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

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

Maybe...you'll fall in love with me all over again. Hell, I said, I love you enough now. What do you want to do? Ruin me? Yes. I want to ruin you. Good, I said. That's what I want too.

Man |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

Thou wilt go now, rabbit. But I go with thee. As long as there is one of us there is both of us.

Kill | Man | Noise |

E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

I have talked about the religion of economics, the idol worship of material possessions, of consumption and the so-called standard of living, and the fateful propensity that rejoices in the fact that "what were luxuries to our fathers have become necessities for us."

Doubt | Man | Size |

Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara

The walls of the educational system must come down. Education should not be a privilege, so the children of those who have money can study.

Revolution | Right | Will |

E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

Economists themselves, like most specialists, normally suffer from a kind of metaphysical blindness, assuming that theirs is a science of absolute and invariable truths, without any presuppositions.

Dependence | Economics | Existence | Man | Means | Value |

Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger

Science is reticent too when it is a question of the great Unity – the One of Parmenides – of which we all somehow form part, to which we belong. The most popular name for it in our time is God – with a capital ‘G’.

Experiment | Freedom | God | Good | Man | Success | Uncertainty | God |

Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara

There is no other definition of socialism valid for us than that of the abolition of the exploitation of man by man.

Defeat | Imperialism | Struggle |

E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

The bigger the country, the greater is the need for internal "structure" and for a decentralized approach to development. If this need is neglected, there is no hope for the poor.

Battle | Experience | Force | Man | Nature |

E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

The insights of wisdomÂ… enable us to see the hollowness and fundamental unsatisfactoriness of a life devoted primarily to the pursuit of material ends, to the neglect of the spiritual. Such a life necessarily sets man against man and national against nation, because man's needs are infinite and infinitude can be achieved only in the spiritual realm, never in the material.

Distinction | Distinguish | Failure | Illusion | Man | Failure |

E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

In large-scale enterprise, private ownership is a fiction for the purpose of enabling functionless owners to live parasitically on the labor of others. It is not only unjust but also an irrational element which distorts all relationships within the enterprise.

Action | Fear | Knowledge | Little | Man | Men | Will |

E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

The common criterion of success, namely the growth of GNP, is utterly misleading and, in fact, must of necessity lead to phenomena which can only be described as neo-colonialism.

Chance | Man | People | Work |

Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara

And yet every so often, the heart of America, shuddering with indignation, sends a nervous spasm through the gentle back of the Andes, and tumultuous shock waves assault the surface of the land. Three times the cuppola of proud Santo Domingo has collapsed from on high to the rhythm of broken bones and its worn walls have opened and fallen too. But the foundations they rest on are unmoved, the great blocks of the Temple of the Sun exhibit their gray stone indifferently; however colossal the disaster befalling its oppressor, not one of its huge rocks shifts from its place.

Life | Life | Man | Property | Worth |

Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara

Valdivia's actions symbolize man's indefatigable thirst to take control of a place where he can exercise total authority. That phrase, attributed to Caesar, proclaiming he would rather be first-in-command in some humble Alpine village than second-in-command in Rome, is repeated less pompously, but no less effectively, in the epic campaign that is the conquest of Chile. If, in the moment the conquistador was facing death at the hands of that invincible Araucanian Caupolican, he had not been overwhelmed with fury, like a hunted animal, I do not doubt that judging his life, Valdivia would have felt death was fully justified. He belonged to that special class of men the species produces every so often, in whom a craving for limitless power is so extreme that any suffering to achieve it seems natural, and he had become the omnipotent ruler of a warrior nation.

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

Neither of the primitive men we have spoken of, nor of those who immediately succeeded them, can we rightly predicate any knowledge of nature.

Circumstances | Day | Evolution | History | Ignorance | Important | Man | Phenomena |

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

The difference between the reason of a Goethe, a Kant, a Lamarck, or a Darwin, and that of the lowest savage, a Vedda, an Akka, a native Australian, or a Patagonian, is much greater than the graduated difference between the reason of the latter and the most "rational" mammals, the anthropoid apes, or even the papiomorpha, the dog, or the elephant.

Man |

Ernst Toller

After that I could never pass a dead man without stopping to gaze on his face, stripped by death of that earthly patina which masks the living soul. And I would ask, who were you? Where was your home? Who is mourning for you now?

Day | Evolution | Important | Man | People | Phenomena | Science | Truths |

E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

Even an economist might well ask: what is the point of economic progress, a so-called higher standard of living, when the earth, the only earth we have, is being contaminated by substances which may cause malformations in our children or grandchildren?

Conduct | Doubt | Knowledge | Life | Life | Little | Man | Meaning | Purpose | Purpose | Will |

Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger

Vedanta teaches that consciousness is singular, all happenings are played out in one universal consciousness and there is no multiplicity of selves… The stages of human development are to strive for Possession (Artha), Knowledge (Dharma), Ability (Kama), Being (Moksha)… Nirvana is a state of pure blissful knowledge. It has nothing to do with individual. The ego or its separation is an illusion. The goal of man is to preserve his Karma and to develop it further – when man dies his karma lives and creates for itself another carrier.

Defeat | Hope |

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

The causal character of the relation which connects embryology with stem-history is due to the action of heredity and adaptation.

Man | Time |

E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

In the simple question of how we treat the land, next to people our most precious resource, our entire way of live is involved, and before our policies with regard to the land will really be changed, there will have to be a great deal of philosophical, not to say religious, change. It is not a question of what we can afford but of what we choose to spend our money on. If we could return to a generous recognition of meta-economic values, our landscapes would become healthy and beautiful again and our people would regain the dignity of manÂ…

Excitement | Man | Nature | Society | System | Society |