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

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.

Character | Man | Nothing |

Henry Hancock

Out of our beliefs are born deeds. Out of our deeds we form habits; out of our habits grow our character; and on our character we build our destination.

Character | Deeds | Deeds |

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a.k.a. Charlotte Anna (nee Perkins), Charlotte Perkins Stetson

It is not that women are really smaller-minded, weaker-minded, more timid and vacillating; but that whosoever, man or woman, lives always in a small, dark place, is always guarded, protected, directed, and restrained will become inevitably narrowed and weakened by it. The woman is narrowed by the home, and the man is narrowed by the woman.

Man | Will | Woman |

Thomas Jefferson

Millions of innocent men, women and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burned, tortured, fined and imprisoned, yet we have not advanced one inch toward uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half of the world fools and the other half hypocrites.

Children | Coercion | Men | Uniformity | World |

William Ralph Inge

The proper time to influence the character of a child is about 100 years before it is born.

Character | Influence | Time | Child |

Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley

The future must have as its basis the consciousness of sanctity in existence – in common things, in the events of human life, in the gradually comprehended interlocking whole revealed to the human desire for knowledge, n the benedictions of beauty and love, in the catharsis, the sacred purging, of the moral drama in which character is pitted against fate and even deepest tragedy may uplift the mind.

Beauty | Character | Consciousness | Desire | Events | Existence | Fate | Future | Knowledge | Life | Life | Love | Mind | Sacred | Tragedy | Fate | Beauty |

Laws of Manu, aka Manusmṛti, Manusmriti, Manusmruti or Mānava-Dharmaśāstra NULL

Where women are honored, there the gods delight; where they are not honored, there all acts become fruitless.

Karl Kraus

There are women who are not beautiful but only look that way.

John Koster

Darwin’s and Huxley’s picture of man’s place in the universe prepared the way for the Holocaust… Darwin the scientist directly inspired Nietzsche’s superman theory and the Nazi corollary that some people were subhuman… People have to learn to stop thinking of other people as machines and learn to think of them as men and women possessed of souls… History doesn’t need another one hundred million deaths to prove that scientific atheism is a form of mental illness.

Atheism | History | Machines | Man | Men | Need | People | Thinking | Universe | Learn | Think |

William Kilpatrick, fully William Heard Kilpatrick

The core problem facing our schools is a moral one. All the other problems derive from it. Even academic reform depends on putting character first.

Character | Problems | Reform |

Aben Kandel and Warren Duff

A man’s character is determined by how hard he fights for what he believes in.

Character | Man |

Thomas Lickona, fully Thomas Edward Lickona

Schools inevitably teach good or bad values in everything they do. Every interaction, whether part of the academic curriculum or the human curriculum of rules, roles, and relationships, has the potential to affect a child’s values and character for good or for ill. The question is not whether to do values education but whether to do it well.

Character | Education | Good | Question | Teach |

John Locke

Fortitude is the Guard and Support of the other Virtues; and without Courage a Man will scarce keep steady to his Duty, and fill up the Character of a truly worthy Man.

Character | Courage | Duty | Fortitude | Man | Will |

P. W. Martin

Promiscuity, possessiveness, misuse of sex for purposes of power, are all highly disintegrative.

Power | Promiscuity |

Thomas Lickona, fully Thomas Edward Lickona

Schools cannot be ethical bystanders at a time when our society is in deep moral trouble. Rather, schools must do what they can to contribute to the character of the young and the moral health of the nation.

Character | Health | Society | Time | Society |

Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli

There is no better indication of a man’s character than the company which he keeps.

Better | Character | Man |

Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli

A truly great man is ever the same under all circumstances; and if his fortune varies, exalting him at one moment and oppressing him at another, he himself never varies, but always preserves a firm courage, which is so closely interwoven with his character that everyone can readily see that the fickleness of fortune has no power over him.

Character | Circumstances | Courage | Fortune | Man | Power |

Thomas Lickona, fully Thomas Edward Lickona

Character so conceived has three interrelated parts: moral knowing, moral feeling, and moral behavior. Good character consists of knowing the good, desiring the good, and doing the good – habits of the mind, habits of the heart, and habits of action. When we think about the kind of character we want for our children, it’s clear that we want them to be able to judge what is right, care deeply about what is right, and then do what they believe to be right – even in the face of pressure from without and temptation from within.

Action | Behavior | Care | Character | Children | Good | Heart | Knowing | Mind | Right | Temptation | Temptation | Think |