Great Throughts Treasury

"I would rather have a mind opened by wonder than one closed by belief."

"The function of the law is not to provide justice or to preserve freedom. The function of the law is to keep those who hold power, in power"

"Government [is] operated by deeply embedded, hopelessly entangled bureaus where nothing is accomplished because the function of the bureau is to intercept every living idea and smother it."

"A man who silently lives by his ethics makes a more profound argument than one who deafens us with his shouting about them."

"A new fascism promises security from the terror of crime. All that is required is that we take away the criminals’ rights – which, of course, are our own. Out of our desperation and fear we begin to feel a sense of security from the new totalitarian state."

"A concession coming from your mouth is not nearly as hurtful as an exposure coming from your opponent's."

"A lawyer is in an awful position about that. It's not fair to the accused who is charged with a serious crime if a lawyer says he's not going to take the case because it reflects badly on the accused and that's not fair to him. On the other hand, if a lawyer is deciding to take the case and hasn't made up his mind, it's also difficult for the accused."

"Although the ideal of free enterprise could, indeed, lend itself to the uplifting of the human condition, when it is practiced for profit alone, it becomes but a license for the powerful to further enslave the weak."

"Children, as persons, are entitled to the greatest respect. Children are given to us as free-flying souls, but then we clip their wings like we domesticate the wild mallard. Children should become the role-models for us, their parents, for they are coated with the spirit from which they came- out of the ether, clean, innocent, brimming with the delight of life, aware of the beauty of the simplest thing; a snail, a bud."

"Each of us has been endowed with the perfect power to be free. Slavery is a state of mind that fails to acknowledge the slave's own power."

"Genius is not some fortunate arrangement of brain cells. Genius is energy, only directed energy."

"I dream of a time when the people will retake their airways and use them to achieve a voice to rediscover democracy, and to see the divine potential of man."

"I am not as concerned about choosing the right words as I am in letting the words flow naturally."

"Everyone wants to argue. Everyone does. Everyone needs to."

"How much of our lives could we buy back if we cherished our lives instead of our trinkets?"

"As we drive down the freeways, we see the new cars, but not the massive new-car loans that enslave their drivers to the banks."

"Arguments do not erase prejudice any more than arguments erase scars, whether psychological or physical."

"Love is how we feel toward those who show us that which is lovable about ourselves."

"If I am real, if I am speaking from the heart zone, the right words will come. They will come a spoonful at a time, in the proper mixture."

"Is there anyone I wouldn't take as a client? Well, I'd never represent a banker."

"My intent is to tell the truth as I know it, realizing that what is true for me may be blasphemy for others."

"I say, embrace fear as a friend. It is nature's gift to us. It is the best weapon for liberty. We do not give our permission to be enslaved by acknowledging its presence. Instead, it permits us to escape into the forest if we must. But it does not prevent the boy from rising off the ground one more time to defeat the bully. Fear is presented to us as a signal of danger. It permits us to escape or to fight with power beyond our ability."

"Nearly every day on the television set the hero cop breaks into the bad guy’s house and beats a confession out of him and we cheer on the cop. Propaganda smears our clear vision. It causes us to accept the diminishment of our constitutional protections as something to be lauded — after all, the cop was protecting us."

"Once slavery in America was not seen as radical. It became, instead, a revolutionary idea that slaves should be freed. When we have lived under a pernicious power long enough, no matter how oppressive, we grow so accustomed to the yoke that its removal seems frightening, even wrong."

"Our prejudices — we all have them — are part of our personality structure. The problem is that our prejudices may lie lurking at the bottom of the subterranean mind where the slowly ooze up and color our thinking without our knowing it."

"Money in doses disproportionate to our needs enslaves."

"No artist's masterpiece can match a mother's creation of a successful child, one who has been freed to explore and to grow. ... Success is measured not only by who we are, but by what gifts we give. As the old chief said, "The gift is not complete until it is given again." Ah, the mother whose gift to the world is a person!"

"Prejudice locks the mind. Nothing can enter. Nothing true can escape."

"Power can win the body count but it cannot win this war. Because the enemy is not human. This is a war against a malicious spirit. Only fools attempt to defeat a spirit with guns and rockets and bombs."

"Our willingness to openly reveal our feelings in our argument nearly always builds our credibility."

"The electronic village has been born, and the village voice, via the internet is being heard."

"Skepticism, not cleanliness, is next to godliness. Skepticism is the father of freedom. It is like the pry that holds open the door for truth to slip in."

"Teach the child to respect that which is not respectable and you teach the child the first requirement of slavery: submission to unjust authority. Children are persons. They are small persons whose perfect souls have not yet been ground through the meat grinder of slavery."

"Successful argument unfolds when we have regained the ability to reveal ourselves, to expose our feelings, and simply ask for what we want."

"The gift of self cannot be given to us. It is an incomparable gift that has already been given. We have possessed it from the beginning."

"The goal of a free nation is to reveal by example the enlightened possibilities of the human race, not to wield its power of destruction and death over the helpless, the poor, the starving and the war torn masses. The goal of a free nation must be no different outside its borders than within them. In America we do not massacre whole towns because they may be the chosen domicile of a criminal or a conspiracy of criminals. Instead we carefully root out the felons and bring them to justice."

"The first trick of the winning argument is the trick of abandoning trickery."

"The key to opening the other to our arguments is to empower the other to reject us."

"The Internet has become the phenomenon of the new century. It has become the voice of the people in the first genuine experiment in democracy yet conducted in America. It stands ready to serve every facet, every faction. It creates neighbors where once we were foreigners. It carries our individual voices to new communities formed through the magic of electronics."

"The law understands the implacable nature of prejudice. It acknowledges that prejudiced judges ought not sit on a given case, although most prejudiced judges are too prejudiced to recognize or admit their prejudice and to remove themselves. To get a prejudiced judge off a case is like prying a tooth out of a rabid gorilla."

"The major functions of the government are, as in the communist nations, operated by deeply embedded, hopelessly entangled bureaus where nothing is accomplished because the function of the bureau is to intercept every living idea and smother it."

"The less of one's life one must exchange for money, the more freedom one may enjoy."

"The key to winning any war is to control the war. This does not mean I seek to control my opponent."

"The most formidable chains are forged from beliefs. Ah, beliefs! Beliefs tear out the eyes and leave us blind and groping in the dark. If I believe in one proposition, I have become locked behind the door of that belief, and all other doors to learning and freedom, although standing open and waiting for me to enter, are now closed to me. If I believe in one God, one religion, yes, if I believe in God at all, if I have closed my mind to magic, to spirit, to salvation, to the unknown dimension that exist in the firmament, I have plunged my mind into slavery. Test all beliefs. Distrust all beliefs."

"The power argument is an argument so powerful in its structure, so compelling in its delivery that when we assume the power stance the argument cannot be defeated. The power argument need not fill the air with noise. It need not create pandemonium. It need not destroy the opponent. It can be quiet. Gentle. It can embrace love, not anger, understanding, not hate."

"The old saw that sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never harm me does not, in fact, hold true."

"The most effective structure for any argument will always be story."

"The people of a nation are enslaved when, together, they are helpless to institute effective change, when the people serve the government more than the government serves them."

"The new and most powerful union of all will be a union of one — one man, one woman, one worker with special skills, an inquiring mind, and an independent attitude, his creativity intact, his love of life blooming. The union of one will be peopled by one man or one woman who is alive. Such a person is always sought by the intelligent manager."

"The question then is, “How does arguing with our children advance our goal that our children freely bloom?”"