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

Francis Fane, fully Sir Francis Fane of Fulbeck

When the soul grants what reason makes her see, that is true faith, what’s more’s credulity.

Character | Faith | Reason | Soul |

John Denham, fully Sir John Denham

All human wisdom, to divine, is folly.

Character | Folly | Wisdom |

Tyron Edwards

There is nothing so elastic as the human mind. Like imprisoned steam, the more it is pressed the more it rises to resist the pressure. The more we are obliged to do, the more we are able to accomplish.

Character | Mind | Nothing |

Albert Einstein

Real human progress depends not so much on inventive ingenuity as on conscience.

Character | Conscience | Ingenuity | Progress | Ingenuity |

Albert Einstein

There lies before us, if we choose, continual progress in happiness, knowledge and wisdom. Shall we instead, choose death because we cannot forget quarrels? We appeal, as human beings, to human beings; remember your humanity and forget the rest. If you can do this, the way lies open to a new paradise; if you cannot, there lies before you the risk of universal death.

Character | Death | Humanity | Knowledge | Paradise | Progress | Rest | Risk | Wisdom |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

The human soul is hospitable, and will entertain conflicting sentiments and contradictory opinions with much impartiality.

Character | Impartiality | Soul | Will |

Sara Davidson

The ability to laugh at life is right at the top, with love and communication in the hierarchy of our needs. Humor has much to do with pain; it exaggerates the anxieties and absurdities we feel, so that we gain distance and through laughter, relief.

Ability | Character | Humor | Laughter | Life | Life | Love | Pain | Right | Wisdom |

Albert Einstein

Any power must be an enemy of mankind which enslaves the individual by terror and force whether it arises under the Fascist or the Communist flag. All that is valuable in human society depends upon the opportunity for development accorded to the individual.

Character | Enemy | Force | Individual | Mankind | Opportunity | Power | Society | Terror | Society |

Elliot W. Eisner

We have inadvertently designed a system in which being good at what you do as a teacher is not formally rewarded, while being poor at what you do is seldom corrected nor penalized.

Character | Good | System | Teacher |

Daniel Defoe, born Daniel Foe

The height of human wisdom is to bring our tempers down to our circumstances, and to make a calm within, under the weight of the greatest storm without.

Character | Circumstances | Wisdom |

William Feather

Change, not habit, is what gets most of us down; habit is the stabilizer of human society, change accounts for its progress.

Change | Character | Habit | Progress | Society |

Lowell Fillmore

We can help raise our standard by praising the good whenever and wherever we find it. As we praise the good at hand we grow in our ability to find more good.

Ability | Character | Good | Praise |

Benjamin Franklin

They that will not be counseled, cannot be helped. If you do not hear reason she will rap you on the knuckles.

Character | Reason | Will |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

A teacher who can arouse a feeling for one single good action, for one single good poem, accomplishes more than he who fills our memory with rows and rows of natural objects, classified with name and form.

Action | Character | Good | Memory | Teacher |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

It seems not to be true that there is a power in the universe, which watches over the well-being of every individual with parental care and brings all his concerns to a happy ending. On the contrary, the destinies of man are incompatible with a universal principle of benevolence or with - what is to some degree contradictory - a universal principle of justice... Dark, unfeeling, and unloving powers determine human destiny; the system of rewards and punishments, which according to religion, governs the world, seems to have no existence.

Benevolence | Care | Character | Destiny | Existence | Happy | Individual | Justice | Man | Power | Religion | System | Universe | World |