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

James A. Pike, fully Bishop James Albert Pike

With us, separation of church and state was never intended to mean separation of religion from society.

Church | Religion | Society |

Indira Gandhi, fully Indirā Priyadarśinī Gāndhī

Opposition comes not only from your enemies but sometimes from your friends, and the latter is much more difficult to face. You have to have physical courage, because very often going along the path of your choice is full of physical handicap hardship.

Choice | Courage | Opposition |

Jean-Paul Sartre

Thus, there is no human nature, because there is no God to have a conniption of it. Man simply is... Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism.

Existentialism | God | Human nature | Man | Nature | Nothing | God |

Jeremy Bentham

Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign asters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and law. Systems which attempt to question it deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.

Darkness | Effort | Law | Light | Man | Mankind | Nature | Object | Pain | Pleasure | Question | Reality | Reason | Right | Sense | System | Will | Words | Wrong | Govern |

Jean-Paul Sartre

Man simply is. Not that he simply is what he conceives himself to be, but he is what he wills, and as he conceives of himself after already existing - as he will to be... Man is nothing else but that which is makes of himself. That is the first principle of existentialism.

Existentialism | Man | Nothing | Will | Wills |

John Fiske

Paley’s simile of the watch is no longer applicable to such a world as this. It must be replaced by the simile of the flower. The universe is not a machine, but an organism, with an indwelling principle of life. It was not made, but it has grown.

Life | Life | Universe | World |

John Henry Newman

Dogma has been the fundamental principle of my religion... Religion, as mere sentiment, is to me a mockery.

Dogma | Mockery | Religion | Sentiment |

John Dryden

Great souls forgive not injuries till time has put their enemies within their power, that they may show forgiveness is their own.

Forgiveness | Power | Time | Forgiveness | Forgive |

John Dryden

Dullness is decent in the Church and State.

Church |

Joseph Addison

When men are easy in their circumstances, they are naturally enemies to innovations.

Circumstances | Men |

John Stuart Mill

The principle of private property has never yet had a fair trial in any country.

Property | Trial |

John Ruskin

It is not the church we want, but the sacrifice; not the emotion of admiration, but the act of adoration; not the gift, but the giving.

Admiration | Church | Giving | Sacrifice |

John Stuart Mill

The progressive principle is antagonistic to the sway of custom. The contest between these two principles, custom and progress, constitutes the chief interest of the history of mankind.

Custom | History | Mankind | Principles | Progress |

Joseph Campbell

The actual point in question, throughout the centuries of Christian persecution, has never been faith in God, but faith in the Bible as the word of God, and in the Church (this Church or that) as the interpreter of that word.

Bible | Church | Faith | God | Question | Bible |

Lillian Hellman, fully Lillian Florience "Lily" Hellman

I didn’t know what she was saying when she moved her lips in a Baptist church or a Catholic cathedral or, less often, in a synagogue, but it was obvious that God could be found anywhere.

Church | God | God |

Karl Rahner

Only one thing can give unity in the Church on the human level: the love which allows another to be different even when it does not understand him.

Church | Love | Unity | Understand |

Louisa May Alcott

My parents never bound us to any church but taught us that the love of goodness was the love of God, the cheerful doing of duty made life happy, and that the love of one’s neighbor in its widest sense was the best help for oneself. Their lives showed us how lovely this simple faith was, how much honor, gratitude and affection it brought them, and what a sweet memory they left behind.

Church | Duty | Faith | God | Gratitude | Happy | Honor | Life | Life | Love | Memory | Parents | Sense |

Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

People don’t come to church for preachments, of course, but to daydream about God.

Church | God | People |