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

Hans Reichenbach

The concept of congruence in Euclidean geometry is not exactly the same as that in non-Euclidean geometry... "Congruent" means in Euclidean geometry the same as "determining parallelism," a meaning which it does not have in non-Euclidean geometry.

Children | Example | Good | Parents | Will |

Hans Reichenbach

Clocks are inherently four-dimensional instruments, since the endpoints of their unit distances are events. Measuring rods, on the other hand, are three-dimensional measuring instruments; their end points are space points and they can be changed into four-dimensional measuring instruments only if events are produced at their end points according to a special rule.

Hans Hoffman

The relative meaning of two physical facts in a emotionally controlled relation always creates the phenomenon of a third fact of a higher order, just as two musical sounds, heard simultaneously create the phenomenon of a third, fourth or fifth. The nature of this higher third is non-physical. In a sense it is magic. Each such phenomenon always overshadows the material qualities and the limited meaning of the basic factors from which it has sprung. For this reason Art expresses the highest quality of the spirit when it is surreal in nature; or, in terms of the visual arts, when it is of a surreal plastic nature.

Need | Friends |

Hans Reichenbach

Absolute time would exist in a causal structure for which the concept indeterminate as to time order lends to a unique simultaneity, i.e., for which there is no finite interval of time between the departure and return of a first-signal...

Hans Reichenbach

Common to the two geometries is only the general property of one-to-one correspondence, and the rule that this correspondence determines straight lines as shortest lines as well as their relations of intersection.

Hans Hoffman

Art is to me the glorification of the human spirit, and as such it is the cultural documentation of the time in which it is produced.

Honor |

Hans Hoffman

Monumentality is an affair of relativity. The truly monumental can only come about by means of the most exact and refined relation between parts. Since each thing carries both a meaning of its own and an associated meaning in relation to something else ? its essential value is relative. We speak of the mood we experience when looking at a landscape. This mood results from the relation of certain things rather than from their separate actualities. This is because objects do not in themselves possess the total effect they give when interrelated.

People |

Italian Proverbs

One may buy gold too dear.

Faith |

Italian Proverbs

One who wants to keep their yard tidy does not reserve a plot for the weeds.

Change | Civilization | Future | Global | Health | Inconvenient | Land | Security | Will |

Italian Proverbs

Poor men do penance for rich men's sins.

Experience | Openness | People | Personality | Safe |

Italian Proverbs

Sometimes the lees are better than the wine.

Little | Means | Will |

Italian Proverbs

No book was so bad, but some good might be got out of it.

Need |

Italian Proverbs

One who speaks fair words feeds you with an empty spoon.

Attention | Change | Conversation | Global | Land | Need |

Italian Proverbs

No one ever saw a goat dead of hunger.

People | Regard | Think |

Italian Proverbs

Public money is like holy water, every one helps himself to it.

People | Play |

Italian Proverbs

Nothing improves the taste of pasta more than a good appetite.

Control | People |

Italian Proverbs

Of this world each man has as much as he takes.

Life | Life | Men |

Italian Proverbs

The eye of the master fattens the horse.

Experience | Life | Life | Principles | Psychology | Time | Youth | Youth |

Italian Proverbs

Tell me the company you keep, and I will tell you who you are.

Need |

Italian Proverbs

Take the will for the deed.

Focus | Government | People | Price | Government |