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

Walter Savage Landor

We enter our studies, and enjoy a society which we alone can bring together. We raise no jealousy by conversing with one in preference to another; we give no offense to the most illustrious by questioning him as long as we will, and leaving him as abruptly. Diversity of opinion raises no tumult in our presence: each interlocutor stands before us, speaks or is silence, and we adjourn or decide the business at our leisure.

Business | Character | Diversity | Jealousy | Leisure | Offense | Opinion | Preference | Silence | Society | Will | Society | Business |

Madame de Motteville, Françoise Bertaut de Motteville

If only man could be induced to laugh more they might hate less, and find more serenity here on earth. If they cannot worship together, or accept the same laws, or tolerate the wonderful diversity of thought and behavior and physique with which they have been blessed, at least they can laugh together.

Behavior | Character | Diversity | Earth | Hate | Man | Serenity | Thought | Worship | Thought |

Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl of Bewdley

I am not struck so much by the diversity of testimony as by the many-sidedness of truth.

Diversity | Truth | Wisdom |

Albert Einstein

Science is the attempt to make the chaotic diversity of our sense-experience correspond to a logically uniform system of thought.

Diversity | Experience | Science | Sense | System | Thought | Wisdom |

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

When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the areas of men's concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his experience. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses. For art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstones of our judgment. The artist... faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an offensive state.

Arrogance | Art | Diversity | Experience | Individual | Judgment | Man | Men | Mind | Poetry | Power | Reality | Sensibility | Society | Vision | Wisdom | Society | Art | Truths |

Starhawk, born Miriam Simos NULL

Our purpose is to live in harmony with those cycles [birth, growth, death and regeneration] to develop our peculiar organs of consciousness and creativity to add to the beauty, love, humor, diversity and general interest of the world.

Beauty | Birth | Consciousness | Creativity | Death | Diversity | Growth | Harmony | Humor | Love | Purpose | Purpose | Wisdom | World |

Peter Abelard, Latin: Petrus Abaelardus or Abailard; French: Pierre Abélard

In fact we say that an intention is good, that is, right in itself, but that an action does not bear any good in itself but proceeds from a good intention. Whence when the same thing is done by the same man at different times, by the diversity of his intention, however, his action is now said to be good, now bad.

Action | Diversity | Good | Inquiry | Intention | Man | Right | Truth | Wisdom |

René Dubos, fully René Jules Dubos

Human diversity makes tolerance more than a virtue; it makes it a requirement for survival.

Diversity | Survival | Virtue | Virtue |

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Giving much thought to the future is vain. Only one task is worthy of the doing and that is to express the Here and Now. And to express means building, out of the infinite diversity of the Here and Now, a visage dominating it. It means shaping silence out of stones. Any other claim is but an ado of words that weave the wind.

Diversity | Future | Giving | Means | Silence | Thought | Words | Thought |

Arthur W Osborn

Minds have forms because, although they are changing streams of consciousness, they exhibit the paradox of unity in diversity which is the characteristic of all wholes. Forms are aspects of consciousness and precede tangible and so-called substantial expression. The universe as a totality, comprising forms and their integration into wholes in infinite diversity, is an expression of Life universal in graded series on various levels. Every particular form-expression “creates” its own time-space. Substance and tangibility have no reality apart from sensory apprehension.

Consciousness | Diversity | Integration | Life | Life | Paradox | Reality | Space | Time | Unity | Universe |

Nicholas of Cusa, also Nicholas of Kues and Nicolaus Cusanus NULL

Even though you are designated in terms of different religions, yet you presuppose in all of this diversity one religion which you call wisdom.

Diversity | Religion | Wisdom |

Nicholas of Cusa, also Nicholas of Kues and Nicolaus Cusanus NULL

Humanity will one day find that it is not a diversity of creeds but the very same creed which is everywhere proposed. There can not be but one wisdom. Humans must therefore all agree that there is but one most imple wisdom whose power is infinite. And everyone in explaining the intensity of this beauty must discover that it is a supreme and terrible beauty.

Beauty | Creed | Day | Diversity | Humanity | Power | Will | Wisdom | Beauty |

Felix Adler

The freedom of thought is a sacred right of every individual man, and diversity will continue to increase with the progress, refinement, and differentiation of the human intellect.

Diversity | Freedom of thought | Freedom | Individual | Right | Sacred | Thought | Will | Thought |

Franz Boas, fully Franz Uri Boas

We do not discuss the anatomical, physiological, and mental characteristics of man considered as an individual; but we are interested in the diversity of these traits in groups of men found in different geographical areas and in different social classes.

Diversity | Man | Men |

Freeman John Dyson

The principle of maximum diversity says that the laws of nature, and the initial conditions at the beginning of time, are such as to make the universe as interesting as possible. As a result, life is possible but not too easy. Maximum diversity often leads to maximum stress. In the end we survive, but only by the skin of our teeth. This is the confession of faith of a scientific heretic. Perhaps I may claim as evidence for progress in religion the fact that we no longer burn heretics.

Beginning | Diversity | Evidence | Faith | Life | Life | Progress | Religion | Universe |

Johannes Kepler

We do not ask for what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for singing. Similarly, we ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the heavens. The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.

Diversity | Mind | Nature | Order | Phenomena | Pleasure | Purpose | Purpose | Troubles |