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

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

In every age it has been the tyrant, the oppressor and the exploiter who has wrapped himself in the cloak of patriotism, or religion, or both to deceive and overawe the People.

Brotherhood | Cause | History | Time | Will |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

Some go to prison for stealing, and others for believing that a better system can be provided and maintained than one that makes it necessary for a man to steal in order to live.

Honesty | Oneness | Sentiment | Will |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

Why should a Socialist be discouraged on the eve of the greatest triumph in all the history of the Socialist movement? It is true that these are anxious, trying days for us all — testing days for the women and men who are upholding the banner of labor in the struggle of the working class of all the world against the exploiters of all the world; a time in which the weak and cowardly will falter and fail and desert. They lack the fiber to endure the revolutionary test; they fall away; they disappear as if they had never been. On the other hand, they who are animated by the unconquerable spirit of the social revolution; they who have the moral courage to stand erect and assert their convictions; stand by them; fight for them; go to jail or to hell for them, if need be — they are writing their names, in this crucial hour — they are writing their names in faceless letters in the history of mankind.

Agitation | Capitalism | Mission | Will |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.

Despair | Individual | Land | Man | People | Sense | Will | Woman |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

If most men and women were forced to rely upon physical charm to attract lovers, their sexual lives would be not only meager but in a youth-worshiping country like America, painfully brief.

Battle | Will |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

It is curious how little interested we are in the sexual desires of those who do not attract us.

History | People | Thought | Will | Think | Thought |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

The planet Venus, a circle of silver in a green sky, pierced the edge of the evening while the wintry woods darkened about me and in the stillness the regular sound of my footsteps striking the pavement was like a the rhythmic beating of a giant stone heart.

Experiment | Freedom | Law | Lesson | Order | Will | Work | Think |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

Do not worry over the charge of treason to your masters, but be concerned about the treason that involves yourselves. Be true to yourself and you cannot be a traitor to any good cause on Earth.

Cunning | Destroy | Enough | Labor | Slavery | Struggle | Will | Understand |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

DonÂ’t call me a spokesman for bisexuality. ItÂ’s like being called a spokesman for blue eyes. It doesnÂ’t mean anything. Everyone is bisexual....I donÂ’t understand the obsession with sex. Norman Mailer often sounds like the deranged commander of an American Legion post, particularly about women, whom he doesnÂ’t like very much. He has made politics out of sex.

Nothing | Will |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Asked who was the worst president, he responded, Oh, there were so many of them. Certainly the silliest was Reagan. The most empty. [George H.W.] Bush is in the running for the worst.

Mystery | Need | Will |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

As the age of television progresses the Reagans will be the rule, not the exception. To be perfect for television is all a President has to be these days.

Language | People | Time | Will | Words |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

I like the way you always manage to state the obvious with a sense of real discovery.

Will |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

The class which has the power to rob upon a large scale has also the power to control the government and legalize their robbery.

Means | Will |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.

Labor | Land | Present | Right | Will |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

The united vote of those who toil and have not will vanquish those who have and toil not, and solve forever the problems of democracy.

Courage | Injustice | Injustice | Intelligence | Justice | Men | Power | Right | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Wrong |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

The average "educated" American has been made to believe that, somehow, the United States must lead the world even though hardly anyone has any information at all about those countries we are meant to lead. Worse, we have very little information about our own country and its past. That is why it is not really possible to compare a writer like Howells with any living American writer because Howells thought that it was a good thing to know as much as possible about his own country as well as other countries while our writers today, in common with the presidents and paint manufacturers, live in a present without past among signs whose meanings are uninterpretable.

Evidence | Inconvenient | Love | Means | Will |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

We have ceased to be a nation under law but instead a homeland where the withered Bill of Rights, like a dead trumpet vine, clings to our pseudo-Roman columns.

Battle | Criticism | Day | Life | Life | Literature | Nothing | Order | Present | Will |