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

Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara

The first commandment for every good explorer is that an expedition has two points: the point of departure and the point of arrival. If your intention is to make the second theoretical point coincide with the actual point of arrival, don't think about the means -- because the journey is a virtual space that finishes when it finishes, and there are as many means as there are different ways of 'finishing.' That is to say, the means are endless.

Life | Life | Right |

E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

It is of little use trying to suppress terrorism if the production of deadly devices continues to be deemed a legitimate employment of man's creative powers. Nor can the fight against pollution be successful if the patterns of production and consumption continue to be of a scale, a complexity, and a degree of violence which, as is becoming more and more apparent, do not fit into the laws of the universe, to which man is just as much subject as the rest of creation.

Question | Right |

Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger

The stages of human development are to strive for: (1) Besitz [Possession], (2) Wissen [Knowledge], (3) Konnen [Ability], (4) Sein [Being].

Truth |

Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara

Far more important than a good remuneration is the pride of serving one's neighbor.

Heart | Truth | Will |

Ester and Jerry Hicks

There is a Life Stream that flows to you, and this is a Stream of clarity, a Stream of wellness, a Stream of abundance - and in any moment, you are allowing it or not. What someone else does with the Stream, or not, does not have anything to do with how much of it will be left for you.

Emotions | Good | Guidance | Hope | Right | Thinking | Guidance | Happiness |

Etel Adnan

Let's not feed the imagination matters relating to the friendship

Truth |

Ester and Jerry Hicks

Some say that you should not want money at all because the desire for money is materialistic and not spiritual. But we want you to remember that you are here in this very physical world where Spirit has materialized. You cannot separate yourself from the aspect of yourself that is spiritual, and while you are here in these bodies, you cannot separate yourselves from that which is physical or material. All the magnificent things of a physical nature that are surrounding you are Spiritual in nature.

Individual | Power | Right | World | Wrong |

Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson

Thus the same statement that guarantees that God exists and that his most suitable name is He Who Is, also reveals to us the perfect simplicity of the divine essence. And indeed, God did not say: I am this or that, but simply I Am. I am what? I am ‘I Am.’ So, more than ever, the statement of Exodus seems to soar above in a kind of empty space, where the attraction of the weight of philosophy can no longer be felt. The work of reason is good, healthy, and important, for it proves that, left to itself, philosophy can establish with certitude the existence of the primary being whom everyone calls God. But a single word of the sacred text at once puts us in personal relations with him. We say his name, and by the simple fact of saying it, it teaches us the simplicity of the divine essence.

Absolute | Experience | Light | Man | Truth | Intellect |

Étienne Pivert de Senancour

If I have developed on me even the law of death, which was given to the company?

Right |

Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson

The Greek gods are the crude but telling expression of this absolute conviction that since man is somebody, and not merely something, the ultimate explanation for what happens to him should rest with somebody, and not merely with somethingÂ… Mythology is not the first step on the path to true philosophy. In fact, it is no philosophy at all. Mythology is a first step on the path to true religion: it is religious in its own right.

Philosophy | Rebellion | Thinking | Truth |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

The old -- like children -- talk to themselves, for they have reached that hopeless wisdom of experience which knows that though one were to cry it in the streets to multitudes, or whisper it in the kiss to one's beloved, the only ears that can ever hear one's secrets are one's own!

Life | Life | Nothing | Truth | World |

Eudora Welty

Fiction shows us the past as well as the present moment in mortal light; it is an art served by the indelibility of our memory, and one empowered by a sharp and prophetic awareness of what is ephemeral. It is by the ephemeral that our feeling is so strongly aroused for what endures, or strives to endure.

Good | Truth |

Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson

Speaking on the near skepticism of the study of the history of philosophy:

Criticism | Distinguish | Doubt | Effort | Existence | Faith | God | Mind | Modesty | Need | Question | Reason | Truth | God | Afraid |

Eugen Herrigel

Your question is already answered by the fact that I made you take a test. You have now reached a stage where teacher and pupil are no longer two persons, but one. You can separate from me any time you wish. Even if broad seas lie between us, I shall always be with you when you practice what you have learned. I need not ask you to keep up your regular practicing, not to discontinue it on any pretext whatsoever, and to let no day go by without your performing the ceremony, even without bow and arrow, or at least without having breathed properly. I need not ask you because I know that you can never give up this spiritual archery. Do not ever write to me about it, but send me photographs from time to time so that I can see how you draw the bow. Then I shall know everything I need to know.

Choice | Difficulty | Right | Will |

Eudora Welty

Don't give anybody up. . . or leave anybody out. . . . There's room for everything, and time for everybody, if you take your day the way it comes along and try not to be much later than you can help.--Spoken by Jack to Gloria

Character | Life | Life | Right | Soul |

Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson

The true reason why this universe appears to some scientists as mysterious is that, mistaking existential, that is, metaphysical, questions for scientific ones, they ask science to answer them. Naturally, they get no answers. Then they are puzzled, and they say that the universe is mysterious.

Absolute | Existence | God | Knowledge | Need | Scripture | Truth | God | Understand |

Eugen Herrigel

Don't think of what you have to do, don't consider how to carry it out! he exclaimed. The shot will only go smoothly when it takes the archer himself by surprise.

Aptitude | Awareness | Cult | Danger | Ego | Existence | Life | Life | Present | Reason | Right | Spirit | Success | Time | Witness | Worth | Talent | Danger | Awareness | Teacher |

Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill

If that ghost have money I tells him never to haunt you -- less'n he wants to lose it!

Life | Life | Meaning | Truth | Ugly | Learn |

Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson

He (a new philosopher) still needs to be taught, not this time philosophy, but to philosophize.

Day | Knowledge | Principles | Right | Time | Intellect |