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

Gerald White Johnson

No man was ever endowed with a right without being at the same time saddled with a responsibility.

Character | Man | Responsibility | Right | Time |

Juan Ramón Jimenez, fully Juan Ramón Jiménez Mantecón

The greatest assassin of life is haste, the desire to reach things before the right time which means overreaching them.

Character | Desire | Haste | Life | Life | Means | Right | Time |

William James

In ethical, psychological and aesthetic matters, to give a clear reason for one’s judgment is universally recognized as a mark of rare genius. The helplessness of uneducated people account for their likes and dislikes is often ludicrous.

Aesthetic | Character | Genius | Judgment | People | Reason |

David Hume

Disbelief in futurity loosens in a great measure the ties of morality, and may be for that reason pernicious to the peace of civil society.

Character | Disbelief | Morality | Peace | Reason | Society |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

The aim and purpose of human life is the unitive knowledge of God. Among the indispensable means to that end is right conduct, and by the degree and kind of virtue achieved, the degree of liberating knowledge may be assessed and its quality evaluated. In a word, the tree is known by its fruits; God is not mocked.

Character | Conduct | God | Indispensable | Knowledge | Life | Life | Means | Purpose | Purpose | Right | Virtue | Virtue | God |

William James

Fear of life is one form or other is the great thing to exorcise; but it isn’t reason that will ever do it. Impulse without reason is enough, and reason without impulse is a poor makeshift. I take it that no man is educated who has never dallied with the thought of suicide.

Character | Enough | Fear | Impulse | Life | Life | Man | Reason | Suicide | Thought | Will | Thought |

Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

The more people who believe something, the more apt it is to be wrong. The person who's right often has to stand alone.

Character | People | Right | Wrong |

Garrison Keillor, fully Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor

We cannot freely and wisely choose the right way for ourselves unless we know both good and evil.

Character | Evil | Good | Right |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Right thinking, surely, is entirely different from right thought. Right thought is static... Right thinking is the understanding of relationship from moment to moment, which uncovers the whole process of the self.

Character | Relationship | Right | Self | Thinking | Thought | Understanding | Thought |

Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

A crowd... in its very concept is the untruth, by reason of the fact that it renders the individual completely impenitent and irresponsible, or at least weakens his sense of responsibility by reducing it to a fraction.

Character | Individual | Reason | Responsibility | Sense |

Eric Allen Johnston

The things a man believes most profoundly are rarely on the surface of his mind or tongue. Newly acquired notions - decisions based on expediency, the fashionable ideas of the moment - are right on top of the pile, ready to be displayed in bright after-dinner conversation. But the ideas that make up a man's philosophy of life are somewhere way down below.

Character | Conversation | Ideas | Life | Life | Man | Mind | Philosophy | Right |

Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung

The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.

Character | Mind | Nonsense | Right | Sense | Wrong |

Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

What education is to the individual man, revelation is to the whole human race... Education gives man nothing which he could not also get from within himself; it gives him that which he could get form within himself, only quicker and more easily. In the same way too, revelation gives nothing to the human race which reason could not arrive at on its own; only it has given, and still gives to it, the most important of these things sooner.

Character | Education | Human race | Important | Individual | Man | Nothing | Race | Reason | Revelation |

John Locke

We must consider what person stands for; - which, I think, is a thinking intelligent being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider itself as itself, the same thinking thing, in different times and places; which it does only by that consciousness which is inseparable from thinking, and, as it seems to me, essential to it: it being impossible for any one to perceive without perceiving that he does perceive. When we see, hear, smell, taste, feel, meditate, or will anything, we know that we do so. Thus it is always as to our present sensations and perceptions: and by this every one is to himself that which he calls self.

Character | Consciousness | Present | Reason | Reflection | Self | Taste | Thinking | Will |

Francis Lieber

There is no right without parallel duty, no liberty without the supremacy of the law, no high destiny without earnest perseverance, no greatness without self-denial.

Character | Destiny | Duty | Greatness | Law | Liberty | Perseverance | Right | Self | Self-denial |