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

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

As societies grow decadent, the language grows decadent, too. Words are used to disguise, not to illuminate, action: you liberate a city by destroying it. Words are to confuse, so that at election time people will solemnly vote against their own interests.

Litigation |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

I came from a guiltless world as far as sex went — the world I grew up in was Southern, Washington and political. Everyone in my world did absolutely everything. I am speaking now of the Thirties. No one I knew denied himself anything. Of course, there was a great deal of care about appearances. People in public life had to be careful.

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

I am at heart a propagandist, a tremendous hater, a tiresome nag, complacently positive that there is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.

Nothing |

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

The theater needs continual reminders that there is nothing more debasing than the work of those who do well what is not worth doing at all.

Good | Human race | Nature | Race | Reason | Worth |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

The rights of one are as sacred as the rights of a million.

Principles |

Eugene McCarthy, fully Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies.

Time |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Life will be wonderful when men no longer fear dying. When the last superstitions are thrown out and we meet death with the same equanimity as life. No longer will children's minds be twisted by evil gods whose fantastic origin is in those barbaric tribes who feared death and lightning, who feared life. That's it: life is the villain to to those who preach reward in death, through grace and eternal bliss, or through dark revenge.

Change | Democracy | Means |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

We are given our place in time as we are given our eyes: weak, strong, clear, squinting, the thing is not ours to choose. Well, this has been a squinting, walleyed time to be born in.

Enough |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Until the rise of American advertising, it never occurred to anyone anywhere in the world that the teenager was a captive in a hostile world of adults.

Authority | Family | Nature | Politics |

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

All children alarm their parents, if only because you are forever expecting to encounter yourself.

Genius | Time |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Constant work, constant writing and constant revision. The real writer learns nothing from life. He is more like an oyster or a sponge. What he takes in he takes in normally the way any person takes in experience. But it is what is done with it in his mind, if he is a real writer, that makes his art.

War |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

The malady of civilized man is his knowledge of death. The good artist, like the wise man, addresses himself to life and invests with his private vision the deeds and thoughts of men. The creation of a work of art, like an act of love, is our one small yes at the center of a vast no.

Public | Rank |

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 |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

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

Lesson | Right | Thought | Thought |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Miss Rand now tells us that what we have thought was right is really wrong. The lesson should have read: One for one and none for all.

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Nonprofit status is what created the Bible Belt. The tax code brought religion back to this country.

Love |

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 |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

The greatest pleasure when I started making money was not buying cars or yachts but finding myself able to have as many freshly typed drafts as possible.

Age | Culture | Evil | Father | God | Loathing | Obedience | Politics | God | Old |