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

Washington Irving

It is in knowledge as in swimming; he who flounders and splashes on the surface, makes more noise, and attracts more attention than the pearl-diver who quietly dives in quest of treasures to the bottom.

Attention | Knowledge | Noise | Wisdom |

Thomas Hobbes

Science is the knowledge of consequences, and dependence of one fact upon another.

Consequences | Dependence | Knowledge | Science | Wisdom |

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

It is the province of knowledge to speak and it is the privilege of wisdom to listen.

Knowledge | Wisdom | Privilege |

John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

The goal of education is the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth.

Education | Knowledge | Truth | Wisdom |

Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla

No time exists other than now... So now is all you have and all you ever will have... Why not begin doing the best you can right where you are?... Trust the process of growth. Trust God. Pay attention to the details of your life, doing your very best with each challenge that presents itself... The past is the raw material of the present, but the past is not a blueprint for the present... Begin where you are. Do what you can. Even a small effort to change, to grow, to improve, will bring astonishing results... You can choose to build on what you were, but you are not what you were. You can focus on what you will be, but you are not what you will be. What you are is what you are right now - the inheritor of all of God’s gifts.

Attention | Challenge | Change | Effort | Focus | God | Growth | Life | Life | Past | Present | Right | Time | Trust | Will | Wisdom |

Lyndon Johnson, fully Lyndon Baines Johnson, aka LBJ

The Great Society is a place where every child can find knowledge to enrich his mind and to enlarge his talents... It is a place where the city of man services not only the needs of the body and the demands of commerce but the desire for beauty and the hunger for community... It is a place where men are more concerned with the quality of their goals than the quantity of their goods.

Beauty | Body | Commerce | Desire | Goals | Hunger | Knowledge | Man | Men | Mind | Society | Wisdom | Society | Commerce | Beauty | Child |

William James

I have no doubt whatever that most people live, whether physically, intellectually, or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness and of their souls’ resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger... We all have reservoirs of life to draw upon, of which we do not dream.

Consciousness | Doubt | Habit | Life | Life | Little | Man | People | Wisdom |

Lyndon Johnson, fully Lyndon Baines Johnson, aka LBJ

As man increases his knowledge of the heavens, why should he fear the unknown on earth? As man draws nearer to the stars, why should he not also draw nearer to his neighbor?

Earth | Fear | Knowledge | Man | Wisdom |

John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.

Ignorance | Knowledge | Wisdom |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

The dream is the small hidden door in the deepest and most intimate sanctum of the soul, which opens into the primeval cosmic night that was soul long before there was a conscious ego and will be soul far beyond what a conscious ego could ever reach.

Ego | Soul | Will | Wisdom |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

You cannot have complete knowledge about anything.

Knowledge | Wisdom |

Lame Deer, fully John Fire Lame Deer, aka The Old Man, born Tȟáȟča Hušté

Only human beings have come to a point where they no longer know why they exist. They don’t use their brains and they have forgotten the secret knowledge of their bodies, their senses, or their dreams. They don’t use the knowledge of the spirit has put into every one of them; they are not even aware of this, and so they stumble along blindly on the road to nowhere - a paved highway which they themselves bulldoze and make smooth so that they can get faster to the big, empty hole which they find at the end, waiting to swallow them up. It’s a quick comfortable superhighway, but I know where it leads to. I’ve seen it. I’ve been there in my vision and it makes me shudder to think about it.

Dreams | Knowledge | Spirit | Vision | Waiting | Wisdom | Think |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Knowledge in relationship creates division... knowledge becomes a barrier in relationship... Where there is division there must be conflict. And therefore an action born out of conflict is a non-intelligent action. So intelligent action is an action that is without friction, without conflict... Dependence is an action of a mind that is not intelligent.

Action | Dependence | Knowledge | Mind | Relationship | Wisdom |