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

Ezriel Tauber

We do not know the purpose of one moment of life.

Eternal | Evil | God | Good | Knowledge | Man | Mystery | Nothing | Providence | Reason | Search | Loss | God |

Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste

My mother phones daily to ask, "Did you just try to reach me?" When I reply no, she adds, "So, if you're not too busy, call me while I'm still alive," . . . and hangs up.

Mind |

Evgeny Morozov

Since technology, like gas, will fill any conceptual space provided, Leo Marx, professor emeritus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, describes it as a “hazardous concept” that may “stifle and obfuscate analytic thinking”. He notes, “Because of its peculiar susceptibility to reification, to being endowed with the magical power of an autonomous entity, technology is a major contributant to that gathering sense… of political impotence. The popularity of the belief that technology is the primary force shaping the postmodern world is a measure of our.. neglect of moral and political standards, in making decisive choices about the direction of society.”

Cost | Day | Knowledge | Men | Opposition | Organization | Public | Will |

Ernest Bramah, born Ernest Brammah Smith

"Excellence," besought Kai Lung, not without misgivings, "how many warriors, each having some actual existence, are there in your never-failing band?" "For all purposes save those of attack and defence there are fifteen score of the best and bravest, as their pay-sheets well attest," was the confident response. "In a strictly literal sense, however, there are no more than can be seen on a mist-enshrouded day with a resolutely closed eye."

Awareness | Body | Death | Dreams | Fate | Knowledge | Man | Nature | Order | Will | World | Fate | Awareness |

Ernest Becker

The man with the clear head is the man who frees himself from those fantastic "ideas" [the characterological lie about reality] and looks life in the face, realizes that everything in it is problematic, and feels him­self lost. And this is the simple truth—that to live is to feel oneself lost —he who accepts it has already begun to find himself, to be on firm ground. Instinctively, as do the shipwrecked, he will look round for something to which to cling, and that tragic, ruthless glance, absolutely sincere, because it is a question of his salvation, will cause him to bring order into the chaos of his life. These are the only genuine ideas; the ideas of the shipwrecked. All the rest is rhetoric, posturing, farce. He who does not really feel himself lost, is without remission; that is to say, he never finds himself, never comes up against his own reality.

Knowledge | Man | Time | Truth |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

He was going to sleep a little while. He lay still and death was not there. It must have gone around another street. It went in pairs, on bicycles, and moved absolutely silently on the pavements.

Guilt | Knowledge | Right | Story | Writing |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

Now I have done what I can, he thought. Let him begin to circle and let the fight come.

Mind | Think |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

The great thing is to last and get your work done and see and hear and learn and understand; and write when there is something that you know; and not before; and not too damned much after. Let those who want to save the world if you can get to see it clear and as a whole. Then any part you make will represent the whole if it's made truly. The thing to do is work and learn to make it.

Art | Knowledge | Man | Time | Art |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

No, he thought, when everything you do, you do too long, and do too late, you can't expect to find the people still there. The people all are gone. The party's over and you are with your hostess now. I'm getting as bored with dying as with everything else, he thought.

Knowledge | Need | Receive |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

No. The two kinds of fools we have in Russia, Karkov grinned and began. First there is the winter fool. The winter fool comes to the door of your house and he knocks loudly. You go to the door and you see him there and you have never seen him before. He is an impressive sight. He is a very big man and he has on high boots and a fur coat and a fur hat and he is all covered with snow. First he stamps his boots and snow falls from them. Then he takes off his fur coat and shakes it and more snow falls from them, then he takes off his fur hat and knocks it against the door. More snow falls from his fur hat. Then he stamps his boots again and advances into the room. Then you look at him and you see he is a fool. That is the winter fool. Now in the summer you see a fool going down the street and he is waving his arms and jerking his head from side to side and everybody from two hundred yards away can tell he is a fool. that is a summer fool. This economist is a winter fool.

Knowledge | Words |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

You know it makes one feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch. Yes. It's sort of what we have instead of God.

Love | Mind |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

Remember everything is right until it's wrong. You'll know when it's wrong.

Ambition | Belief | Economics | Little | Mind | Music | Patriotism | People | Sense | Thought | Ambition | Old | Thought |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

I thought that all generations were lost by something and always had been and always would be

Ability | Good | Knowledge | Life | Life | Money | Nothing | Price | Reward | Thought | Work | World | Thought |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

No animal has more liberty than the cat, but it buries the mess it makes. The cat is the best anarchist.

Good | Mind | Quiet |

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

Ontogeny is a short and quick repetition, or recapitulation, of Phylogeny, determined by the laws of Inheritance and Adaptation.

Knowledge | Men |

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

You can either read something many times in order to be assured that you got it all, or else you can define your purpose and use techniques which will assure that you have met it and gotten what you need.

Health | Mind | Sound | Truth |

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

We have indeed labored to make some of the capital which today helps us to produce – a large fund of scientific, technological, and other knowledge; an elaborate physical infrastructure; innumerable types of sophisticated capital equipment, etc. – but all this is but a small part of the total capital we are using. Far larger is the capital provided by nature and not by man – and we do not even recognize it as such. This larger part is now being used up at an alarming rate, and that is why it is an absurd and suicidal error to believe, and act on the belief, that the problem of production has been solved.

Convictions | Faith | Heart | Ideas | Mind | Reason | War |

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

In large-scale enterprise, private ownership is a fiction for the purpose of enabling functionless owners to live parasitically on the labor of others. It is not only unjust but also an irrational element which distorts all relationships within the enterprise.

Action | Fear | Knowledge | Little | Man | Men | Will |