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

A prison is a cross section of society in which every human strain is clearly revealed.

Justify | Kindness | Man | Opinion |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved — Judaism, Christianity, Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are, literally, patriarchal — God is the Omnipotent Father — hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates. The sky-god is a jealous god, of course. He requires total obedience from everyone on earth, as he is in place not for just one tribe but for all creation. Those who would reject him must be converted or killed for their own good. Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god's purpose.

Genius | Majority | Nothing | People | System |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

The first TV babies are now writing with a TV mind that has no attention span at all.

Objectivity | Opinion | World |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

What other culture could have produced someone like Hemmingway and not seen the joke?

Question |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

If you go to the city of Washington, you will find that almost all of those corporation lawyers and cowardly politicians, members of congress, and mis-representatives of the masses claim, in glowing terms, that they have risen from the ranks to places of eminence and distinction. I am very glad that I cannot make that claim for myself. I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from the ranks.

Right | War |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Monotheism is easily the greatest disaster to befall the human race.

Lesson | Right | Thought | Thought |

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

An eagle, looking for a hard surface on which to break up the turtle that he held in his claws, mistook the bald head of Aeschylus, the author of The Persians, for a rock and let slip the turtle, with fatal accuracy.

Play | Right |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Patriotism is as sickening today as it has ever been. I was watching the news before you came and there was a lot of coverage of Kosovo and the problems there. They showed footage of people burning an American flag. And the newscaster got all broken up and teary-eyed. He says, "I guess [sob] I just feel something here, folks, when I see the American flag being burned." And I said, You fucking asshole. Whatever happened to the news?

Price | Proletariat | Question | Right | System |

Eustace Budgell

Don't believe your friends when they ask you to be honest with them. All they really want is to be maintained in the good opinion they have of themselves.

Better | Consideration | God | Mankind | Mind | Opinion | Reason | Tradition | Truth | Following | God | Think |

Euripedes NULL

Down on your knees, and thank heaven, fasting, for a good man's love.

Day | Divinity | Evil | Good | Pious | Waste | Words | Yielding | Old |

Evan Esar

Experience is the only school from which no one ever graduates.

Science |

Euripedes NULL

Do not mistake the rule of force for true power. Men are not shaped by force.

Mistake | Opinion | Wisdom |

Euripedes NULL

Wealth stays with us a little moment if at all: only our characters are steadfast, not our gold.

Anger | Harm | Right | Friends |

Eustace Budgell

During the civil wars there appeared one, which makes too great a figure in story to be passed over in silence; I mean that of the redoubted Hudibras, an account of which Butler has transmitted to posterity in the following lines:

Good | Opinion | Friends |

Evan Esar

The thing that surprises the college graduate most when he gets out in the world is to find out how much uneducated people know.

Right | Writing |

Everett Dirksen, fully Everett McKinley Dirksen

When I face an issue of great import that cleaves both constituents and colleagues, I always take the same approach. I engage in deep deliberation and quiet contemplation. I wait to the last available minute and then I always vote with the losers. Because, my friend, the winners never remember and the losers never forget.

Strength |