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

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

They must know but little of mankind who imagine that, having once been seduced by luxury, they can ever renounce it.

Little | Luxury | Mankind | Wisdom |

Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy

Love decentralizes, truth universalizes: he who speaks addresses all mankind, he who loves incarnates all mankind in himself.

Love | Mankind | Truth | Wisdom |

Oscar S. Straus, fully Oscar Solomon Straus

There is a higher form of patriotism than nationalism, and that higher form is not limited by the boundaries of one's country; but by a duty to mankind to safeguard the trust of civilization.

Civilization | Duty | Mankind | Patriotism | Trust | Wisdom |

Sydney Smith

The greatest curse that can be entailed on mankind is a state of war. All the atrocious crimes committed in years of peace, all that is spent in peace by the secret corruptions, or by the thoughtless extravagance of nations, are mere trifles compared with the gigantic evils which stalk over this world in a state of war. God is forgotten in war; every principle of Christianity is trampled upon.

Extravagance | God | Mankind | Nations | Peace | Trifles | War | Wisdom | World | God |

Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville

Amid the ruins which surround me I shall dare to say that revolutions are not what I most fear for coming generations?... It is believed by some that modern society will be always changing its aspect; for myself, I fear that it will ultimately be too invariably fixed in the same institutions, the same prejudices, the same manners, so that mankind will be stopped and circumscribed; that the mind will swing backwards and forwards forever without begetting fresh ideas; that man will waste his strength in bootless and solitary trifling, and, though in continual motion, that humanity will cease to advance.

Fear | Humanity | Ideas | Man | Mankind | Manners | Mind | Society | Strength | Waste | Will | Wisdom | Society |

Stefan Zweig

It is a consoling fact that, in the end, the moral independence of mankind remains indestructible. Never has it been possible for a dictatorship to enforce one religion or one philosophy upon the whole world. Nor will it ever be possible, for the spirit always escapes from servitude; refuses to think in accordance with prescribed forms, to become shallow and supine at the word of command, to allow uniformity to be permanently imposed upon it.

Mankind | Philosophy | Religion | Servitude | Spirit | Uniformity | Will | Wisdom | World | Think |

Philip Berrigan

History tells us that the pendulum of time is sweeping to extremes of subjectivism, to cults of selfishness and savage irresponsibility. We must bring it back to balance by taking up the burdens of mankind as our own, with an entirely new vision and confidence. And we must do this perhaps as a condition for continued existence itself.

Balance | Confidence | Existence | History | Mankind | Selfishness | Time | Vision |

Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson

Mysticism is undoubtedly at the origin of great moral transformations. And mankind seems to be as far away as ever from it. But who knows?

Mankind | Mysticism |

Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann

All our distinctions are accidental; beauty and deformity, though personal qualities, are neither entitled to praise nor censure; yet it is so happens that they color our opinion of those qualities to which mankind have attached responsibility.

Beauty | Censure | Mankind | Opinion | Praise | Qualities | Responsibility | Wisdom | Beauty |

Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

Of all mankind the great poet is the equable man. Not in him but off from him things are grotesque or eccentric or fail of their sanity.

Man | Mankind | Sanity | Wisdom |

William Wirt

Perhaps there is no property in which men are more distinguished from each other, than in the various degrees in which they possess the faculty of observation. The great herd of mankind pass their lives in listless inattention and indifference as to what is going on around them, being perfectly content to satisfy the mere cravings of nature, while those who are destined to distinction have lynx-eyed vigilance that nothing can escape.

Distinction | Inattention | Indifference | Mankind | Men | Nature | Nothing | Observation | Property | Vigilance | Wisdom |

Waldo Beach, fully William Waldo Beach

It is not just negative inertia and caution which lie behind racial discrimination, but the positive counterfaiths which produce them. The “conflicting valuations” turn out to be a warfare of the gods in the soul of man. Ultimately the racial problem is not one of hypocrisy but idolatry.

Caution | Hypocrisy | Man | Soul | Inertia |

Edward Young

Who tells me he denies his soul’s immortal, whate’er his boast, has told me he’s a knave; his duty, ‘tis to love himself alone, nor care though mankind perish, if he smiles, who thinks ere long the man shall wholly die, is dead already; nought but brute survives.

Care | Duty | Love | Man | Mankind | Soul | Wisdom |

Rachel Carson, fully Rachel Louise Carson

For mankind as a whole, a possession infinitely more valuable than individual life is our genetic heritage, our link with past and future. Shaped through long eons of evolution, our genes not only make us what we are, but hold in their minute beings the future – be it one of promise or threat. Yet genetic deterioration through manmade [chemical and radioactive] agents is the menace of our time, “the last and greatest danger to our civilization.”

Civilization | Danger | Evolution | Future | Individual | Life | Life | Mankind | Past | Promise | Time | Danger |

Jean Daniélou

The danger of the cult of technological progress lies in its tendency to restrict and confine mankind within the adoring contemplation of his own creative power.

Contemplation | Cult | Danger | Mankind | Power | Progress | Danger | Contemplation |

Ignaz von Döllinger, fully Johann Ignaz von Döllinger

In 1881… “The false and repulsive precept that mankind is perpetually called upon to avenge the sins and errors of the forefathers upon the innocent descendents, has ruled the world far too long, and has blotted the countries of Europe with shameful and abominable deeds, from which we turn away in horror.”

Deeds | Mankind | Precept | World |