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

Richard Beer-Hoffmann

The road is pre-destined, but the way we walk it, the attitude with which we bear our fate, can be of great influence over events.

Events | Fate | Influence | Wisdom |

Chester Bliss Bowles

The chief characteristics of the (liberal) attitude are human sympathy, a receptivity to change, and a scientific willingness to follow reason rather than faith.

Change | Faith | Reason | Sympathy | Wisdom |

Charles Darwin, fully Charles Robert Darwin

It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life and from use and disuse: a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms, Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and wonderful have been, and are being evolved.

Action | Beginning | Character | Death | Earth | Growth | Inheritance | Law | Life | Life | Nature | Object | Sense | Struggle | War | Wisdom |

Calvin Coolidge, fully John Calvin Coolidge, Jr.

All growth depends upon activity. There is no development physically or intellectually without effort, and effort means work. Work is not a curse; it is the prerogative of intelligence, the only means to manhood, and the measure of civilization.

Civilization | Effort | Growth | Intelligence | Means | Wisdom | Work |

Tyron Edwards

Change of opinion is often only the progress of sound thought and growing knowledge; and though sometimes regarded as an inconsistency, it is but the noble inconsistency natural to a mind ever ready for growth and expansion of thought, and that never fears to follow where truth and duty may lead the way.

Change | Duty | Growth | Inconsistency | Knowledge | Mind | Opinion | Progress | Sound | Thought | Truth | Wisdom | Thought |

Freeman John Dyson

In the long run, the only limits to the technological growth of a society are internal. A society has always the option of limiting its growth, either by conscious decision or by stagnation or by disinterest. A society in which these internal limits are absent may continue its growth forever.

Decision | Growth | Society | Wisdom | Society |

Albert Einstein

In the first place, the human mind, no matter how highly trained, is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many tongues. The little child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books - a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind to God. And because I believe this, I am not an atheist.

Books | God | Little | Mind | Order | Plan | Universe | Wisdom | Child | Understand |

Léon Gambetta

History is constantly repeating itself, making only such changes of programme as the growth of nations and centuries requires.

Growth | History | Nations | Wisdom |

Raymond Holliwell

Each experience through which we pass operates ultimately for our good. This is a correct attitude to adopt and we must be able to see it in that light.

Experience | Good | Light | Wisdom |

Victor Hugo

Certain thoughts are prayers. There are moments when, whatever be the attitude of the body, the soul is on its knees.

Body | Soul | Wisdom |

Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos

We are not only made in God’s image, but that we are made to image God - to reflect His freedom, joy, compassion and peace in our lives... When religion becomes reduced to an outward observation of rules and ceremonies and an intolerance toward the beliefs of others, we are mistaking the oyster for the pearl. The oyster is certainly valuable, but it is of infinitely greater value when it promotes the growth of the pearl... We cannot reason our way back to the roots of religion. We cannot trap God in stale dogmas or narrow creeds. Our purpose is to make religion a continuous living experience, to lead us toward a resurrection not of the dead but of the living who are dead to their own truth. Then religion becomes a thread that can both link us to the past and guide us to our future.

Compassion | Experience | Freedom | Future | God | Growth | Intolerance | Joy | Observation | Past | Peace | Purpose | Purpose | Reason | Religion | Truth | Wisdom | God | Value |

Charles Foster Kent

Religion is the individual's attitude toward God and man as expressed in faith, in worship, in life, and in service.

Faith | God | Individual | Life | Life | Man | Religion | Service | Wisdom | Worship | God |

Charles F. Kettering, fully Charles Franklin Kettering

Research... is nothing but a state of mind - a friendly, welcoming attitude toward change; going out to look for a change instead of waiting for it to come. Research, for practical men, is an effort to do things better.

Better | Change | Effort | Men | Mind | Nothing | Research | Waiting | Wisdom |

Arnold Allan Lazarus and Alan Fay

We firmly believe that therapy is education rather than healing; that it is growth rather than treatment.

Education | Growth | Wisdom |