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

My family helped start [this country], we've been in political life ... since the 1690s, and I have a very possessive sense about this country.

Heart | Kill | Love | Past | Reading | Time |

Eugene McCarthy, fully Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy

The only thing that saves us from the bureaucracy is its inefficiency.

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

The only absolute attainment is absolute abandonment.

Business | Will | Writing | Business |

Eugene McCarthy, fully Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy

This is, I say, the time for all good men not to go to the aid of their party, but to come to the aid of their country.

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

There are certain truths so true that they are practically unbelievable.

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

It makes no difference who you vote for - the two parties are really one party representing four percent of the people.

Money | Vice |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Sexual revelation in literature, must be tactful and must serve plot

Life | Life | Meaning | Nothing | Novels |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

The last best hope of earth, two trillion dollars in debt, is spinning out of control, and all we can do is stare at a flickering cathode-ray tube as Ollie answers questions on TV while the press, resolutely irrelevant as ever, asks politicians if they have committed adultery. From V-J Day 1945 to this has been, my fellow countrymen, a perfect nightmare.

Important | Object |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

After four centuries, Montaigne's curious genius still has that effect on his readers and, time and again, one finds in his self-portrait one's own most brilliant aperçus (the ones that somehow we forgot to write down and so forgot) restored to us in his essays—attempts—to assay—value—himself in his own time as well as, if he was on the subject, all time, if there is such a thing.

Words |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

Now my friends, I am opposed to the system of society in which we live today, not because I lack the natural equipment to do for myself but because I am not satisfied to make myself comfortable knowing that there are thousands of my fellow men who suffer for the barest necessities of life. We were taught under the old ethic that man’s business on this earth was to look out for himself. That was the ethic of the jungle; the ethic of the wild beast. Take care of yourself, no matter what may become of your fellow man. Thousands of years ago the question was asked; ‘Am I my brother’s keeper?’ That question has never yet been answered in a way that is satisfactory to civilized society.

Soul | Work |

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 behavior of President Bush on 11 September certainly gives rise to not unnatural suspicions.

Good | Little | Past | Present | Thought | World | Thought |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

There is not one human problem that could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.

Eugene McCarthy, fully Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy

The Senate is the last primitive society in the world. We still worship the elders of the tribe and honor the territorial imperative.

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

Professor Richard N. Current fusses, not irrelevantly, about the propriety of fictionalising actual political figures. I also fuss about this. But he has fallen prey to the scholar-squirrel's delusion that there is a final Truth revealed only to the tenured few in their footnote maze; in this he is simply naïve.

Advice | Age | Opportunity | Television |

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

We are the United States of amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing.

Time |