Great Throughts Treasury

"My opinion is that a poet should express the emotion of all the ages and the thought of his own." - Thomas Hardy

"On an evening in the latter part of May a middle-aged man was walking homeward from Shaston to the village of Marlott, in the adjoining Vale of Blakemore or Blackmoor. The pair of legs that carried him were rickety, and there was a bias in his gait which inclined him somewhat to the left of a straight line. He occasionally gave a smart nod, as if in confirmation of some opinion, though he was not thinking of anything in particular. An empty egg-basket was slung upon his arm, the nap of his hat was ruffled, a patch being quite worn away at its brim where his thumb came in taking it off. Presently he was met by an elderly parson astride on a gray mare, who, as he rode, hummed a wandering tune." - Thomas Hardy

"Intemperance is naturally punished with diseases; rashness, with mischance; injustice; with violence of enemies; pride, with ruin; cowardice, with oppression; and rebellion, with slaughter." - Thomas Hobbes

"It is each individual that must ultimately be his own protector." - Thomas Hobbes

"Another means of silently lessening the inequality of property is to exempt all from taxation below a certain point, and to tax the higher portions of property in geometrical progression as they rise." - Thomas Jefferson

"It is a great importance to set a resolution, not to be shaken, never to tell an untruth. There is no vice so mean, so pitiful, so contemptible and he who permits himself to tell a lie once, finds it much easier to do it a second and third time, till at length it becomes habitual, he tells lies without attending to it, and truths without the world's believing him. This falsehood of the tongue leads to that of the heart, and in time depraves all its good dispositions." - Thomas Jefferson

"Truth is great and will prevail if left to herself. She is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error, and has nothing to fear from the conflict, unless, by human interposition, disarmed of her natural weapons, free argument and debate; errors ceasing to be dangerous when it is permitted freely to contradict them." - Thomas Jefferson

"Truth will do well enough if left to shift for herself. She seldom has received much aid from the power of great men to whom she is rarely known and seldom welcome. She has no need of force to procure entrance into the minds of men. Error indeed has often prevailed by the assistance of power or force. Truth is the proper and sufficient antagonist to error." - Thomas Jefferson

"Were I to commence my administration again, the first question I would ask respecting a candidate would be, Does he use ardent spirits?" - Thomas Jefferson

"When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty." - Thomas Jefferson

"When at first thought we think of a creator our ideas appear to us undefined and confused; but if we reason philosophically, those ideas can be easily arranged and simplified. It is a Being, whose power is equal to his will." - Thomas Paine

"1) We talk about you. 2)We talk to you. 3)We talk with one another. And 4) We talk with one another about ourselves. When we are talking about one another, and when we are talking to (or at) one another there is no dialogue. The dialogue starts when we are at the place of talking with one another. Sometimes in the process of dialogue, we discover we have moved to the deeper, fourth stage. We are talking with one another about ourselves. " - Wilfred Cantwell Smith

"I should like to say two things, one intellectual and one moral. The intellectual thing I should want to say to them is this: When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only what are the facts and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe, or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed. But look only, and solely, at what are the facts. That is the intellectual thing that I should wish to say. The moral thing I should wish to say to them is very simple: I should say, love is wise, hatred is foolish. In this world which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way — and if we are to live together and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell

"Our talk of external things, our very notion of things, is just a conceptual apparatus that helps us to foresee and control the triggerings of our sensory receptors in the light of previous triggering of our sensory receptors." - Willard Quine, fully Willard Van Orman Quine

"Anxiety is not fear, being afraid of this or that definite object, but the uncanny feeling of being afraid of nothing at all. It is precisely Nothingness that makes itself present and felt as the object of our dread." - William Barrett, fully William Christopher Barrett

"There is no credit to being a comedian, when you have the whole Government working for you. All you have to do is report the facts. I dont even have to exaggerate." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers

"They got such a high inheritance tax on ’em that you won’t catch these old rich boys dying promiscuously like they did. This bill makes patriots out of everybody. You sure do die for your country if you die from now on." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers

"We need a combination of supreme moral sensitivity and economic knowledge. Economically ignorant moralism is as objectionable as morally callous economism." - Wilhelm Röepke

"I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love if you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean but I shall be good health to you nonetheless and filter and fibre your blood." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"If you have to prove you are worthy of credit, your credit is already gone." - Walter Bagehot

"Biotechnology, variety patenting, and other agribusiness innovations are intended not to help farmers or consumers but to extend and prolong corporate control of the food economy; they will increase the cost of food, both economically and ecologically." - Wendell Berry

"I am speaking of the life of a man who knows that the world is not given by his fathers, but borrowed from his children; who has undertaken to cherish it and do it no damage, not because he is duty-bound, but because he loves the world and loves his children; whose work serves the earth he lives on and from and with, and is therefore pleasurable and meaningful and unending; whose rewards are not deferred until "retirement," but arrive daily and seasonally out of the details of the life of their place; whose goal is the continuance of the life of the world, which for a while animates and contains them, and which they know they can never compass with their understanding or desire." - Wendell Berry

"If he was silent I could be silent too. Indeed, I could very we'll do with a little rest in this subdued, frightened-to-death rocking chair, before I drove to wherever the beasts lair was and then pulled the pistols foreskin back, and then enjoyed the orgasm of the crushed trigger." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"A growing body of clinical observation has pointed to the conclusion that the family therapy must be oriented to the family as a whole." - Virginia Satir

"If you too keep your senses and your wishes in check, you will gain by listening to these talks and by this visit; and I will be happy that you have taken to the path that will give you real strength and joy." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"Belief in heaven and hell is a big deal in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and some forms of doctrinaire Buddhism. For the rest of us it's simply meaningless. We don't live in order to die, we live in order to live." - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

"When their women have brought forth children, they suckle and rear them in temples set apart for all. They give milk for two years or more as the physician orders. After that time the weaned child is given into the charge of the mistresses, if it is a female, and to the masters, if it is a male. And then with other young children they are pleasantly instructed in the alphabet, and in the knowledge of the pictures, and in running, walking, and wrestling; also in the historical drawings, and in languages; and they are adorned with a suitable garment of different colors." - Tommaso Campanella, baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella

"Liberty has never come from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of the government. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

"In practice we always base our preparations against an enemy on the assumption that his plans are good; indeed, it is right to rest our hopes not on a belief in his blunders, but on the soundness of our provisions. Nor ought we to believe that there is much difference between man and man, but to think that the superiority lies with him who is reared in the severest school." - Thucydides NULL

"All the contagion of the south light on you, You shames of Rome! you herd of--boils and plagues Plaster you o'er; that you may be abhorr'd Further than seen, and one infect another Against the wind a mile!" - William Shakespeare

"And thus I clothe my naked villany with old odd ends, stol'n out of holy writ, and seem a saint when most I play the devil. The Tragedy of King Richard the Third (Gloucester at I, iii)" - William Shakespeare

"God himself has no right to be a tyrant." - William Godwin

"If there be any truth more unquestionable than the rest, it is that every man is bound to the exertion of his faculties in the discovery of right, and to the carrying into effect all the right with which he is acquainted. It may be granted that an infallible standard, if it could be discovered, would be considerably beneficial. But this infallible standard itself would be of little use in human affairs, unless it had the property of reasoning as well as deciding, of enlightening the mind as well as constraining the body." - William Godwin

"Memory cannot exist without endurance of the things perceived, and the thing perceived cannot remain where it has never been." - William Harvey

"The best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: 'This is the real me!'" - William James

"There is a sanctity in suffering when meekly born. Our duty, though set about by thorns, may still be made a staff, supporting even while it tortures. Cast it away, and, like the prophet's rod, it changes to a snake." - Douglas William Jerrold

"I love Sweden. The entire world should be like Sweden. They all like to drink and get naked, and the women are hot. I can't think of a better nation on the planet." - Drew Curtis

"Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince: And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest! Hamlet, Act v, Scene 2" - William Shakespeare

"Once again I do receive thee honest. Who by repentance is not satisfied is nor of heaven nor earth." - William Shakespeare

"The methods of peace propaganda which aim at establishing peace doctrine by argument and by creating a feeling favorable to peace in general seem to fall short of reaching the springs of human action and of dealing with the causes of the conduct which they seek to modify." - Elihu Root

"The old system of exploitation of colonies and the monopolization of their trade for the benefit of the mother country has practically disappeared." - Elihu Root

"I have my own set of survival techniques. I am patient. I know how to pack light. But my one might travel talent is that I can make friends with anybody. I can make friends with the dead. If there isn’t anyone else around to talk to, I could probably make friends with a four-foot-tall pile of sheetrock. That is why I’m not afraid to travel to the most remote places in the world, not if there are human beings there to meet. People asked me before I left, do you have friends [there]?’ and I would just shake my head no, thinking to myself, But I will." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"I wonder if I am capable of being somebody’s sun, somebody’s everything. Am I centered enough now to be the center of somebody else’s life?" - Elizabeth Gilbert

"The six elements of her Fail Proof Broken-Heart Curing Treatment: 'Vitamin E, get much sleep, drink much water, travel to a place far away from the person you loved, meditate and teach your heart that this is destiny." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"Wanting to get married, for me, is all about a desire to feel chosen. She went on to write that while the concept of building a life together with another adult was appealing, what really pulled at her heart was the desire for a wedding, a public event that will unequivocally prove to everyone, especially to myself, that I am precious enough to have been selected by somebody forever." - Elizabeth Gilbert

"Because man and woman are the complement of one another, we need woman's thought in national affairs to make a safe and stable government." - Elizabeth Cady Stanton

"The State is the altar of political freedom and, like the religious altar, it is maintained for the purpose of human sacrifice." - Emma Goldman

"How does one transcend himself; how does he open himself to new possibility? By realizing the truth of his situation, by dispelling the lie of his character, by breaking his spirit out of its conditioned prison. The enemy, for Kierkegaard as for Freud, is the Oedipus complex. The child has built up strategies and techniques for keep­ing his self-esteem in the face of the terror of his situation. These techniques become an armor that hold the person prisoner. The very defenses that he needs in order to move about with self-con­fidence and self-esteem become his life-long trap. In order to transcend himself he must break down that which he needs in order to live. Like Lear he must throw off all his "cultural lendings" and stand naked in the storm of life. Kierkegaard had no illusions about man's urge to freedom. He knew how comfortable people were in­side the prison of their character defenses. Like many prisoners they are comfortable in their limited and protected routines, and the idea of a parole into the wide world of chance, accident, and choice terrifies them. We have only to glance back at Kierkegaard's con­fession in the epigraph to this chapter to see why. In the prison of one's character one can pretend and feel that he is somebody, that the world is manageable, that there is a reason for one's life, a ready justification for one's action. To live automatically and un­critically is to be assured of at least a minimum share of the pro­grammed cultural heroics—what we might call "prison heroism": the smugness of the insiders who "know."" - Ernest Becker

"There exists a modern trend towards total quantification at the expense of the appreciation of qualitative differences; for private enterprise is not concerned with what it produces but only with what it gains from production." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

"Every complete set of chromosomes contains the full code; so there are, as a rule, two copies of the latter in the fertilized egg cell, which forms the earliest stage of the future individual. In calling the structure of the chromosome fibres a code-script we mean that the all-penetrating mind, once conceived by Laplace, to which every causal connection lay immediately open, could tell from their structure whether the egg would develop, under suitable conditions, into a black cock or into a speckled hen, into a fly or a maize plant, a rhododendron, a beetle, a mouse or a woman. To which we may add, that the appearances of the egg cells are very often remarkably similar; and even when they are not, as in the case of the comparatively gigantic eggs of birds and reptiles, the difference is not so much in the relevant structures as in the nutritive material which in these cases is added for obvious reasons. But the term code-script is, of course, too narrow. The chromosome structures are at the same time instrumental in bringing about the development they foreshadow. They are law-code and executive power, or, to use another simile, they are architect's plan and builder's craft-in one." - Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger