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

Thomas Paine

The Vatican is a dagger in the heart of Italy.

Bible | Evidence | Existence | God | Man | Universe | God | Bible |

Tzvi Freeman

G-d is not Nature...but Nature is G-dly.

Evidence | Health | History | Humanity | World | Understand |

Thomas Reid

But when, in the first setting out, he takes it for granted without proof, that distinctions found in the structure of all languages, have no foundation in nature; this surely is too fastidious a way of treating the common sense of mankind.

Evidence | Plan | Power | Wisdom |

Walter L. Bradley

The widespread recognition of the severe improbability that self-replicating organisms could have formed from purely random interactions has led to a great deal of speculation---speculation that some organizing principle must have been involved. [Co-written with Charles B. Thaxton and Roger L. Olsen]

Evidence |

Walter L. Bradley

A universe that contains a special place of habitation for complex, conscious life is so truly remarkable that it is, realistically speaking, impossible to believe it is the result of a series of cosmic accidents. To choose to believe that there is a naturalistic explanation for (a) the mathematical forms encoded in the laws of nature, (b) the precise specification of the nineteen universal constants and (c) the remarkable initial conditions required for star formation and the simplest living systems is to believe in a miracle by another name.

Design | Evidence | Faith | God | Life | Life | Present | Universe | God |

Walter L. Bradley

An intelligible communication via radio signal from some distant galaxy would be widely hailed as evidence of an intelligent source. Why then doesn't the message sequence on the DNA molecule also constitute prima facie evidence for an intelligent source? After all, DNA information is not just analogous to a message sequence such as Morse code, it is such a message sequence.[Co-written with Charles B. TGhaxton and Robert L. Olsen]

Difficulty | Evidence | Evolution | Life | Life | Mystery | System | Time | Universe |

Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell

I should like to say two things, one intellectual and one moral. The intellectual thing I should want to say to them is this: When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only what are the facts and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe, or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed. But look only, and solely, at what are the facts. That is the intellectual thing that I should wish to say. The moral thing I should wish to say to them is very simple: I should say, love is wise, hatred is foolish. In this world which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way — and if we are to live together and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.

Argument | Authority | Dissent | Evidence | Fear | Husband | Inconvenient | Intelligence | Opinion | Pleasure | Power | Respect | Thinking | Truth | Will | Worth | Respect | Happiness | Old | Think | Value |

William Arthur

There is not a beast of the field but may trust his nature and follow it; certain that it will lead him to the best of which he is capable. But as for us, our only invincible enemy is our nature.

Change | Evidence | Power |

William Cohen, fully William Sebastian Cohen

The more reliant we become upon computers and information systems, the more vulnerable we become to cyber-terrorists who will conceive unlimited ways to cripple our infrastructure, our power grids, our banking systems, our financial markets, our space based communications systems.

Administration | Belief | Challenge | Effort | Evidence | Intelligence | Kill | War | Think |

William Cohen, fully William Sebastian Cohen

There are some reports, for example, that some countries have been trying to construct something like an Ebola Virus, and that would be a very dangerous phenomenon, to say the least... Others are engaging even in an eco- type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves.

Evidence | Intelligence | Risk | Security | Time | Weapons |

Wendell Phillips

The press is the exclusive literature of the million; to them it is literature, church, and college.

Change | Evidence | God | Search | God |

Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers

[The Devil said:] It seems but yesterday that I launched Hell’s Five Hundred Year Plan.… I saw that Hell had to move with the tide and leave the rest to rationalism, liberalism and universal compulsory education… At first there was some opposition in Hell. Baal, Beelzebub and a handful of almost aboriginal demons who are still living in the 10th Century B.C. and have not had an idea since the Fall, naturally opposed the New Deal.

Devil | Evidence | Good | Hell | Man | World |

Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers

It is in fact no exaggeration to say that we live in terror that Senator McCarthy will one day make some irreparable blunder that will play directly into the hands of our common enemy and discredit the whole anti-Communist effort for a long while to come.

Evidence | Hope | Knowledge | Little | Men | Need | Thought | Thought |

Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

Choose to see death as simply removing a garment or moving from one room to another... it's merely a transition.

Evidence | Greatness | Life | Life | People | Sense | Spirit |

Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

Have you ever noticed when you’re in the presence of certain people that you feel better about yourself? Their compassionate energy has the noticeably pleasant impact of simply making you feel really good about yourself. You’ll impact others with this energy of compassion as you develop your connection to intention.

Evidence | Faith | Fear | God | God |

Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

Anything that has been accomplished by any other human being in the physical realm is within the field of possibility.

Ability | Evidence | Talent |

Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

There is a voice in the Universe urging us to remember our purpose for being on this great Earth. This is the voice of inspiration, which is within each and every one of us.

Evidence | Relationship | Thinking | Wrong |

Wendell Berry

The care of the earth is our most ancient and most worthy and, after all, our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it, and to foster its renewal, is our only legitimate hope.

Ability | Abundance | Defeat | Desire | Evidence | Hope | Ignorance | Knowledge | Problems | Revelation | World |

Wendell Berry

My grandfather returned to what he called ‘studying.’ He sat looking down at his lap, his left hand idle on the chair arm, his right scratching his head, his white hair gleaming in the lamplight. I knew that when he was studying he was thinking, but I did not know what about. Now I have aged into knowledge of what he thought about. He thought of his strength and endurance when he was young, his merriment and joy, and how his life’s burdens had then grown upon him. He thought of that arc of country that centered upon Port William as he first had known it in the years just after the Civil War, and as it had changed, and as it had become; and how all that time, which would have seemed almost forever when he was a boy, now seemed hardly anytime at all. He thought of the people he remembered, now dead, and of those who had come and gone before his knowledge, and of those who would come after, and of his own place in that long procession.

Evidence | Heart | History | Hope | Improvement | Individual | Little | Protest | Public | Qualities | Spirit | Success |