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

William Benton Clulow

Philosophy abounds more than philosophers, and learning more than learned men.

Learning | Men | Philosophy | Wisdom |

John Dewey

Genuine ignorance is... profitable because it is likely to be accompanied by humility, curiosity, and open-mindedness; whereas ability to repeat catch-phrases, cant terms, familiar propositions, gives the conceit of learning and coats the mind with varnish water-proof to new ideas.

Ability | Curiosity | Humility | Ideas | Ignorance | Learning | Mind | Wisdom |

William H. Cowley

People sometimes refer to higher education as the higher learning, but colleges and universities are much more than the knowledge factories; they are testaments to man's perennial struggle to make a better world for himself, his children, and his children's children. This, indeed, is their sovereign purpose. They are great fortifications against ignorance and irrationality; but they are more than places of higher learning - they are centers and symbols of man's higher yearning.

Better | Children | Education | Ignorance | Knowledge | Learning | Man | People | Purpose | Purpose | Struggle | Wisdom | World |

John Dewey

Every serious-minded person knows that a large part of the effort required in moral discipline consists in the courage needed to acknowledge the unpleasant consequences of one's past and present acts.

Consequences | Courage | Discipline | Effort | Past | Present | Wisdom |

Lydia Avery Coonley Ward

Why fear tomorrow, timid heart? Why tread the future's way? We only need to do our part Today, dear child, today. The past is written! Close the book On pages sad and gay; Within the future do not look, But live today-today. "Tis this one hour that God has given; His now we must obey; And it will make our earth his heaven To live today-today.

Earth | Fear | Future | God | Heart | Heaven | Need | Past | Will | Wisdom | God |

Madame d'Épinay, born born Florence Louise Tardieu d'Esclavelles Petronilla

One sees the past better than it was; one finds the present worse than it is; one hopes for a future happier than it will be.

Better | Future | Past | Present | Will | Wisdom |

Karl Deutsch, fully Karl Wolfgang Deutsch

The single greatest power in the world today is the power to change... The most recklessly irresponsible thing we could do in the future would be to go on exactly as we have in the past ten or twenty years. I can imagine no more dangerous policy than the conservatism that exists today.

Change | Conservatism | Future | Past | Policy | Power | Wisdom | World |

George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans

Is it any weakness, pray, to be wrought on by exquisite music? to feel its wondrous harmonies searching the subtlest windings of your soul, the delicate fibres of life where no memory can penetrate, and binding together your whole being, past and present, in one ;unspeakable vibration; melting you in one moment with all the tenderness, all the love, that has been scattered through the toilsome years, concentrating in one emotion of heroic courage or resignation all the hard-learned lessons of self-renouncing sympathy, blending your present joy with past sorrow, and your present sorrow with all your past joy?

Courage | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Memory | Music | Past | Present | Resignation | Self | Sorrow | Soul | Sympathy | Tenderness | Weakness | Wisdom |

Tyron Edwards

Right actions for the future are the best apologies for wrong ones in the past - the best evidence of regret for them that we can offer, or the world receives.

Evidence | Future | Past | Regret | Right | Wisdom | World | Wrong |

Henry Ford

Anyone who stops learning is old, whether this happens at twenty or at eighty. Anyone who keeps on learning not only remains young but becomes constantly more valuable, regardless of physical capacity.

Capacity | Learning | Wisdom |

Euripedes NULL

Sweet is the memory of past labor.

Labor | Memory | Past | Wisdom |

Ted W. Engstrom

We must expect to fail, but fail in a learning posture, determined not to repeat the mistakes, and to maximize the benefits from what is learned in the process.

Learning | Wisdom |

Norman Geschwind

One must remember that practically all of us have a number of significant learning disabilities. For example, I am grossly unmusical and cannot carry a tune. We happen to live in a society in which the child who has trouble learning to read is in difficulty. Yet we have all seen dyslexic children who have either superior visual-perception or visual-motor skills. My suspicion would be that in an illiterate society such a child would be in little difficulty and might in fact do better because of his superior visual-perception talents, while many of us who function here might do poorly in a society in which a quite different array of talents was needed in order to be successful. As the demands of society change will we acquire a new group of "minimally brain damaged?"

Better | Change | Children | Difficulty | Example | Learning | Little | Order | Perception | Society | Suspicion | Will | Wisdom | Society | Trouble | Child |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Go to the place where the thing you wish to know is native; your best teacher is there. Where the thing you wish to know is so dominant that you must breathe its very atmosphere, there teaching is most thorough, and learning is most easy. You acquire a language most readily in the country where it is spoken; you study mineralogy best among miners; and so with everything else.

Language | Learning | Study | Wisdom | Teacher |

Erle Stanley Gardner

Where ignorance is bliss, a little learning is a dangerous thing.

Ignorance | Learning | Little | Wisdom |

Anna Lorette Rose Hawkes

Our past is our heritage, our present is our responsibility, and our future is our destiny.

Destiny | Future | Past | Present | Responsibility | Wisdom |