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

Gail Godwin, fully Gail Kathleen Godwin

Good teaching is one-fourth preparation and three-fourths theatre.

Good | Wisdom |

Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

It may be difficult, too, for many of us, to abandon the belief that there is an instinct towards perfection at work in human beings, which has brought them to their present high level of intellectual achievement and ethical sublimation and which may be expected to watch over their development as supermen. I have no faith, however, in the existence of any such internal instinct and I cannot see how this benevolent illusion is to be preserved. The present development of human beings requires, as it seems to me, no different explanation from that of animals. What appears in a minority of human individuals as an untiring impulsion towards further perfection can easily be understood as a result of the instinctual repression upon which is based all that is most precious in human civilization.

Achievement | Belief | Civilization | Existence | Faith | Illusion | Instinct | Perfection | Present | Wisdom | Work |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Be always resolute with the present hour. Every moment is of infinite value; for it is the representative of eternity.

Eternity | Present | Wisdom |

Paul Géraldy, pen name of Paul Lefevre

What we call love is the desire to awaken and to keep awake in another's body, heart and mind, the responsibility of flattering, in our place, the self of which we are not very sure.

Body | Desire | Heart | Love | Mind | Responsibility | Self | Wisdom |

Anna Lorette Rose Hawkes

Our past is our heritage, our present is our responsibility, and our future is our destiny.

Destiny | Future | Past | Present | Responsibility | Wisdom |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The people who are absent are the ideal; those who are present seem to be quite commonplace.

People | Present | Religion | Reverence | Soul | Wisdom |

Harry Golden, born Herschel Goldhirsch

The school is a place or institution for teaching and learning. Underneath this definition in every standard dictionary is another definition: School is a large number of fish of the same kind swimming together in the same direction.

Learning | Wisdom |

Jean Guéhenno, given name Marcel-Jules-Marie Guéhenno

To teach people to read without teaching them not to believe everything they read is only to prepare them for a new slavery.

People | Slavery | Teach | Wisdom |

Werner Heisenberg, fully Werner Karl Heisenberg

We cannot know as a matter of principle, the present in all its details.

Present | Wisdom |

J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane

So many new ideas are at first strange and horrible though ultimately valuable that a very heavy responsibility rests upon those who would prevent their dissemination.

Ideas | Responsibility | Wisdom |

Heinrich Heine

Like a great poet, Nature produces the greatest results with the simplest means. These are simply a sun, flowers, water and love. Of course, if the spectator be without the last, the whole will present but a pitiful appearance; and, in that case, the sun is merely so many miles in diameter, the trees are good for fuel, the flowers are classified by stamens, and the water is simply wet.

Appearance | Good | Love | Means | Nature | Present | Will | Wisdom |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

The present moment is a powerful deity.

Present | Wisdom |

Moses Harvey

Science is teaching man to know and reverence truth, and to believe that only as far as he knows and loves it can he live worthily on earth, and vindicate the dignity of his spirit.

Dignity | Earth | Man | Reverence | Science | Spirit | Truth | Wisdom |

Huang Po, also Huángbò Xīyùn

On perceiving any individual's mind, you perceive all mind. Glimpse one truth, and all truth is present in your vision, for there is nowhere at all which is devoid of the Truth.

Individual | Mind | Present | Truth | Vision | Wisdom |

Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos

Both these perspectives - that the government is responsible for us, and that we are responsible only for ourselves - are dehumanizing. To be fully human, we can neither give up responsibility for ourselves nor refuse responsibility for others. Indeed, we need to redefine individual responsibility to include social responsibility.

Government | Individual | Need | Responsibility | Wisdom | Government |

Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

Enjoy the present day, trusting very little to the morrow.

Day | Little | Present | Wisdom |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous convention of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own.

Convention | Individual | Murder | Politics | War | Wisdom | Murder |

Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL

They change their sky not their mind who cross the sea. A busy idleness possesses us: we seek a happy life, with ships and carriages: the object of our search is present with us.

Change | Happy | Idleness | Life | Life | Mind | Object | Present | Search | Wisdom |

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

The function and responsibility of the President is to set before the American people the unfinished business, the things we must do if we are going to succeed as a nation.

Business | People | Responsibility | Wisdom |