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

Evan Williams

All the startup advice you read is wrong.

Experience | People | Study |

Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham

God comes through the wound': Our very imperfections—what religion labels our 'sins,' what therapy calls our 'sickness,' what philosophy terms our 'errors'—are precisely what bring us closer to the reality that no matter how hard we try to deny it, we are not the ones in control here. And this realization, inevitably and joyously, brings us closer to 'God'.

Acceptance | Imperfection | Means | Pain | Space | Spirituality | Understanding | Understand |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

Do you have bad luck with all games? With everything and with women. He smiled again, showing his bad teeth. Truly? –Truly. And what is there to do? -Continue, slowly, and wait for luck to change.

Enough | Problems | Understanding | Think |

Ernest Becker

And so, the question for the science of mental health must be­come an absolutely new and revolutionary one, yet one that re­flects the essence of the human condition: On what level of illusion does one live? We will see the import of this at the close of this chapter, but right now we must remind ourselves that when we talk about the need for illusion we are not being cynical. True, there is a great deal of falseness and self-deception in the cultural causa-sui project, but there is also the necessity of this project. Man needs a "second" world, a world of humanly created meaning, a new reality that he can live, dramatize, nourish himself in. "Illusion" means creative play at its highest level. Cultural illusion is a necessary ideology of self-justification, a heroic dimension that is life itself to the symbolic animal. To lose the security of heroic cultural illusion is to die—that is what "deculturation" of primitives means and what it does. It kills them or reduces them to the animal level of chronic fighting and fornication. Life becomes possible only in a continual alcoholic stupor. Many of the older American Indians were relieved when the Big Chiefs in Ottawa and Washington took control and prevented them from warring and feuding. It was a relief from the constant anxiety of death for their loved ones, if not for themselves. But they also knew, with a heavy heart, that this eclipse of their traditional hero-systems at the same time left them as good as dead.

Absolute | Anxiety | Anxiety | Cause | Confidence | Order | Parents | Power | Question | Security | Self | Society | Terror | Understanding | Weakness | Worth | Society | Child | Think |

Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

When you love you wish to do things for. You wish to sacrifice for. You wish to serve.

Day | Good | Happy | Little | Love | People | Qualities | Understanding | Work | Happiness | Learn |

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

From the point of view of the employer, it is in any case simply an item of cost, to be reduced to a minimum if it cannot be eliminated altogether, say, by automation. From the point of view of the workman, it is a 'disutility'; to work is to make a sacrifice of one's leisure and comfort, and wages are a kind of compensation for the sacrifice.

Economics | Study | Wisdom |

Ester and Jerry Hicks

I care how I feel and it is my desire to feel good.

Important | Understanding |

Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara

If your heart vibrate looking Resist oppression then silence is a form of treason because

Beauty | Life | Life | People | Spirit | Understanding | Will | Beauty |

Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara

We brought ten thousand head of cattle to the Sierra one day and said to the peasants, simply, "Eat". And the peasants, for the first time in years and years, some for the first time in their lives, ate beef.

Administration | Understanding |

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

In the course of individual development, inherited characters appear, in general, earlier than adaptive ones, and the earlier a certain character appears in ontogeny, the further back must lie in time when it was acquired by its ancestors.

Important | Life | Life | Order | Study |

Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

This demand, that the doctrine of descent should be grounded on experiment, is so perverse and shows such ignorance of the very essence of our theory, that though we have never been surprised at hearing it continually repeated by ignorant laymen, from the lips of a Virchow it has positively astounded us. What can in this case be proved by experiment, and what can experiment prove?

Evolution | History | Inquiry | Light | Science | Study |

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

So let's not mesmerize ourselves by the difficulties, but recover the common-sense view that to work is the most natural thing in the world. Only one must not be blocked by being too damn clever about itÂ…It is a fixation in the mind, that unless you can have the latest you can't do anything at all, and this is the thing that has to be overcome.

Economics | Evidence | Study |

Ester and Jerry Hicks

There is no better way to earn money than to do the things that you love to do. Money can flow into your experience through endless avenues. It is not the choice of the craft that limits the money that flows - but only your attitude toward money.

People | Understanding | World |

Eugene Peterson

You don't make your words true by embellishing them with religious lace. In making your speech sound more religious, it becomes less true.

Guidance | Habit | Need | Time | Understanding | Wisdom | Guidance |

Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson

The great curse of modern philosophy is the almost universally prevailing rebellion against intellectual self-discipline. Where loose thinking obtains, truth cannot possibly be grasped, whence the conclusion naturally follows that there is no truth.

History | Skepticism | Study |

Eugene Peterson

Instead of asking, “Why does this happen Why do I feel left in the lurch” we can ask “How does it happen that there are people who sing with such confidence, ‘God’s strong name is our help’”

Competence | God | Growth | Habit | Knowing | Knowledge | Love | People | Understanding | God |

Eugene Peterson

We survive in the way of faith not because we have extraordinary stamina but because God sticks with us.

Birth | Death | Understanding | Will |

Eugene Peterson

There is a great market for religious experience in our world; there is little enthusiasm for the patient acquisition of virtue, little inclination to sign up for a long apprenticeship in what earlier generations called holiness.

Age | Experience | Future | God | Old age | People | Soul | Spirit | Study | Theology | God | Old |

Eugenio Montale

Scotellaro could leave us a hundred poems that remain some of the most significant of our time ... in him the dough between the vein and the vein that I would say international folk have found happiness unusual accent.

Understanding |