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

Richard Hooker

Reason is the director of man's will, discovering in action what is good, for the laws of well-doing are the dictates of right reason.

Action | Good | Man | Reason | Right | Will | Wisdom |

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

As knowledge advances, science ceases to scoff at religion; and religion ceases to frown on science. The hour of mockery by the one, and of reproof by the other, is passing away. Henceforth, they will dwell together in unity and good-will. They will mutually illustrate the wisdom, power, and grace of God. Science will adorn and enrich religion; and religion will ennoble and sanctify science.

God | Good | Grace | Knowledge | Mockery | Power | Religion | Science | Unity | Will | Wisdom |

Herbert Hoover, fully Herbert Clark Hoover

You cannot extend the mastery of the government over the daily working life of a people without at the same time making it the master of the people’s souls and thoughts. Every expansion of government in business means that government in order to protect itself from the political consequences of its errors and wrongs is driven irresistibly without peace to greater and greater control of the nation’s press and platform. Free speech does not live many hours after free industry and free commerce die.

Business | Commerce | Consequences | Control | Free speech | Government | Industry | Life | Life | Means | Order | Peace | People | Speech | Time | Wisdom | Government | Business | Commerce |

Firuz Kazemzadeh

The problem of our purpose is a religious problem... Our purpose is derived from faith and is imposed onto reality by our own souls. But faith and religious truth themselves are not absolute. They are relative. Thus the answers one gives to questions about the purpose of life must necessarily be relative to a time, a place, a tradition... To know and worship God means, in Baha’ullah’s words, to promote the unity of the human race and to foster the spirit of love and fellowship amongst men”... Someday there will be a global society in which humanity will realize its spiritual and moral potential... The destiny of mankind, actually, is the ultimate creation of the world civilization. It is only in the service of such a cause that I find the meaning and purpose of life.

Absolute | Cause | Civilization | Destiny | Faith | Global | God | Human race | Humanity | Life | Life | Love | Mankind | Meaning | Means | Men | Purpose | Purpose | Race | Reality | Service | Society | Spirit | Time | Tradition | Truth | Unity | Will | Wisdom | Words | World | Worship | Society | God |

Harold S. Kahm

Chain reaction is popularly associated with the atomic bomb, but it is no less gigantic a force in your daily life. Every word you speak, every action you perform sets up a chain of reaction that can end in a damaging explosion or a shower of blessings.

Action | Atomic bomb | Blessings | Force | Life | Life | Wisdom |

John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

The unity of freedom has never relied on uniformity of opinion.

Freedom | Opinion | Uniformity | Unity | Wisdom |

Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard

People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have, for example, freedom of thought; instead they demand freedom of speech as a compensation.

Compensation | Example | Freedom of speech | Freedom of thought | Freedom | People | Speech | Thought | Wisdom |

Elizabeth Klarer

In aging, the (one's) inner clock slows down while earth time remains constant. Your planet continues to move in three directions at the same time, giving to you your speed or flow of time, past, present and future. There is less time to do things as one grows older and time is speeded up because the living body processes are slowing down. Time is a wave-motion in a triple unity with light and gravity.

Body | Earth | Future | Giving | Light | Past | Present | Time | Unity | Wisdom |

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Knowledge in relationship creates division... knowledge becomes a barrier in relationship... Where there is division there must be conflict. And therefore an action born out of conflict is a non-intelligent action. So intelligent action is an action that is without friction, without conflict... Dependence is an action of a mind that is not intelligent.

Action | Dependence | Knowledge | Mind | Relationship | Wisdom |

Gottfried Leibniz, fully Gottfried Wilhalm von Leibniz, Baron von Leibnitz

By means of the soul or form there is a true unity which corresponds to what is called the I in us.

Means | Soul | Unity | Wisdom |

Louis Kossuth, also Lajos Kossuth, fully Lajos Kossuth de Udvard et Kossuthfalva

I know that there is one God in heaven, the Father of all humanity, and heaven is therefore one. I know that there is one sun in the sky, which gives light to all the world. As there is unity in God, and unity in the light, so is there unity in the principles of freedom. Whatever it is broken, wherever a shadow is cast upon the sunny rays of the sun of liberty, there is always danger of free principles everywhere in the world.

Danger | Father | Freedom | God | Heaven | Humanity | Liberty | Light | Principles | Unity | Wisdom | World | Danger | God |

Charles Lamb

The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident.

Accident | Action | Good | Pleasure | Wisdom |

George Henry Lewes

Not only the individual experience slowly acquired, but the accumulated experience of the race, organized in language, condensed in instruments and axioms, and in what may be called the inherited intuitions - these form the multiple unity which is expressed in the abstract term “experience.”

Abstract | Axioms | Experience | Individual | Language | Race | Unity | Wisdom |

John Baptiste Massillon

I love a serious preacher, who speaks for my sake and not for his own; who seeks my salvation, and not his own vainglory. He best deserves to be heard who uses speech only to clothe his thoughts, and his thoughts only to promote truth and virtue. Nothing is more detestable than a professed declaimer, who retails his discourses as a quack does his medicine.

Love | Nothing | Salvation | Speech | Truth | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom |

Christopher Morley, fully Christopher Darlington Morley

The unluckiest insolvent in the world is the man whose expenditure of speech is too great for his income of ideas.

Ideas | Man | Speech | Wisdom | World |

Pamela Oliver and Gerald Maxwell

Collective action usually entails the development of a critical mass - a small segment of the population that chooses to make big contributions to the collective action... that will tend to explode, to draw in the other less interested or less resourceful members of the population and to carry the event toward its maximum potential.

Action | Will | Wisdom |

Max Picard

The world of silence without speech is the world before creation, the world of unfinished creation. In silenced truth is passive and slumbering, but in language it is wide-awake. Silence is fulfilled only when speech comes forth from silence and gives it meaning and honor.

Honor | Language | Meaning | Silence | Speech | Truth | Wisdom | World |

William Paley, Archdeacon of Saragossa

In strictness of language there is a difference between knowledge and wisdom; wisdom always supposing action and action directed by it.

Action | Knowledge | Language | Wisdom |

Bons (Leonidovich) Pasternak

The direct speech of feeling is allegorical and cannot be replaced by anything.

Speech | Wisdom |