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

Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste

I have a theory about the human mind. A brain is a lot like a computer. It will only take so many facts, and then it will go on overload and blow up.

Courage | Enough |

Evgeny Morozov

All the recent chatter about how the Internet is breaking down institutions, barriers and intermediaries can make us oblivious to the fact that strong and well-functioning institutions, especially governments, are essential to the preservation of freedom.

People | Protest |

Erich Auerbach

It was Plato who bridged the gap between poetry and philosophy; for, in his work, appearance, despised by his Eleatic and Sophist predecessors, became a reflected image of perfection. He set poets the task of writing philosophically, not only in the sense of giving instruction, but in the sense of striving, by the imitation of appearance, to arrive at its true essence and to show its insufficiency measured by the beauty of the Idea.

Character | Courage | Day | Destiny | God | Obedience | Rebellion | Soul | God |

Ernest Bramah, born Ernest Brammah Smith

At this display the elder and less attractive of the maidens fled, uttering loud and continuous cries of apprehension in order to conceal the direction of her flight.

Duty | Impartiality | Sound | Winning |

Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste

There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt. And how do you know laughter if there is no pain to compare it with?

Cause | Freedom | Hope | Rumor | Story |

Ernest Bramah, born Ernest Brammah Smith

"Excellence," besought Kai Lung, not without misgivings, "how many warriors, each having some actual existence, are there in your never-failing band?" "For all purposes save those of attack and defence there are fifteen score of the best and bravest, as their pay-sheets well attest," was the confident response. "In a strictly literal sense, however, there are no more than can be seen on a mist-enshrouded day with a resolutely closed eye."

Awareness | Body | Death | Dreams | Fate | Knowledge | Man | Nature | Order | Will | World | Fate | Awareness |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

It is awfully easy to be hard-boiled about everything in the daytime, but at night it is another thing.

Think |

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

What we have today, in modern industrial society, is not romantic and certainly not utopianÂ…But it is in very deep trouble and holds no promise of survival. We jolly well have to have the courage to dream if we want to survive and give our children a chance of survival.

Education | Metaphysics | Present | Soul | World | Understand |

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

We see that man entirely resembles the higher mammals, and most of all the apes, in embryonic development as well as in anatomic structure. And if we seek to understand this ontogenetic agreement in the light of the biogenetic law, we find that it proves clearly and necessarily the descent of man from a series of other mammals, and proximately from the primates.

Church | Education | Existence | Important | Influence | Need | Order | Public |

Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara

We brought ten thousand head of cattle to the Sierra one day and said to the peasants, simply, "Eat". And the peasants, for the first time in years and years, some for the first time in their lives, ate beef.

Administration | Understanding |

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

The real cause of personal existence is not the favor of the Almighty, but the sexual love of one's earthly parents.

Antithesis | Courage | Desire | Faith | Knowledge | Man | Men | Mind | Nature | Purpose | Purpose | Reality | Religion | Soul | Thinking | World |

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

Everybody knows that the butterfly emerges from the pupa, and the pupa from a quite different thing called a larva, and the larva from the butterfly's egg.

Man | Psychology | Sense | Soul |

Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger

We are, I believe, at the moment in grave danger of missing the 'path to perfection'.

Ability | Consciousness | Ego | Knowledge | Man | Nothing |

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

The gulf between this thoughtful mind of civilized man and the thoughtless animal soul of the savage is enormous -- greater than the gulf that separates the latter from the soul of the dog.

Action | Choice | Doctrine | Inheritance | Man | Organic | Survival | Will |

Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara

A petty concern with mere evidence is an antiquated and bourgeois feature of the captalist legal system. We are revolutionaries. We convict from a revolutionary passion.

Obligation | Order | Loss |

Ester and Jerry Hicks

Make fun of death. We are as dead as it gets, and we are fully aware of this joyous experience. We are with you every time you allow it. We are in every singing bird and in every joyful child. We are part of every delicious pulsing in your environment. We are not dead, and neither will you ever be. You will just get up one day, and get out of the movie.

Good |

Ester and Jerry Hicks

The law of attraction is most understood when you see yourself as a magnet getting more and more of the way you FEEL.

Achievement | Attainment | Body | Joy | Money | Possessions | Property | Success |

Ester and Jerry Hicks

Some say that you should not want money at all because the desire for money is materialistic and not spiritual. But we want you to remember that you are here in this very physical world where Spirit has materialized. You cannot separate yourself from the aspect of yourself that is spiritual, and while you are here in these bodies, you cannot separate yourselves from that which is physical or material. All the magnificent things of a physical nature that are surrounding you are Spiritual in nature.

Individual | Power | Right | World | Wrong |

Étienne Bonnot de Condillac

We judge the objects to touch only because we have learned to judge. In fact, if we consider the size of an object, we see that it is relative to that of other objects, so we have to compare it with and judge the extent to which these differ from them, if we want to get an idea of its size, and so for ideas of substance, of shape and weight. In other words, all the ideas that come from touch presuppose the comparison and judgment.

Action | Rest |