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

Louis Kronenberger

If it is the great delusion of moralists to suppose that all previous ages were less sinful than their own, then it is the great delusion of intellectuals to supposed that all previous ages were less sick.

Character | Delusion |

John T. McNicholas, fully John Timothy McNicholas

The God-given rights of parents are not understood or are ignored by our secularist educators and by many school administrators who, in the delusion of sovereignty, act as though they, not the parents, have complete control of the education of the child.

Character | Control | Delusion | Education | God | Parents | Rights |

Nicholas Rescher

One cannot properly appreciate the human realities so long as one labors under the adolescent delusion that people get the fates they deserve.

Character | Delusion | People |

Christian Nestell Bovee

No man is happy without a delusion of some kind. Delusions are as necessary to our happiness as realities.

Delusion | Happy | Man | Wisdom | Happiness |

Edward Dowling, S.J.

The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first, the widespread delusion among the poor that we have a democracy, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it.

Delusion | Democracy | Terror | Wisdom |

Rose Macauley, fully Dame Emilie Rose Macaulay

She probably labored under the common delusion that you made things better by talking about them.

Better | Delusion | Talking | Wisdom |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

Politics, as hopeful men practice it in the world, consists mainly of the delusion that a change in form is a change in substance.

Change | Delusion | Men | Politics | Practice | Wisdom | World |

Giovanni Battista Pergolesi

The certitude of laws is an obscurity of judgment backed only by authority.

Authority | Judgment | Obscurity | Obscurity | Wisdom |

Haku'un Ryoko Yasutani, aka Yasutani Roshi

The fundamental delusion of humanity is to supposed that I am here and you are out there.

Delusion | Humanity | Wisdom |

Dionysius the Areopagite, aka Saint Dionysius the Areopagite NULL

The simple, absolute, and unchangeable mysteries of heavenly Truth lie hidden in the dazzling obscurity of the secret Silence, outshining all brilliance with the intensity of their darkness.

Absolute | Darkness | Obscurity | Obscurity | Silence | Truth |

Albert Einstein

A human being is part of the whole called by us 'universe', a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from the prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. The true value of a human being is determined by the measure and the sense in which they have obtained liberation from the self [ego]. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if humanity is to survive.

Beauty | Compassion | Consciousness | Delusion | Ego | Experience | Feelings | Humanity | Nature | Prison | Rest | Self | Sense | Space | Thinking | Time | Universe | Value |

Dionysius the Areopagite, aka Saint Dionysius the Areopagite NULL

Guide us to the topmost height of mystic love where the simple absolute and unchangeable mysteries of heavenly truth lie hidden in the dazzling obscurity of the Secret Silence.

Absolute | Love | Obscurity | Obscurity | Silence | Truth |

John Maurice Clark

One of the besetting fallacies of reformers is the delusion that their plans will be carried out by people who think precisely as they do.

Delusion | People | Will | Think |

Thomas Merton

Truth, not in distinct and clear-cut definitions but in the limpid obscurity of a single intuition that unites all dogmas in one simple Light, shining into the soul directly from God’s eternity, without the medium of created concept, without the intervention of symbols or of language or the likeness of material things. Here the Truth is One Whom we not only know and possess but by Whom we are known and possessed. Here theology ceases to be a body of abstractions and becomes a Living Reality Who is God Himself.

Body | Eternity | God | Intuition | Language | Light | Obscurity | Obscurity | Reality | Soul | Theology | Truth | God |

Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.

Beauty | Delusion | Beauty |

P. D. Premasiri, fully Pahalawattage Don Premasiri

Fanaticism and intolerance often result from the delusion that, "this alone is the truth and everything else is false," causing people to commit atrocities in the name of "truth."

Delusion | Fanaticism | Intolerance | People | Truth |