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

Ken Wilber, fully Kenneth Earl Wilber II

There is arguably no more important and pressing topic than the relation of science and religion in the modern world. Science is clearly one of the most profound methods that humans have yet devised for discovering truth, while religion remains the single greatest force for generating meaning. Truth and meaning, science and religion; but we still cannot figure out how to get the two of them together in a fashion that both find acceptable.

Force | Important | Religion | Science | Truth |

Kurt Gödel, also Goedel

The meaning of the world is the separation of wish and fact. Wish is a force as applied to thinking beings, to realize something. A fulfilled wish is a union of wish and fact. The meaning of the whole world is the separation and the union of fact and wish.

Force | Meaning | Thinking | World |

Kurt Hahn, fully Kurt Martin "the rod" Hahn

It is the sin of the soul to force young people into opinions - indoctrination is of the devil - but it is culpable neglect not to impel young people into experiences.

Devil | Force | Neglect | People | Sin | Soul |

Kenneth Kaunda, fully Kenneth David Kaunda

The inability of those in power to still the voices of their own consciences is the great force leading to change.

Force | Power |

Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi

Error is the force that welds men together; truth is communicated to men only by deeds of truth.

Deeds | Force | Men | Truth | Deeds |

Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi

Thus the truth—that his life should be directed by the spiritual element which is its basis, which manifests itself as love, and which is so natural to man—this truth, in order to force a way to man’s consciousness, had to struggle not merely against the obscurity with which it was expressed and the intentional and unintentional distortions surrounding it, but also against deliberate violence, which by means of persecutions and punishments sought to compel men to accept religious laws authorized by the rulers and conflicting with the truth.

Force | Life | Life | Means | Men | Obscurity | Obscurity | Order | Struggle |

Laurence Steinberg

Peer pressure is not a monolithic force that presses adolescents into the same mold... generally choose friend whose values, attitudes, tastes, and families are similar to their own. In short, good kids rarely go bad because of their friends.

Force | Friend | Good |

Laurence J. Peter, fully Laurence Johnston Peter

Television has changed the American child from an irresistable force to an immovable object.

Force | Child |

Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi

Faith is the sense of life, that sense by virtue of which man does not destroy himself, but continues to live on. It is the force whereby we live.

Destroy | Force | Man | Sense | Virtue | Virtue |

Leon Trotsky, born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein

Where force is necessary, there it must be applied boldly, decisively and completely. But one must know the limitations of force; one must know when to blend force with a maneuver, a blow with an agreement.

Force |

Les Brown

We must look for ways to be an active force in our own lives. We must take charge of our own destinies, design a life of substance and truly begin to live our dreams.

Design | Force | Life | Life |

Leon Shenendoah, elected Tadodaho, aka Chief Leon Shenendoah

We must live in harmony with the Natural World and recognize that excessive exploitation can only lead to our own destruction. We cannot trade the welfare of our future generations for profit now. We must abide by the Natural Law or be victims of its ultimate reality. We must stand together, the four sacred colors of humans, as the one family we are, in the interest of peace. We must abolish nuclear and conventional weapons of war. When warriors are leaders, then you will have war. We must raise leaders of peace. We must unite the religions of the world as the spiritual force strong enough to prevail in peace. It is no longer good enough to cry, "Peace." We must act peace, live peace, and march in peace in alliance with the people of the world.

Enough | Family | Force | Future | Good | Harmony | Law | Peace | People | Sacred | Weapons | Will | World |

Lord Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury

In nature, all is managed for the best with perfect frugality and just reserve, profuse to none, but bountiful to all; never employing on one thing more than enough, but with exact economy retrenching the superfluous, and adding force to what is principal in everything.

Force | Frugality |

Louis Pasteur

There are two men in each one of us: the scientist, he who starts with a clear field and desires to rise to the knowledge of Nature through observations, experimentation and reasoning, and the man of sentiment, the man of belief, the man who mourns his dead children, and who cannot, alas, prove that he will see them again, but who believes that he will, and lives in the hope – the man who will not die like a vibrio, but who feels that the force that is within him cannot die.

Force | Hope | Knowledge | Man | Men | Nature | Will |

John Dalberg-Acton, Lord Acton, fully John Emerich Edward Dalberg-Acton, 1st Baron Acton

The one pervading evil of democracy is the tyranny of the majority, or rather of that party, not always the majority, that succeeds, by force or fraud, in carrying elections.

Democracy | Evil | Force | Tyranny |

Louis Bromfield

There is nothing of such force as the power of a person content merely to be himself, nothing so invincible as the power of simple honesty, nothing so successful as the life of one who runs alone. Somewhere she had learned all this. She was like a woman to whom nothing could ever again happen.

Force | Life | Life | Nothing | Power | Woman |

Ludwig von Mises, fully Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises

Inequality of wealth and incomes is an essential feature of the market economy. It is the implement that makes the consumers supreme in giving them the power to force all those engaged in production to comply with their orders. It forces all those engaged in production to the utmost exertion in the service of the consumers. It makes competition work. He who best serves the consumers profits most and accumulates riches.

Competition | Force | Giving | Power | Service | Wealth |

M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck

The problem of unmet expectations in marriage is primarily a problem of stereotyping. Each and every human being on this planet is a unique person. Since marriage is inevitably a relationship between two unique people, no one marriage is going to be exactly like any other. Yet we tend to wed with explicit visions of what a “good” marriage ought to be like. Then we suffer enormously from trying to force the relationship to fit the stereotype and from the neurotic guilt and anger we experience when we fail to pull it off.

Anger | Experience | Force | Guilt | Marriage | Relationship | Unique |