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

A. H. R. Fairchild, fully Arthur Henry Rolph Fairchild

The most distinctive mark of a cultured mind is the ability to take another's point of view; to put one's self in another's place, and see life and its problems from a point of view different from one's own. To be willing to test a new idea; to be able to live on the edge of difference in all matters intellectually; to examine without heat the burning question of the day; to have imaginative sympathy, openness and flexibility of mind, steadiness and poise of feeling, cool calmness of judgment, is to have culture.

Ability | Calmness | Culture | Day | Flexibility | Judgment | Life | Life | Mind | Openness | Problems | Question | Self | Sympathy | Wisdom | Flexibility |

Benjamin Franklin

Were it offered to my choice, I should have no objection to a repetition of the same life from its beginning, only asking the advantages authors have is a second edition to correct some faults of the first.

Beginning | Choice | Life | Life | Wisdom |

Kurt Gödel, also Goedel

I don’t see any reason why we should have less confidence in this kind of perception, I.e., in mathematical intuition, than in sense perception, which induces us to build up physical theories and to expect that future sense perceptions will agree with them and, moreover, to believe that a question not decidable now has meaning and may be decided in the future.

Confidence | Future | Intuition | Meaning | Perception | Question | Reason | Sense | Theories | Will | Wisdom |

Edward Hodnett

If you do not ask the right questions, you do not get the right answers. A question asked in the right way often points to its own answer. Asking questions is the A-B-C of diagnosis. Only the inquiring mind solves problems.

Mind | Problems | Question | Right | Wisdom |

Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos

The silence in our lives is under assault on all fronts: roaring jets and blasting Walkmans, numbing elevator music and blaring headline news. It’s hard to genuflect to the beat of MTV. We are wired, plugged in, constantly catered to and cajoled. After a while we become terrified out of the silence, unaware of what it has to offer. We drown out the simple question of God with the simplistic sound-bites of man.

God | Man | Music | News | Question | Silence | Sound | Wisdom | God |

Karl Jaspers, fully Karl Theodor Jaspers

There is either no freedom at all, or it is in the very asking about it.

Freedom | Wisdom |

Hamilton Wright Mabie

The question for each man to settle is not what he would do if he had means, time, influence and educational advantages, but what he will do with the things he has.

Influence | Man | Means | Question | Time | Will | Wisdom |

Douglas MacArthur

The great question is: can war be outlawed? If so, it would mark the greatest advance in civilization since the Sermon on the Mount.

Civilization | Question | War | Wisdom |

James Russell Lowell

Poetry is not made out of the understanding. The question of common sense is always: "What is it good for?' a question which would abolish the rose, and be triumphantly answered by the cabbage.

Common Sense | Good | Poetry | Question | Sense | Understanding | Wisdom |

Andrew H Malcolm

Farmers now are members of a capital-intensive industry that values good bookwork more than backwork. so several times a year almost every farmer must seek operating credit from the college fellow in the white shirt and tie - in effect, asking financial permission to work hard on his own land.

Credit | Good | Industry | Land | Wisdom | Work |

Paul A. Meglitsch, fully Paul Allen Meglitsch

Nearly every discovery in science has come as the result of providing a new question rather than a new answer.

Discovery | Question | Science | Wisdom | Discovery |

Maurice Nicoll

All ideas require preparation for their meaning to engage the soul... There is no question whether they are true or not. One buys for oneself. There is no absolute truth. All truth is relative - relative to one’s needs, relative to one’s position in psychological space.

Absolute | Ideas | Meaning | Position | Question | Soul | Space | Truth | Wisdom |

Publius Syrus

It is not every question that deserves an answer.

Question | Wisdom |

Shōzō Tanaka

The care of rivers is not a question of rivers, but of the human heart.

Care | Heart | Question | Wisdom |

Lillian Smith, fully Lillian Eugenia Smith

When you stop learning, stop listening, stop looking and asking questions, always new questions, then it is time to die.

Learning | Listening | Time | Wisdom |