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

Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

Much that we hug today as knowledge is ignorance pure and simple… It makes the mind wander and even reduces it to a vacuity.

Ignorance | Knowledge | Mind |

Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu

The purpose of life is undoubtedly to know oneself. We cannot do it unless we learn to identify ourselves with all that lives. The sum total of that life is God. Hence the necessity of realizing God living within every one of us… The instrument of this knowledge is boundless, selfless service.

God | Knowledge | Life | Life | Necessity | Purpose | Purpose | Service | God | Learn |

Ludwig Feuerbach, fully Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach

Theology is nothing else than anthropology… The knowledge of God is nothing else than a knowledge of man.

God | Knowledge | Man | Nothing | Theology | God |

Tzvi Freeman

Learning is not the mere acquisition of knowledge and more knowledge. Learning is a process of making quantum leaps beyond the subjective self.

Knowledge | Learning | Self |

Romano Guardini

My being known by God is my reality, and I become real in the measure that my life and action are in harmony with the knowledge of God.

Action | God | Harmony | Knowledge | Life | Life | Reality | God |

David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins

Spiritual truth is beyond meaning; it doesn’t `mean’ anything. It can only be known, and that knowledge can only come about by becoming. Meaning is a mentation and a definition. Spiritual truth is a subjective awareness which is innately beyond intellection. For instance, what does a beautiful sunset `mean’? It doesn’t `mean’ anything; it is just startling that which it is, complete and total in and of itself. God is direct awareness and experience, a realization, a revelation, and the absolute perfection of pure subjectivity.

Absolute | Awareness | Experience | God | Knowledge | Meaning | Perfection | Revelation | Truth | God | Awareness |

Patrick Grim

Our pursuit of knowledge involves exploring the consequences of our initial assumptions, both our conceptual assumptions and empirical ones

Consequences | Knowledge |

Abraham Joshua Heschel

Faith is sensitiveness to what transcends nature, knowledge and will, awareness of the ultimate, alertness to the holy dimension of all reality. Faith is a force in man, lying deeper than the stratum of reason and its nature cannot be defined in abstract, static terms. To have faith is not to infer the beyond from the wretched here, but to perceive the wonder that is here and to be stirred by the desire to integrate the self into the holy order of living. It is not a deduction but an intuition, not a form of knowledge, of being convinced without proof, but the attitude of mind toward ideas whose scope is wider than its own capacity to grasp.

Abstract | Awareness | Capacity | Desire | Faith | Force | Ideas | Intuition | Knowledge | Lying | Man | Mind | Nature | Order | Reality | Reason | Self | Will | Wonder | Awareness |

Sidney Greenberg

Time converts knowledge into wisdom

Knowledge | Time | Wisdom |

Peter W. Jedlicka

Wisdom and knowledge are different from each other. Intellect alone cannot lead you to a complete understanding. To have the complete truth you have to use your entire being, your mind and your soul.

Knowledge | Mind | Soul | Truth | Understanding | Wisdom | Intellect |

Mohamed Iqbal or Sir Muhammad Iqbal, aka Allama Iqbal

Life is a struggle and not a matter of privilege. It is nothing but one’s knowledge of the temporal and the spiritual world.

Knowledge | Life | Life | Nothing | Struggle | World |

Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

The fountain of contentment must spring up in the mind. He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief which he proposes to remove.

Contentment | Grief | Human nature | Knowledge | Life | Life | Little | Mind | Nature | Waste | Will | Happiness |

Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

He who has so little knowledge of human nature as to seek happiness by changing anything but his own disposition will waste his life in fruitless efforts and multiply the grief which he proposes to remove.

Grief | Human nature | Knowledge | Life | Life | Little | Nature | Waste | Will | Happiness |

Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful.

Integrity | Knowledge |

Abraham Joshua Heschel

We live not only in time and space but also in the knowledge of God. The events in the world reflect in him, and all existence is coexistence with God. Time and space are not the limits of the world. Our life occurs here and in the knowledge of God.

Events | Existence | God | Knowledge | Life | Life | Space | Time | World |

Abraham Isaac Kook

Faith is the song of life. Woe to him who wishes to rob life of its splendid poetry. The whole mass of prosaic literature and knowledge is of value only when it is founded on the perception of the poetry of life.

Faith | Knowledge | Life | Life | Literature | Perception | Poetry | Wishes | Woe | Value |

Sharon R. Kaufman

An individual does not comprehend his or her self as a linear sequence – a succession of roles or a trajectory of “socialize” beings, learning and then acting out (or deviating from) a set of socially appropriate rules of behavior. Moreover, identity in old age is not merely the sum of the parts, whether roles, achievements, losses, or social norms. Instead, people dynamically integrate a wide range of experience – unique situations, structural forces, values, cultural pathways, knowledge of an entire life span – to construct a current and viable identity.

Age | Behavior | Experience | Individual | Knowledge | Learning | Life | Life | Old age | People | Self | Unique | Old |

Glenn W. Lehrer

Crystals are like concentrated knowledge pressed into crystalline form. They are the culmination of life force coming together in time and space. The crystal shows nature’s urge for symmetry and perfection. Our life purpose is like that – purposeful curiosity and imagination yearning for balance and beauty.

Balance | Beauty | Curiosity | Force | Imagination | Knowledge | Life | Life | Nature | Perfection | Purpose | Purpose | Space | Time |