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

French Student Revolt Graffiti NULL

The Revolution must take place in men before it can be manifest in things.

Character | Men | Revolution |

Edgar Z. Friedenberg

Only science can hope to keep technology in some sort of moral order.

Character | Hope | Order | Science | Technology |

Ellen Goodman

For most Americans the sexual revolution was not a vast national orgy of swingers. There was never widespread approval of adultery or promiscuity. The revolution - evolution is a better word - appeared rather as a massive questioning of the double standard and the sexual constraints we grew up with.

Adultery | Better | Character | Evolution | Promiscuity | Revolution | Approval |

Heinrich Heine

Whether a revolution succeeds or miscarries, men of great hearts will always be its victims.

Character | Men | Revolution | Will |

William James

The great revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.

Change | Character | Discovery | Revolution | Discovery |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

There is a very general belief that, where gadgets are concerned, we can get something for nothing - can enjoy all the advantages of an elaborate, top-heavy and constantly advancing technology without having to pay for them by any compensating disadvantages.

Belief | Character | Nothing | Technology |

Anthony Kenny, fully Sir Anthony John Patrick Kenny

It is characteristic of our age to endeavour to replace virtues by technology. That is to say, wherever possible we strive to use methods of physical or social engineering to achieve goals which our ancestors thought attainable only by the training of character. Thus we try so far as possible to make contraception take the place of chastity, and anesthetics to take the place of fortitude; we replace resignation by insurance policies and munificence by the Welfare state. It would be idle romanticism to deny that such techniques and institutions are often less painful and more efficient methods of achieving the goods and preventing the evils which unaided virtue once sought to achieve and avoid. But it would be an equal and opposite folly to hope that the take-over of virtue by technology may one day be complete.

Age | Character | Chastity | Day | Folly | Fortitude | Goals | Hope | Munificence | Resignation | Technology | Thought | Training | Virtue | Virtue | Thought |

Yosef Zev Leipowitz

Every person alive today derives much benefit from comforts and pleasures that in the past were not available. All of the latest inventions and findings of technology serve us to a remarkable degree. For all this we should be full of appreciation and gratitude.

Appreciation | Character | Gratitude | Past | Technology | Appreciation |

Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

It was left for the Germans to bring about a revolution of a kind never seen before: [the Nazi] revolution, devoid of ideas... and opposed to everything that is higher, better and decent; opposed to liberty, truth, and justice.

Better | Character | Ideas | Justice | Liberty | Revolution | Truth |

Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL

There is something in humility which, strangely enough, exalts the heart, and something in pride which debases it. This seems, indeed, to be contradictory, that loftiness should debase and lowliness exalt. But pious humility enables us to submit to what is above us; and nothing is more exalted above us than God; and therefore humility, by making us subject to God, exalts us. But pride, being a defect of nature, by the very act of refusing subjection and revolution from Him who is supreme, falls to a low condition.

Enough | God | Heart | Humility | Nature | Nothing | Pious | Pride | Revolution | Wisdom |

Barry Commoner

Despite the dazzling successes of modern technology and the unprecedented power of modern military systems, they suffer from a common and catastrophic fault. While providing us with a bountiful supply of food, with great industrial plants, with high-speed transportation, and with military weapons of unprecedented power, they threaten our very survival.

Fault | Power | Survival | Technology | Weapons | Wisdom |

Alice Embree

America’s technology has turned in upon itself; its corporate form makes it the servant of profits, not the servant of human needs.

Technology | Wisdom |

Freeman John Dyson

Science and technology, like all original creations of the human spirit, are unpredictable. If we had a reliable way to label our toys good and bad, it would be easy to regulate technology wisely. But we can rarely see far enough ahead to know which road leads to damnation. Whoever concerns himself with big technology, either to push it forward or to stop it, is gambling with human lives.

Enough | Good | Science | Spirit | Technology | Wisdom |