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

Simcha Zissel of Kelm, fully Rabbi imcha Zissel Ziv Broida, aka the Elder of Kelm

When a person focuses on the goals of his life, he is able to overcome the difficulties involved. When one’s focus is on olam haboh [world-to-come], he lives in a state of happiness even though he experiences many inconveniences along his relatively short trip.

Character | Focus | Goals | Life | Life | World | Happiness |

W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

All I have is a voice to undo the folded lie, the romantic lie in the brain of the sensual man-in-the-street and the lie of Authority whose buildings grope the sky: there is no such thing as the State and no one exists alone; hunger allows no choice to the citizen or the police; we must love one another or die.

Authority | Choice | Hunger | Love | Man | Wisdom |

Zeno of Citium NULL

One should seek virtue for its own sake and not from hope or fear, or any external motive. It is in virtue that happiness consists, for virtue is the state of mind which tends to make the whole of life harmonious.

Character | Fear | Hope | Life | Life | Mind | Virtue | Virtue | Happiness |

Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson

In that continuity of becoming which is reality itself, the present moment is constituted by the quasi-instantaneous section effected by our perception in the flowing mass; and this section is precisely that which we call the material world. Our bodies occupies its centre; it is, in this material world, that part of which we directly feel the flux; in its actual state the actuality of our present lies.

Perception | Present | Reality | Wisdom | World |

Alan Barth

Security is never absolute... The government of a free people must take certain chances for the sake of maintaining freedom which the government of a police state avoids because it holds freedom to be of no value.

Absolute | Freedom | Government | People | Security | Wisdom | Government |

Amiri Baraka, formerly known as LeRoi Jones

Life itself is the expression of evolution... Everything that exists is merely matter in motion. In the same way, perfection is always a temporary relative motion. Humanity is relative... We are at such a low expression of consciousness that we have not yet seriously studied ourselves... Development is circular... Everything is constantly moving at higher, faster, more refined, complex levels of being... We will be here as quantitative motion until we reach a state of motion that is qualitative, revolutionary. Then we will be somewhere else!

Consciousness | Evolution | Humanity | Life | Life | Perfection | Will | Wisdom |

Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson

From our point of view, life appears in its entirety as an immense wave... which rises, and which is opposed by the descending movement of matter.. this rising wave is consciousness... running through human generations, subdividing itself into individuals. This subdivision was vaguely indicated in it, but could not have been made clear without matter. Thus souls are continually being created, which, nevertheless, in a certain sense pre-existed. They are nothing else than the little rills into which the great river of life divides itself, flowing through the body of humanity. The movement of the stream is distinct from the river bed, although it must adopt its winding course. Consciousness is distinct from the organism it animates, although it must undergo its vicissitudes... the brain underlines at ever instant the motor indications of the state of consciousness; but the interdependence of consciousness and brain is limited to this... consciousness is essentially free.

Body | Consciousness | Humanity | Life | Life | Little | Nothing | Sense | Wisdom |

Bible or The Bible or Holy Bible NULL

I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.

Wisdom |

Andrew Brock, fully Andrew Clutton Brock

The universe is to be valued because there is truth in it and beauty in it; and we live to discover the truth and the beauty no less than to do what is right. Indeed, we can not attain to that state of mind in which we shall naturally do what is right unless we are aware of the truth and the beauty of the universe.

Beauty | Mind | Right | Truth | Universe | Wisdom | Beauty |

Brown v. Board of Education NULL

Today education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. Compulsory school attendance laws and the great expenditures for education both demonstrate our recognition of the importance of education to our democratic society. It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces. It is the very foundation of good citizenship. Today it is a principal instrument in awakening the child to cultural values, in preparing him for later professional training, and in helping him to adjust normally to his environment. In these days, it is doubtful that any child may reasonably be expected to succeed in life if he is denied the opportunity of an education. Such an opportunity, where the state has undertaken to provide it, is a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.

Awakening | Citizenship | Education | Good | Important | Life | Life | Opportunity | Public | Right | Service | Society | Training | Wisdom | Child |

Arthur Brisbane

The leading characteristic of the savage state is its refusal or avoidance of industry.

Industry | Wisdom |

John Caldwell Calhoun

If the government should be taught that the highest wisdom of a state is a wise and masterly inactivity, an invaluable blessing will be conferred.

Government | Inactivity | Will | Wisdom | Wise | Government |

Richard Cecil

I extend the circle of real religion very widely. Many men fear God, and love God, and have sincere desire to serve him, whose views of religious truth are very imperfect, and in some points utterly false. But may not many such persons have a state of heart acceptable before God?

Desire | Fear | God | Heart | Love | Men | Religion | Truth | Wisdom |

James Burgh

No state can be more destitute than that of a person, who, when the delights of sense forsake him, has no pleasures of the mind.

Mind | Sense | Wisdom |

Carl von Clausewitz, fully Carl Philipp Gottfried von Clausewitz, also Karl von Clausewitz

If the aim of the military action is an equivalent for the political object, that action will in general diminish as the political object diminishes. The more this object comes to the front, the more will this be so. This explains how, without self-contradiction, there can be wars of all degrees of importance and energy, from a war of extermination down to a mere state of armed observation.

Action | Contradiction | Energy | Object | Observation | Self | War | Will | Wisdom |

Cyril Connolly, fully Cyril Vernon Connolly

Reality, union with reality, is the true state of the soul when confident and healthy. Unreality is what keeps us from ourselves, and most pleasures are unreal.

Reality | Soul | Wisdom |

Anne Conway

(Mathematical Division of Things, is never made in Minima; but Things may be Physically divided into their least parts; as when Concrete Matter is so far divided that it departs into Physical Monades, as it was in the first State of its Materiality...) Moreover the consideration of this Infinite Divisibility of every thing, into parts always less, is no unnecessary or unprofitable Theory, but a thing of great moment; viz. that thereby may be understood the Reasons and Causes of Things; and how all Creatures from the highest to the lowest are inseparably united with one another, by means of Subtiler Parts interceding or coming in between, which are the Emanations of one Creature into another, by which also they act one upon another at the greatest distance; and this is the Foundation of all Sympathy and Antipathy which happens in Creatures: And if these things be well understood of any one, he may easily see into the most secret and hidden Causes of Things, which ignorant Men call occult Qualities.

Consideration | Means | Men | Qualities | Sympathy | Wisdom |

John Dewey

The fundamental defect in the present state of democracy is the assumption that political and economic freedom can be achieved without first freeing the mind. Freedom of mind is not something that spontaneously happens. It is not achieved by mere absence of obvious restraints. It is a product of constant unremitting nurture of right habits of observation and reflection.

Absence | Democracy | Freedom | Mind | Observation | Present | Reflection | Right | Wisdom |

Auguste Comte, formally Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte

When a regular division of employments has spread through any society, the social state begins to acquire a consistency and stability which place it out of danger from particular divergencies.

Consistency | Danger | Society | Wisdom | Danger |