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

Sa’ib of Tabriz, aka Mirza Muhammad Ali Sa'ib, Saib Isfahani or Sa'ib Of Esfahan NULL

What does it profit you that all the libraries of the world should be yours? Not knowledge but what one does with knowledge is your profit.

Knowledge | World |

Hu Shih, born Hu Hung-hsing

The knowledge that mankind needs is not the way or principle which has an absolute existence, but the particular truths for here and now and for particular individuals. Absolute truth is imaginary, abstract, vague, without evidence, and cannot be demonstrated.

Absolute | Abstract | Evidence | Existence | Knowledge | Mankind | Truth | Truths |

Samuel Smiles

Lost wealth may be replaced by industry, lost knowledge by study, lost health by temperance or medicine, but lost time is gone forever.

Health | Industry | Knowledge | Study | Time | Wealth |

E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

The best aid to give is intellectual aid, a gift of useful knowledge… Nothing becomes truly “one’s own” except on the basis of some genuine effort or sacrifice… The gift of material goods makes people dependent, but the gift of knowledge makes them free.

Aid | Effort | Knowledge | Nothing | People | Sacrifice |

Albert Schweitzer

All living knowledge of God rests upon this foundation: that we experience Him in our lives as Will-to-Love.

Experience | God | Knowledge | Love | Will | God |

Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, aka Vatican II

The Catholic Church rejects nothing which is true and holy in these religions… In Hinduism, men probe the mystery of God and express it with a rich fund of myths, and a penetrating philosophy… In the various forms of Buddhism the basic inadequacy of this changing world is recognized and men are taught with confident application how they can achieve a state of complete liberation… The Church also regards with esteem the Muslims who worship the one, subsistent, merciful and almighty God… They venerate Jesus as a prophet… Given the great spiritual heritage common to Christians and Jews, it is the wish of this sacred Council to foster and recommend a mutual knowledge and esteem.

Church | Esteem | God | Knowledge | Men | Mystery | Nothing | Philosophy | Sacred | World | Worship | God |

Herbert Alexander Simon

What chiefly characterizes creative thinking from more mundane forms are (i) willingness to accept vaguely defined problem statements and gradually structure them, (ii) continuing preoccupation with problems over a considerable period of time, and (iii) extensive background knowledge in relevant and potentially relevant areas.

Knowledge | Problems | Thinking | Time |

Albert Schweitzer

We will never comprehend why the infinite will, in order to realize its completion, requires the incomplete, or how evil can result in good. No forced attempt to reason out these events can give us peace of God. There is a different way, a way born from inward experience. We may not have been given the privilege of understanding how events are expressing the will of God. But one thing we do know, and on that knowledge all else depends – the will of God is directed only toward one thing: the spiritual.

Events | Evil | Experience | God | Good | Knowledge | Order | Peace | Reason | Understanding | Will | God | Privilege |

Rudolf Steiner, fully Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner

In every man there are latent faculties by means of which he can acquire for himself knowledge of the higher worlds.

Knowledge | Man | Means |

Ezriel Tauber

The Torah preceded creation in that it was the idea behind creation. It is the primordial knowledge of existence. It is the idea to which life is nothing more than a means. God is eternal, and the temporary nature of the physical creation is contradictory to eternity. Creation, therefore, it not an end in itself; it is a means. It is a means for giving the part of creation made in the Divine image – mankind – the opportunity to earn a share with Hashem in eternity.

Eternal | Eternity | Existence | Giving | God | Knowledge | Life | Life | Mankind | Means | Nature | Nothing | Opportunity | God | Torah |

Ezriel Tauber

Serving God is the way to gain knowledge of Him. God is the source of life, knowledge – everything – and gaining a close, intimate knowledge of God through our service to Him is the ultimate experience. He is the ultimate mystery – and the ultimate discovery.

Discovery | Experience | God | Knowledge | Life | Life | Mystery | Service | God |

John Trudell

It does not seem as if knowledge has done the best thing for humanity. In the time of wisdom, I respected my brother’s dream and he respected mine.

Humanity | Knowledge | Time | Wisdom |

Ezriel Tauber

This world is by definition the place where God hides Himself. It contains His light, i.e., the knowledge of Him, in a hidden way. And the purpose of life is to discover God; or as the prophet says: “to fill the world with the knowledge of God.”

God | Knowledge | Life | Life | Light | Purpose | Purpose | World | God |

Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi

Faith is the knowledge of the meaning of human life, in consequence of which man does not destroy himself but lives. Faith is the force of life. If a man lives he believes in something. If he did not believe there was something to live for, he would not live. If he does not see and understand the unreality of the finite, he believes in the finite; if he sees that unreality, he must believe in the infinite. Without faith it is impossible to live.

Destroy | Faith | Force | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Understand |

Ralph Waldo Trine

“God is well and so are you.” You must awaken to the knowledge of your real being. When this awakening comes, you will have, and you will see that you have the power to determine what conditions are externalized in your body. You must recognize, you must realize yourself, as one with Infinite Spirit. God’s will is then your will; your will is God’s will, and “with God all things are possible.” When we are able to do away with all sense of separateness by living continually in the realization of his oneness, not only will our bodily ills and weaknesses vanish, but all limitations along all lines.

Awakening | Body | God | Knowledge | Oneness | Power | Sense | Spirit | Will | God |

Aimé Fernand David Césaire

Poetic knowledge is born in the great silence of scientific knowledge.

Knowledge | Silence |