profound truths recognized by the fact that the opposite is also a profound truth, in contrast to trivialities where opposites are obviously absurd.

Absurd | Contrast | Distinction | Father | Maxims | Truth | Wisdom | Truths |

Anne Conway

In every visible Creature there is a Body and a Spirit... or, more Active and more Passive Principle, which may fitly be termed Male and Female, by reason of that Analogy a Husband hath with his Wife. For as the ordinary Generation of Men requires a Conjunction and Co-operation of Male and Female; so also all Generations and Productions whatsoever they be, require an Union, and conformable Operation of those Two Principles, to wit, Spirit and Body; but the Spirit is an Eye or Light beholding its own proper Image, and the Body is a Tenebrosity or Darkness receiving that Image, when the Spirit looks thereinto, as when one sees himself in a Looking-Glass; for certainly he cannot so behold himself in the Transparent Air, nor in any Diaphanous Body, because the reflexion of an Image requires a certain opacity or darkness, which we call a Body: Yet to be a Body is not an Essential property of any Thing; as neither is it a Property of any Thing to be dark; for nothing is so dark that nothing else, neither differs any thing from a Spirit, but in that it is more dark; therefore by how much the thicker and grosser it is become, so much the more remote it is from the degree of Spirit, so that this distinction is only modal and gradual, not essential or substantial.

Body | Darkness | Distinction | Husband | Light | Looks | Men | Nothing | Principles | Property | Reason | Spirit | Wife | Wisdom | Wit |

Michael Harner

In shamanism there is ultimately no distinction between helping others and helping yourself. By helping others shamancially, one becomes more powerful, self-fulfilled, and joyous. Shamanism goes far beyond a primarily self-concerned transcendence of ordinary reality. It is a transcendence for a broader purpose, the helping of mankind.

Distinction | Mankind | Purpose | Purpose | Reality | Self | Wisdom |

Jack Holland

There is a broad distinction between character and reputation, for one may be destroyed by slander, while the other can never be harmed, save by its possessor. Reputation is in no man's keeping. You and I cannot determine what other men shall think and say about us. We can only determine what they ought to think of us and say about us.

Character | Distinction | Man | Men | Reputation | Slander | Wisdom | Think |

Alfred M. Lilienthal

Here are taught three doctrines which shall be taught here as the essence of Judaism: First, there is a God, one, indivisible, eternal, spiritual, most holy and most perfect. Second, there is an immortal life and man is a son of eternity. Thirdly, love thy fellow men without distinction of creed or race as thyself.

Creed | Distinction | Eternal | Eternity | God | Life | Life | Love | Man | Men | Race | 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 |

Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

The friend of humanity cannot recognize a distinction between what is political and what is not. There is nothing that is not political.

Distinction | Friend | Humanity | Nothing | Wisdom |

Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev

Spirit unites itself upwardly to soul and transfigures it. The distinction between spirit and soul does not imply their separation.

Distinction | Soul | Spirit |

Robert Aris Willmott

Taste is not stationary. It grows every day, and is improved by cultivation, as a good temper is refined by religion. In its most advanced state it takes the title of judgment. Hume quotes Fontenelle's ingenious distinction between the common watch that tells the hours, and the delicately constructed one that marks the seconds and smallest differences of time.

Cultivation | Day | Distinction | Good | Religion | Taste | Temper | Title | Wisdom |

William Wirt

Perhaps there is no property in which men are more distinguished from each other, than in the various degrees in which they possess the faculty of observation. The great herd of mankind pass their lives in listless inattention and indifference as to what is going on around them, being perfectly content to satisfy the mere cravings of nature, while those who are destined to distinction have lynx-eyed vigilance that nothing can escape.

Distinction | Inattention | Indifference | Mankind | Men | Nature | Nothing | Observation | Property | Vigilance | Wisdom |

Katy Butler

For millennia, shamans and witch doctors... made no distinction between physical, emotional, and spiritual healing. To them, all symptoms were signs of something awry in the individual’s relationship with the larger universe of spirits and animal powers.

Distinction | Individual | Relationship | Universe |

Martin D’Arcy, fully Fr. Martin Cyril D'Arcy

The peculiar character of an individual human being is distinction from an atom lies in this, that he is the owner of himself and responsible to himself.

Character | Distinction | Individual |