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

David Hume

A philosopher, who purposes only to represent the common sense of mankind in more beautiful and more engaging colors, if by accident he falls into error, goes not farther; but renewing his appeal to common sense, and the natural sentiments of the; mind, returns into the right path, and secures himself from any dangerous illusions.

Accident | Common Sense | Error | Mankind | Mind | Right | Sense | Wisdom |

Roswell Dwight Hitchcock

Twin-sister of natural and revealed religion, and of heavenly birth, science will never belie her celestial origin, nor cease to sympathize with all that emanates from the same pure home. Human ignorance and prejudice may for a time seem to have divorced what God has joined together; but human ignorance and prejudice shall at length pass away, and then science and religion shall be seen blending their parti-colored rays into one beautiful bow of light, linking heaven to earth and earth to heaven.

Birth | Earth | God | Heaven | Ignorance | Light | Prejudice | Religion | Science | Time | Will | Wisdom | God |

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

The best part of knowledge is that which teaches us where knowledge leaves off and ignorance begins.

Ignorance | Knowledge | Wisdom |

George Stillman Hillard

The instinctive and universal taste of mankind selects flowers for the expression of its finest sympathies, their beauty and their fleetingness serving to make them the most fitting symbols of those delicate sentiments for which language itself seems almost too gross a medium.

Beauty | Language | Mankind | Taste | Wisdom | Beauty |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

Divisive forces are more powerful than those which make for union. Vested interests in language, philosophies of life, table manners, sexual habits, political, ecclesiastical and economic organizations are sufficiently powerful to block all attempts, by rational methods, to unite mankind for its own good. And there is nationalism. With the 57 varieties of tribal gods, nationalism is the religion of the 20th century. We may be Christians, Jews, Moslems, Hindus, Buddhists, Confucians or Atheists; but the fact remains that there is only one faith for which large masses of us are prepared to die and kill, and that faith is nationalism.

Faith | Good | Kill | Language | Life | Life | Mankind | Manners | Religion | Wisdom |

William Ralph Inge

The nations which have put mankind most in their debt have been small states - Israel, Athens, Florence, Elizabethan England.

Debt | Mankind | Nations | Wisdom |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

The proper study of mankind is books.

Books | Mankind | Study | Wisdom |

James Hilton

If a child who wanted to be a teacher I would bid him Godspeed as if he were going to war. For indeed the war against prejudice, greed and ignorance is eternal, and those who dedicate themselves to it give their lives not less because they may live to see some faction of the battle won.

Battle | Eternal | Greed | Ignorance | Prejudice | War | Wisdom | Child | Teacher |

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

If scientific discovery has not been an unalloyed blessing, if it has conferred on mankind the power not only to create but also to annihilate, it has at the same time provided humanity with a supreme challenge and a supreme testing.

Challenge | Discovery | Humanity | Mankind | Power | Time | Wisdom | Discovery |

Thomas Jefferson

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation. We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.

Earth | Events | God | Government | Mankind | Men | Nature | People | Respect | Right | Wisdom | Government | Respect | God | Truths |

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

The greater our knowledge increases, the greater our ignorance unfolds.

Ignorance | Knowledge | Wisdom |

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

We have the power to make this the best generation of mankind in the history of the world - or make it the last.

History | Mankind | Power | Wisdom | World |

Roger L'Estrange, fully Sir Roger L'Estrange

There is not one grain the universe, either too much or too little, nothing to be added, nothing to be spared; nor so much as any one particle of it, that mankind may not be either the better or the worse for according as it is applied.

Better | Little | Mankind | Nothing | Universe | Wisdom |

Jeannette Kirk

It can be said without qualification that music expresses all the various shadings of life's moods and the greatest portion of life's experiences. There is perhaps no more adequate tool than music to relate mankind to life.

Life | Life | Mankind | Music | Wisdom |

D. H. Lawrence, fully David Herbert "D.H." Lawrence

Creation destroys as it goes, throws down one tree for the rise of another. But ideal mankind would abolish death, multiply itself million upon million, rear up city upon city, save every parasite alive, until the accumulation of mere existence is swollen to a horror.

Death | Existence | Mankind | Wisdom |