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

Aeschylus NULL

Everyone is harsh whose authority is new.

Authority |

American Proverbs

The church bell sometimes does better work than the sermon.

Better | Church | Work |

Ambrose Gwinett Bierce

Destiny: A tyrant's authority for crime and a fool's excuse for failure.

Authority | Crime | Destiny | Failure |

Andrew Martin Fairbairn

Symbols are deeper than words; speak when words become silent; gain where words lose in meaning; and so in hours of holiest worship the Church teaches, by symbols, truth language may not utter.

Church | Language | Meaning | Truth | Words | Worship |

Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr., born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger

The individual freedoms destroyed by the increase in national authority have been in the main the freedom to deny black Americans their elementary rights as citizens, the freedom to work little children in mills... the freedom to pay starvation wages... the freedom to... pollute the environment - all freedoms that, one supposes, a civilized country can readily do without

Authority | Children | Freedom | Individual | Little | Rights | Work |

Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee

So long as a church is proscribed, it can build up a new society at its own peril without being implicated in the old society’s weaknesses and sins.

Church | Peril | Society | Society | Old |

Ben Jonson

The two chief things that give a man reputation in counsel, are the opinion of his honesty, and the opinion of his wisdom; the authority of those two will persuade.

Authority | Counsel | Honesty | Man | Opinion | Reputation | Will | Wisdom |

Blaise Pascal

God regards only the inward; the Church judges only by the outward. god absolves as soon as He sees penitence in the heart; the church when she sees it in works.

Church | God | Heart | God |

Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield

Man is born to believe, and if no church comes forward with all the title deeds of truths... he will find alters and idols in his own heart and his own imagination.

Church | Deeds | Heart | Imagination | Man | Title | Will | Deeds |

Benjamin Whichcote

Sin is a defiance to the authority of God, a contradiction to the law of righteousness, a disturbance to the society of men, and a distraction to the soul of the sinner.

Authority | Contradiction | Defiance | God | Law | Men | Righteousness | Sin | Society | Soul | Society |

Blaise Pascal

The authority of reason is far more imperious than that of a master; for he who disobeys the one is unhappy, but he who disobeys the other is a fool.

Authority | Reason |

Blaise Pascal

When malice has reason on its side, it looks forth bravely, and displays that reason in all its luster. When austerity and self-denial have not realized true happiness, and the soul returns to the dictates of nature, the reaction is fearfully extravagant.

Looks | Malice | Nature | Reason | Self | Self-denial | Soul |

English Proverbs

The church is an anvil that has worn out many hammers.

Church |

Elizabeth Cady Stanton

The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women's emancipation.

Bible | Church | Bible |

Frank Lloyd Wright, born Frank Lincoln Wright

The insolence of authority is endeavoring to substitute money for ideas.

Authority | Ideas | Money |

Francis Bacon

Nothing destroyeth authority so much as the unequal and untimely interchange of power pressed too far, and relaxed too much.

Authority | Nothing | Power |

Francis Bacon

Men suppose their reason has command over their words; still it happens that words in return exercise authority on reason.

Authority | Men | Reason | Words |

Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi

Every great example takes hold of us with the authority of a miracle, and says to us, "If ye had but faith, ye, also, could do the same things."

Authority | Example | Faith |

Galileo Galilei, known simply as Galileo

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth that humble reasoning of a single individual.

Authority | Individual | Science | Worth |

George Santayana

Religion should be disentangled as much as possible from history and authority and metaphysics, and made to rest honestly on one's feelings, on one's indomitable optimism and trust in life.

Authority | Feelings | History | Life | Life | Metaphysics | Optimism | Religion | Rest | Trust |