Great Throughts Treasury

"A person is not old until regrets take the place of hopes and plans."

"Al Miller, Chairman of the Toledo Forum, asked me to come to his office. He greeted me pleasantly and then said, 'As you know, I am attorney for the Toledo Chamber of Commerce, on a permanent retainer. I am their legal spokesman; they are among my clients. They have directed me to introduce a resolution at the next meeting of the Toledo university trustees, ending your connection with the institution.' He waited a moment for this announcement to sink in. 'Of Course,' I said quietly. 'That is one of the symptoms of war fever. Those who tell the truth or try to tell the truth are among the first victims of any war.' Al hurried on, 'You understand, there is nothing personal about this. You and I have worked together on the Forum and other projects with never a real disagreement, certainly never a fight.' 'That is true,' I said, 'and I think our joint efforts have helped to make some real advances here in Toledo.' 'True,' said Al. 'It is also true that I have enjoyed every minute of our cooperation.' Then he added: 'At this point I guess we part company. I hope we part as friends, on two sides of the war barrier that separates us. Please remember that there is nothing personal about this,' he repeated. 'I respect your stand and wish you well. My duty lies elsewhere.' We shook hands and I never saw him again."

"During the whole period of written history, it is not the workers but the robbers who have been in control of the world."

"Count Leo Tolstoi is a classic example of an individual in potential and actual conflict with his group. He was talented and had immense vitality. Until young manhood he accepted his place in the Tsarist social pattern and generally conformed to it. After some drastic experiences and much soul searching, Leo Tolstoi challenged the social system under which he lived to mortal combat. From that point until the day he left home and died in a railway station in his final attempt to win out against group pressures, his life consisted of combats with members of his family, with members of the neighboring nobility, with the army, with the Tsarist autocracy and with the established church."

"Do the thing you believe in. Do the best you can in the place where you are and be kind."

"Freedom varies in direct relation to group stability. The greater the group stability, the greater the freedom. The reverse proposition also holds. Hence, freedom is an opportunity enjoyed in times and places where public policy as interpreted by public authority leans away from restraint toward a greater number and variety of choices. A gradual or sudden change in the community boundaries, will be reflected in lessened or augmented limitations."

"Freedom as a blessing today might, under new conditions, become a danger and a curse tomorrow. Crimes endanger the general welfare of a community. Freedom for criminals would be a menace to community interests. The community therefore forbids crime, adopts a criminal code listing a great variety of acts which are considered prejudicial to community well-being, and prescribes penalties for lawbreakers. Individuals and social groups who violate the criminal law are restrained or coerced. The nature of crime depends upon local custom or accepted practice. In this very considerable area, by common consent, freedom is officially abrogated, and restraint and coercions are relied upon to protect the community."

"I assume that my fellow creatures have as much right to live as I. I would like to help them to live and develop, not hinder, or harm them. Armed with weapons I am stronger than they are and therefore responsible to help them. As a vegetarian I do the least possible harm to the least numbers of other living entities. Recognizing that all forms of life are worthy of respect, I disturb the life process as little as I can."

"I became a vegetarian because I was persuaded that life is as valid for other creatures as it is for humans. I do not need dead animal bodies to keep me alive, strong and healthy. Therefore, I will not kill for food."

"I became a pacifist because I respect life. I believe that life is an important part of the manifested universe. I am one expression of life as I am also part of the universe. As I respect the universe in all its parts, so I respect myself and all the other living beings who inhabit it."

"I look forward to the possibility of living until I?m 99. It is a precarious outlook, I assure you. With age, your facility of expression and perception diminishes. I have almost nothing left but time. But if I can be of service, I would like to go on living."

"I had the good fortune to be born in 1883 and to live consciously through more than half a century of transformation of a class culture. I have watched the doors of opportunity swing open for larger and larger segments of my fellowmen. I never thought the world would move so quickly, that socialism would spread so far so fast. Not only have I watched the process, but I have played a part in the big drama. Indeed I consider that I came with an assignment to do my level best to help convert our time of troubles into an era of opportunities."

"I think I won?t eat anymore. Alright, said I. I understand. I think I would do that too. Animals know when to stop. They go off in a corner and leave off food? I think I?ll go on water. Nothing more."

"I have spent 70 years of study and travel in order to equip myself with information that would enable me to speak and write with authority on the course of world affairs. The authority I have sought is not in any sense political. It is the authority that results from collecting and classifying information on a scientific level and interpreting facts as I have found them. Since I do not speak with political authority I have no means of communicating my conclusions except by putting them in print myself and distributing them in the most advantageous way that is available to a private citizen."

"Q: You are a pacifist even to class struggles? [Nearing]: I am a pacifist in that I believe that no man has a right to do violence to any other man. Q: Even in the class struggle? [Nearing]: Under no circumstances."

"Leftists were liquidated on sight. The procedure was summary. When one was captured by Chiang's forces, his arms were held by two Chiang soldiers while a third, with a sword, hacked off his head. The remains were left lying as a warning to other Leftists to follow Chiang or perish. I saw some heads mounted on poles."

"That means, if it means anything, that in the United States as it is at present organized, the radical political movements are short-lived. And if that is true, then the Socialist Party has had its day. Through the Middle West recently I found the Socialist Party almost extinct. Since 1920 it has had first the Communist Party and then the Workers Party as rivals"

"No meal is so good as when you have your feet under your own table."

"The Communist radical of today will be the administrator of tomorrow, and the Communist Society will need the radical as badly as the capitalist society needs him now. It will then be the business of the radical, as it is now, not to take an appointment as justice of the Supreme Court, not to perform any particular function as a part of the established order, but to stand apart and speak his mind about the established order.... A radical who wishes to continue being a radical cannot do so if he is an essential part of the existing order, for then he owes a certain fealty to his position. I have seen Socialists elected to office; they become, not critical functionaries, but administrators, and one cannot be both at the same time."

"That the economists part company with the ominous pictures of an overpopulated, starving world, prostrate before the throne of 'competition,' 'individual initiative,' 'private property,' or some other pseudo-god, and tell men in simple, straightforward language how they may combine, re-shape, or overcome the laws and utilize them as a blessing instead of enduring them as a burden and a curse."

"The individual may win out and impose himself and his ideas upon the group. The normal consequence of such an outcome is a personal dictatorship or the imposition upon the community of an oligarchy in which the dissident individual or individuals play a prominent role. (2) The division of the community into factions, one of which upholds the dissident individual, with a stalemate leading to feuding, rebellion, civil war. (3) The group wins out, imposes its will and eliminates the non-conformist. Such conflict sequences have occurred repeatedly in contemporary and in earlier history."

"The only way to have intelligent public opinion is to have discussion, and the moment you check discussion you destroy democracy.... The Constitution does not guarantee us only the right to be correct, we have a right to be honest and in error. And the views that I have expressed in this pamphlet I expressed honestly. I believe they were right. The future will show whether or not I was correct, but under the laws, as I understand it, and under the Constitution, as I understand it, every citizen in this country has the right to express himself...on public questions."

"The pro-peace attitude of the people of the Soviet Union and People's China is not based on fear of war but on confidence in their theory and way of life. One Soviet trade unionist put the matter to us in this way. 'We are not afraid of war. We have been through it and survived its cruelties and horrors. We know that we can take it. Just because we have been through it and suffered from it, we know how terrible war is. It wastes materials, but worse than that, it squanders human idealism, energy, wealth and life. Still worse, those of us who are trying to build a socialist society are diverted and preoccupied by war. We know from bitter experience that if we are to engage in socialist construction we cannot fight wars. War is a full-time occupation.?"

"The Workers Party has fallen heir to the present radical political situation in the United States. Is it built to represent the American worker? So far the radical movement has represented the European worker in the United States. The opportunities for a radical political party are as great as, or greater than, ever before; the important problem before the Workers Party is to get radical ideas before the workers. Its second and more serious problem is to establish proper relations with Moscow. Moscow is strong; the Workers Party is weak; Moscow can dominate without any trouble."

"War is an attempt of one group to impose its will upon another group by armed violence."

"The prosecution has not been able to show a single instance in which recruiting was obstructed. They have not been able to show a single instance in which insubordination, disloyalty, and refusal to duty was caused."

"We believed it was better to pay as you go than it was to pay your bills by borrowing and laying up debts for another day. To pay as you go, that policy is a safer business policy and a saner business policy, and we thought it was a saner national policy."

"War drags human beings from their tasks of building and improving, and pushes them en masse into the category of destroyers and killers."

"Work helps prevent one from getting old. My work is my life. I cannot think of one without the other. The man who works and is never bored, is never old. A person is not old until regrets take the place of hopes and plans. Work and interest in worthwhile things are the best remedy for aging."

"Your government is no longer mine."