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

John Dewey

I believe that... education, therefore, is a process of living and not a preparation for future living... all education proceeds by the participation of the individual in the social consciousness of the race... Every thinker puts one portion of an apparently stable world in peril.

Consciousness | Education | Future | Individual | Peril | Race | Wisdom | World |

John Dewey

Every serious-minded person knows that a large part of the effort required in moral discipline consists in the courage needed to acknowledge the unpleasant consequences of one's past and present acts.

Consequences | Courage | Discipline | Effort | Past | Present | Wisdom |

Lydia Avery Coonley Ward

Why fear tomorrow, timid heart? Why tread the future's way? We only need to do our part Today, dear child, today. The past is written! Close the book On pages sad and gay; Within the future do not look, But live today-today. "Tis this one hour that God has given; His now we must obey; And it will make our earth his heaven To live today-today.

Earth | Fear | Future | God | Heart | Heaven | Need | Past | Will | Wisdom | God |

Madame d'Épinay, born born Florence Louise Tardieu d'Esclavelles Petronilla

One sees the past better than it was; one finds the present worse than it is; one hopes for a future happier than it will be.

Better | Future | Past | Present | Will | Wisdom |

Karl Deutsch, fully Karl Wolfgang Deutsch

The single greatest power in the world today is the power to change... The most recklessly irresponsible thing we could do in the future would be to go on exactly as we have in the past ten or twenty years. I can imagine no more dangerous policy than the conservatism that exists today.

Change | Conservatism | Future | Past | Policy | Power | Wisdom | World |

Orville Dewey

The dead carry our thoughts to another and a nobler existence. They teach us, and especially buy all the strange and seemingly untoward circumstances of their departure from this life, that they and we shall live in a future state forever.

Circumstances | Existence | Future | Life | Life | Teach | Wisdom |

Charles W. Eliot

The best way to secure future happiness is to be as happy as is rightfully possible today.

Future | Happy | Wisdom | Happiness |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

Is it any weakness, pray, to be wrought on by exquisite music? to feel its wondrous harmonies searching the subtlest windings of your soul, the delicate fibres of life where no memory can penetrate, and binding together your whole being, past and present, in one ;unspeakable vibration; melting you in one moment with all the tenderness, all the love, that has been scattered through the toilsome years, concentrating in one emotion of heroic courage or resignation all the hard-learned lessons of self-renouncing sympathy, blending your present joy with past sorrow, and your present sorrow with all your past joy?

Courage | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Memory | Music | Past | Present | Resignation | Self | Sorrow | Soul | Sympathy | Tenderness | Weakness | Wisdom |

Tyron Edwards

Right actions for the future are the best apologies for wrong ones in the past - the best evidence of regret for them that we can offer, or the world receives.

Evidence | Future | Past | Regret | Right | Wisdom | World | Wrong |

Thomas Dreier

If we are ever to enjoy life, now is the time - not tomorrow, nor next year, nor in some future life after we have died. The best preparation for a better life next year is a full, complete, harmonious, joyous life this year. Our beliefs in a rich future life are of little importance unless we coin them into a rich present life. Today should always be our most wonderful day.

Better | Day | Future | Life | Life | Little | Present | Time | Tomorrow | Wisdom |

Euripedes NULL

Sweet is the memory of past labor.

Labor | Memory | Past | Wisdom |

Gustave Flaubert

The most glorious moments in your life are not the so-called days of success, but rather those days when out of dejection and despair you feel rise in you a challenge to life, and the promise of future accomplishments.

Challenge | Dejection | Despair | Future | Life | Life | Promise | Success | 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 |

J. Paul Getty, fully Jean Paul Getty

The man who comes up with a means of doing or producing almost anything better, faster, or more economically has his future and his fortune at his fingertips.

Better | Fortune | Future | Man | Means | 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 |

Tanhum ben Hanilai

A physician restricts the diet of only those patients whom he expects to recover. So God prescribed dietary laws for those who have hope of a future life. Others may eat anything.

Diet | Future | God | Hope | Life | Life | Wisdom | God |