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

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

Our best hope for the future is that the intellect - the scientific spirit, reason - should in time establish a dictatorship over the human mind. The very nature of reason is a guarantee that it would not fail to concede to human emotions, and to all that is determined by them, the position to which they are entitled. But the common pressure exercised by such a domination of reason would prove to be the strongest unifying force among men, and would prepare the way for further unifications. Whatever, like the ban laid upon thought by religion, opposes such a development is a danger for the future of mankind.

Character | Danger | Emotions | Force | Future | Guarantee | Hope | Mankind | Men | Mind | Nature | Position | Reason | Religion | Spirit | Thought | Time | Danger | Intellect | Thought |

Edgar Z. Friedenberg

Only science can hope to keep technology in some sort of moral order.

Character | Hope | Order | Science | Technology |

Benjamin R. Haydon

No man, perhaps, is so wicked as to commit evil for its own sake. Evil is generally committed under the hope of some advantage the pursuit of virtue seldom obtains. Yet the most successful result of the most virtuous heroism is never without its alloy.

Character | Evil | Hope | Man | Virtue | Virtue |

John-Roger & Peter McWilliams NULL

Fear breeds lack of experience, lack of experience breeds ignorance, ignorance breeds more fear. It is a vicious cycle.

Character | Experience | Fear | Ignorance |

Victor Hugo

For man's greatest actions are performed in minor struggles. Life, misfortune, isolation, abandonment and poverty are battlefields which have their heroes - obscure heroes who are at times greater than illustrious heroes.

Character | Isolation | Life | Life | Man | Misfortune | Poverty |

William James

We have lost the power even of imagining what the ancient realization of poverty could have meant; the liberation from material attachments, the unbribed soul, the manlier indifference, the paving our way by what we are and not by what we have, the right to fling away our life at any moment irresponsibly, - the more athletic trim, in short, the fighting shape.

Character | Fighting | Indifference | Life | Life | Poverty | Power | Right | Soul |

Ralph E. Johnson

The fruit we wish to pick tomorrow lies hidden in the seed of today. The goals we are to reach and the problems we are to solve tomorrow depend on today's diligence, hope and faith, today's conviction of the almightiness of good.

Character | Diligence | Faith | Goals | Good | Hope | Problems | Tomorrow |

Anna Jameson

It is not poverty so much as pretence that harasses a ruined man - the struggle between a proud mind and an empty purse - the keeping up a hollow show that must soon come to an end. Have the courage to appear poor, and you disarm poverty of its sharpest sting.

Character | Courage | Man | Mind | Poverty | Struggle |

Juvenal, fully Decimus Junius Juvenalis NULL

Men do not easily rise whose poverty hinders their merit.

Character | Men | Merit | Poverty |

Krishna, also Kreeshna, Krsna, Lord Krishna NULL

Let the motive be in the deed and not in the event. Be not one whose motive for action is the hope of reward.

Action | Character | Hope | Reward |

John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

The ignorance of one voter in a democracy impairs the security of all.

Character | Democracy | Ignorance | Security | Wisdom |

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Nothing in the world is more dangerous than a sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

Character | Ignorance | Nothing | Stupidity | World |

Jenkin Lloyd Jones

You cannot put a great hope into a small soul.

Character | Hope | Soul |

Anthony Kenny, fully Sir Anthony John Patrick Kenny

It is characteristic of our age to endeavour to replace virtues by technology. That is to say, wherever possible we strive to use methods of physical or social engineering to achieve goals which our ancestors thought attainable only by the training of character. Thus we try so far as possible to make contraception take the place of chastity, and anesthetics to take the place of fortitude; we replace resignation by insurance policies and munificence by the Welfare state. It would be idle romanticism to deny that such techniques and institutions are often less painful and more efficient methods of achieving the goods and preventing the evils which unaided virtue once sought to achieve and avoid. But it would be an equal and opposite folly to hope that the take-over of virtue by technology may one day be complete.

Age | Character | Chastity | Day | Folly | Fortitude | Goals | Hope | Munificence | Resignation | Technology | Thought | Training | Virtue | Virtue | Thought |