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

There is no human problem which could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.

Time |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

TV is now so desperately hungry for material that theyÂ’re scraping the top of the barrel.

Society | Society | Think |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

What the workingmen of the country are profoundly interested in is the private ownership of the means of production and distribution, the enslaving and degrading wage-system in which they toil for a pittance at the pleasure of their masters and are bludgeoned, jailed or shot when they protest — this is the central, controlling, vital issue of the hour, and neither of the old party platforms has a word or even a hint about it. As a rule, large capitalists are Republicans and small capitalists are Democrats, but workingmen must remember that they are all capitalists, and that the many small ones, like the fewer large ones, are all politically supporting their class interests, and this is always and everywhere the capitalist class.

Age | Awakening | Conquest | Duty | Glory | History | Nothing | Object | Reason | War | Wealth | World |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Big oil, big steel, big agriculture avoid the open marketplace. Big corporations fix prices among themselves and thus drive out of business the small entrepreneur. Also, in their conglomerate form, the huge corporations have begun to challenge the very legitimacy of the state.

Fate | Life | Life | Fate |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

One's neighbor is always the enemy. That is the nature of things.

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 |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

The American reader cannot bear a surprise. He knows that this is the greatest country on earthÂ…and evidence to the contrary is not admissible. That means no inconvenient facts, no new information. If you really want the readerÂ’s attention, you must flatter him. Make his prejudices your own. Tell him things he already knows. He will love your soundness.

Evil | Freedom | Happy | History | People | Purpose | Purpose |

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 |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

I suspect that one of the reasons we create fiction is to make sex exciting.

Challenge | Truth | Think |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Private lives should be no business of the State. The State is bad enough as it is. It cannot educate or medicate or feed the people; it cannot do anything but kill the people. No State like that do we want prying into our private lives.

Justify | Order | War | Will |

Euripedes NULL

The best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life, acknowledge the great powers around us and in us. If you can do that, and live that way, you are really a wise man.

Action | Happy | Life | Life | Mortal |

Eustace Budgell

If I was put to define modesty, I would call it the reflection of an ingenuous mind, either when a man has committed an action for which he censures himself, or fancies that he is exposed to the censure of others.

Euripedes NULL

Along with success comes a reputation for wisdom.

Children | Love | People | Virtue | Virtue |

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 |

Eugenio Montale

I do not go in search of poetry. I wait for poetry to visit me.

Capacity | Extreme | Fault | Philosophy | Work | Fault | Think |

Euripedes NULL

No one can confidently say that he will still be living tomorrow.

Brutality |

Euripedes NULL

This is courage in a man: to bear unflinchingly what heaven sends.