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

Barbara Mary Ward, Baroness Jackson of Lodsworth, Lady Robert Jackson

To act without rapacity, to use knowledge with wisdom, to respect interdependence, to operate without hubris and greed are not simply moral operatives. They are an accurate scientific description of the means of survival.

Greed | Knowledge | Means | Respect | Survival | Wisdom | Respect |

Lyall Watson

There are around half a million words in the English language, but a recent statistical study of telephone speech discovered that 96 percent of all conversation over the wires consists of just 737 words.

Conversation | Language | Speech | Study | Wisdom | Words |

Victor Weisskopf, fully Victor "Viki" Frederick Weisskopf

Youngsters and adults cannot learn if information is pressed into their brains. You can teach only by creating interest, by creating an urge to know. Knowledge has to be sucked into the brain, not pushed into it. First, one must create a state of mind that craves knowledge, interest and wonder.

Knowledge | Mind | Teach | Wisdom | Wonder | Learn |

Paul Valéry, fully Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry

The majority of those who flatter themselves on their knowledge of the human heart do not separate their boasted insight from their unfavorable feeling about humanity... Nothing indeed imparts a psychological air so much as an habitual attitude of depreciation.

Heart | Humanity | Insight | Knowledge | Majority | Nothing | Wisdom |

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi

Just as divine truth is what God orders and produces as He comes to know it, so human truth is what man arranges and makes as he knows it. In this way knowledge is cognition of the genus or mode by which a thing is made, and by means of which, as the mind comes to know the mode, because it arranges the elements, it makes the thing. Divine truth is solid because God grasps all things; human truth is two-dimensional because man grasps the externals of things.

God | Knowledge | Man | Means | Mind | Truth | Wisdom | God |

Lyall Watson

If reality flows like a stream, then knowledge of such reality also becomes fluid, a process rather than a set of fixed truths. And because all knowledge is produced, displayed, communicated and applied in thought; then thought too must be seen as part of the same eternal tide... Thought is, in essence, a response of memory. It consists of a repetition of some image or sensation, or it involves a combination or reorganisation of such repetition in a new and useful way. So, in the end, intelligence turns out to be part of the flow. It is not grounded in cells or molecules, but drawn from the same moving stream as reality. In other words, mind and matter are ultimately inseparable.

Eternal | Intelligence | Knowledge | Memory | Mind | Reality | Thought | Wisdom | Words | Thought |

Simone Weil

If we find fullness of joy in the thought that God exists, we should find the same fullness in the knowledge that we ourselves do not exist for it is the same thought.

God | Joy | Knowledge | Thought | Wisdom | God | Thought |

Jonathan Weiner

Specialization has gotten out of hand. There are more branches in the tree of knowledge than there are in the tree of life.

Knowledge | Life | Life | Wisdom |

Arthur Warwick

There are two things necessary for a traveler to bring him to the end of his journey - a knowledge of his way, a perseverance in his walk. If he walk in a wrong way, the faster he goes the farther he is from home; if he sit still in the right way, he may know his home, but never come to it: discreet stays make speedy journeys. I will first then know my way, ere I begin my walk; the knowledge of my way is a good part of my journey.

Good | Journey | Knowledge | Perseverance | Right | Will | Wisdom | Wrong |

Lyall Watson

Perception is based, to a very large extent, on conceptual models - which are always inadequate, often incomplete and sometimes profoundly wrong. This complex situation arose because signals from the environment itself can be inadequate. The sort of information we need is not always available. And so, knowledge from the past, mixed up with assumptions about that knowledge which may be more or less appropriate, are used to augment information provided by the senses. Which means that our perception of any situation depends only partly on sensory signals being received at that time. And it is only a very short step from there, to perception which occurs in the absence of all immediate signals and has to be labeled “extrasensory”.

Absence | Knowledge | Means | Need | Past | Perception | Time | Wisdom | Wrong |

Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville

Eager and apprehensive men of small property constitute the class that is constantly increased by the equality of conditions. Hence in democratic communities the majority of the people do not clearly see what they have to gain by a revolution, but they continually and in a thousand ways feel that they might lose by one.

Equality | Majority | Men | People | Property | Revolution | Wisdom |

Perry F. Webb, fully Perry Flynt Webb or Perry Flint Webb

The home... is the lens through which we get our first look at marriage and all civic duties; it is the clinic where, by conversation and attitude, impressions are created with respect to sobriety and reverence; it is the school where lessons of truth or falsehood, honesty or deceit are learned; it is the mold which ultimately determines the structure of society.

Conversation | Deceit | Falsehood | Honesty | Marriage | Respect | Reverence | Society | Truth | Wisdom | Respect |

Edward Young

For envy, to small minds, is flattery.

Envy | Flattery | Wisdom |

Scott Adams, fully Scott Raymond Adams

Remember there's no such thing as a small act of kindness. Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.

Kindness |

Saint Bonaventure, born John of Fidanza Bonaventure

That we may arrive at an understanding of the First Principle, which is most spiritual and eternal and above us, we ought to proceed through the traces which are corporeal and outside us; and this it to be led into the way of God. We ought next to enter into our minds, which are the eternal image of God, spiritual and internal; and this is to walk in the truth of God. We ought finally to pass over into that which is eternal, most spiritual, and above us, looking to the First Principle; and this is to rejoice in the knowledge of God and in the reverence of His majesty.

Eternal | God | Knowledge | Reverence | Truth | Understanding | God |

Robert Aris Willmott

A little knowledge leads the mind from God. Unripe thinkers use their learning to authenticate their doubts. While unbelief has its own dogma, more peremptory than the inquisitor's, patient meditation brings the scholar back to humbleness. He learns that the grandest truths appear slowly.

Dogma | God | Knowledge | Learning | Little | Meditation | Mind | Scholar | Thinkers | Unbelief | Wisdom | Truths |

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

Never lose sight of this important truth, that no one can be truly great until he has gained a knowledge of himself which can only be acquired by occasional retirement.

Important | Knowledge | Retirement | Truth | Wisdom |