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

William James

In civilized life... it has at last become possible for large numbers of people to pass from the cradle to the grave without ever having had a pang of genuine fear. Man of us need an attack of mental disease to teach us the meaning of the word. Hence the possibility of so much blindly optimistic philosophy and religion.

Character | Disease | Fear | Grave | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Need | People | Philosophy | Religion | Teach |

David Hume

The chief and most confounding objection to excessive skepticism, that no durable good can ever result from it; while it remains in its full force and vigor. We need only ask such a skeptic, what his meaning is? And what he proposes by all these curious researches? He is immediately at a loss, and knows not what to answer.

Character | Force | Good | Meaning | Need | Skepticism |

Trevor Huddleston

We are created by God for union with Himself... That’s really the meaning of heaven too: fulfillment, wholeness... Though no man has seen God, we have to learn how to love God through loving one another.

Character | Fulfillment | God | Heaven | Love | Man | Meaning | Wholeness | God | Learn |

Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos

I began to accept that the meaning of life, even the purpose of the pain that accompanies it, would be found not in the question I asked of life, but in the questions life asked of me.

Character | Life | Life | Meaning | Pain | Purpose | Purpose | Question |

Robert H. Jackson, fully Robert Houghwout Jackson

A person gets from a symbol the meaning he puts into it, and what is one man's comfort and inspiration is another's jest and scorn.

Character | Comfort | Inspiration | Man | Meaning |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

Our current neglect of Law is yet another of the many indications that twentieth-century educators have ceased to be concerned with questions of ultimate truth or meaning and (apart from mere vocational training) are interested solely in the dissemination of a rootless and irrelevant culture, and the fostering of the solemn foolery of scholarship for scholarship’s sake.

Character | Culture | Law | Meaning | Neglect | Training | Truth |

William James

We can act as if there were a God; feel as if we were free; consider Nature as if she were full of special designs; lay plans as if we were to be immortal; and we find then that these words do make a genuine difference in our moral life.

Character | God | Life | Life | Nature | Words |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

The least of things with a meaning is worth more in life than the greatest of things without it.

Character | Life | Life | Meaning | Worth |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Relationship means to respond. The root meaning of that word, not what we have made of that word, is to respond completely to another, like responsibility. Do we ever respond totally with each other, or it is always a fragmentary response, a partial response?

Character | Meaning | Means | Relationship | Responsibility |

Martin Luther King, Jr.

It may well be that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition is not the glaring noisiness of the so-called bad people, but the appalling silence of the so-called good people. It may be that our generation will have to repent not only for the diabolical actions and vitriolic words of the children of darkness, but also for the crippling fears and tragic apathy of the children of light.

Apathy | Character | Children | Darkness | Good | Light | People | Silence | Tragedy | Will | Words |

Jaron Lanier, fully Jaron Zepel Lanier

Life is based on limitation and compromise. The fact that we forget the meaning of life is the meaning of life. Being in a state of partial awareness allows experience and life to progress. God, as an omniscient being, is not an “experiencing being” because his or her experience is not new. If You were going to start a universe, what would Your options be? You could choose to remain totally stagnant, but that wouldn’t amount to a true universe. You’d need entities that experience it, entities that are fragile and temporary and not omniscient. That’s who we are and why we’re here.

Awareness | Character | Experience | God | Life | Life | Meaning | Need | Progress | Universe | Awareness |

László Kardos

Every man is an island. Each person radiates feelings to others, but ultimately we are alone. For me, the essence of life is how we handle our loneliness. There are moments when we manage to resolve this loneliness through personal relationships, especially through love. But there are also certain situations in which you feel truly alone, when even words and affection cannot ease your fears.

Character | Feelings | Life | Life | Loneliness | Love | Man | Words |

Wolfe Kelman

Moments of total transcendence are what give meaning to life... reaching entirely beyond yourself.

Character | Life | Life | Meaning |

Roger L'Estrange, fully Sir Roger L'Estrange

Men are not to be judged by their looks, habits, and appearances; but by the character of their lives and conversations, and by their works. It is better to be praised by one's own works than by the words of another.

Better | Character | Looks | Men | Words |

Wilma Mankiller, fully Wilma Pearl Mankiller

The meaning of life is to live in balance and harmony with every other living thing in creation. We must all strive to understand the interconnectedness of all living things and accept our individual role in the protection and support of other life forms on earth. We must also understand our own insignificance in the totality of things.

Balance | Character | Earth | Harmony | Individual | Insignificance | Life | Life | Meaning | Understand |

Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas

The best thing about philosophy is that it fails. It is better that philosophy fail to totalize meaning for it thereby remains open to the irreducible otherness of transcendence.

Better | Character | Meaning | Philosophy |