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

Winston Churchill, fully Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill

The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.

Future | Mind |

T. Berry Brazelton, fully Thomas Berry Brazelton

Reading to children at night, responding to their smiles, with a smile, returning their vocalizations with one of your own, touching them, holding them – all of these further a child’s brain development and future potential, even in the earliest months. Research demonstrates that the early responsiveness of caring parents sets the tone for future self-esteem, trust, problem solving, ability to communicate successfully and motivation for future learning.

Ability | Children | Esteem | Future | Learning | Parents | Reading | Research | Self | Self-esteem | Smile | Trust |

Center of Concern NULL

Idolatry is the denial of all hope for the future. The idols of the past were worshipped by people who were afraid of change, who wanted things to remain the same, who did not want a future that was different, who found their security in the status quo. The same is true today.

Change | Future | Hope | Past | People | Security | Afraid |

Charles Darwin, fully Charles Robert Darwin

As for future life, every person must judge for themself between conflicting vague possibilities.

Future | Life | Life |

René Dubos, fully René Jules Dubos

Most of the dangerous aspects of technological civilization arise, not from its complexities, but from the fact that modern man has become more interested in the machines and industrial goods themselves than in their use to human ends.

Civilization | Ends | Machines | Man |

Will and Ariel Durant

The future never just happened. It was created.

Future |

Havelock Ellis, fully Henry Havelock Ellis

The greatest task before civilization at present is to make machines what they ought to be, the slaves, instead of the masters of men.

Civilization | Machines | Men | Present |

Albert Einstein

Time is not all what it seems. It does not flow in only one direction, and the future exists simultaneously with the past.

Future | Past | Time |

Havelock Ellis, fully Henry Havelock Ellis

All civilization has from time to time become a thin crust over a volcano of revolution.

Civilization | Revolution | Time |

John Dewey

The things in our civilization we most prize are not of ourselves. They exist by grace of the doings and sufferings of the continuous human community in which we are a link. Ours is the responsibility of conserving, transmitting, rectifying and expanding the heritage of values we have received, that those who come after us may receive it more solid and secure, more widely accessible and more generously shared that we have received it. Here are all the elements for a religious faith that shall not be confined to sect, class or race. Such a faith has always been implicitly the common faith of mankind.

Civilization | Faith | Grace | Mankind | Race | Receive | Responsibility |

David Dunn

Every time you give a bit of yourself and you plant a little seed of Future Happiness. All the rest of your life these seeds will keep springing up unexpectedly along your path. When you need a friend to give you a lift in some situation, likely as not along will come a person for whom you did something thoughtful when you were a youngster. Taking up giving-away as a hobby while you are young, and you will live a happy life. What is more, because you do so many wonderful thoughtful things on impulse, you will develop a lively and interesting personality - gracious, friendly, likable.

Friend | Future | Giving | Happy | Impulse | Life | Life | Little | Need | Personality | Rest | Time | Will |

Stephen A. Erickson

An important way to distinguish philosophy from religion is that philosophy, at its best, raises questions, whereas religion provides answers. Answers can sometimes lose their force, however, if the questions to which they provide answers have somehow been lost, muted, or superseded. But philosophy can never end. As long as we live, we are going to ask ourselves about the meaning of life. Some have written about the “end of philosophy.” It has been thought that philosophy exists only if you can construe life as a journey traveling to a new and different dimension. Some have said that the cognitive sciences, linguistics, neuroscience, and so forth will advance so much that traditional technical problems of philosophy will diminish. Insofar as philosophy is a pursuit of the art of living providing (often conflicting) guidance for living, there is a future for philosophy.

Art | Distinguish | Force | Future | Guidance | Important | Journey | Life | Life | Meaning | Philosophy | Problems | Religion | Thought | Will | Guidance | Art | Thought |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

Ethics is… to be regarded as a therapeutic attempt – as an endeavor to achieve, by means of a command of the superego, something which has so far not been achieved by means of any other cultural activities. As we already know, the problem before us is how to get rid of the greatest hindrance to civilization – namely, the constitutional inclination of human beings to be aggressive towards one another.

Civilization | Ethics | Inclination | Means |

Henry George

That amid our highest civilization men faint and die with want is not due to the niggardliness of nature, but to the injustice of man.

Civilization | Injustice | Injustice | Man | Men | Nature |

Melvin James Evans

The men who build the future are those who know that greater things are yet to come, and that they themselves will help bring them about. Their minds are illuminated by the blazing sun of hope. They never stop to doubt. They haven't time.

Doubt | Future | Hope | Men | Time | Will |

Nancy Forest-Flier

Disciplining one’s appetite may be the biggest spiritual challenge many of us will face this side of dying. In a world where the future of the planet depends on how many of us will agree to say not to excessive lifestyles, fasting can teach us that physical satisfaction is not the purpose of life.

Appetite | Challenge | Future | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Teach | Will | World |

W. R. Forrester, fully William Roxburgh Forrester

Every war of the future will be a war of religion, for no country will go to war till it can give its cause the color of a Crusade and so secure for its maintenance absolute loyalty of a heroic quality in the whole population.

Absolute | Cause | Future | Loyalty | Loyalty | Religion | War | Will |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

The ancient belief that dreams reveal the future is not indeed entirely devoid of truth. By representing a wish as fulfilled the dream certainly leads us into the future.

Belief | Dreams | Future | Truth |