Great Throughts Treasury

"Perhaps to lose a sense of where you are implies the danger of losing a sense of who you are." - Ralph Ellison, fully Ralph Waldo Ellison

"I am speaking of the danger of the alligators of lust and the like. Because of them one should smear one's body with turmeric before diving in" - Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL

"We must move into the universe. Mankind must save itself. We must escape the danger of war and politics. We must become astronauts and go out into the universe and discover the God in ourselves." - Ray Bradbury, fully Ray Douglas Bradbury

"I think I should know how to educate a boy, but not a girl; I should be in danger of making her too learned." - Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr

"Our danger is not too few, but too many options ... to be puzzled by innumerable alternatives." - Richard Livingstone, fully Sir RIchard Winn Livingstone

"A tiger's DNA is also a 'duplicate me' program but it contains an almost fantastically large digression as an essential part of the efficient execution of its fundamental message. That digression is a tiger, complete with fangs, claws, running muscles, stalking and pouncing instincts. The tiger's DNA says, 'Duplicate me by the round-about route of building a tiger first.' At the same time, antelope DNA says, 'Duplicate me by the round-about route of building an antelope first, complete with long legs and fast muscles, complete with timorous instincts and finely honed sense organs tuned to the danger from tigers." - Richard Dawkins

"So we have arrived at the following paradox. If a theory of the origin of life is sufficiently 'plausible' to satisfy our subjective judgment of plausibility, it is then too 'plausible' to account for the paucity of life in the universe as we observe it. According to this argument, the theory we are looking for has got to be the kind of theory that seems implausible to our limited, Earth-bound, decade-bound imaginations. Seen in this light, both Cairns-Smith's theory and the primeval-soup theory seem if anything in danger of erring on the side of being too plausible! Having said all this I must confess that, because there is so much uncertainty in the calculations, if a chemist did succeed in creating spontaneous life I would not actually be disconcerted!" - Richard Dawkins

"Whenever a system of communication evolves, there is always the danger that some will exploit the system for their own ends. Brought up as we have been on the 'good of the species' view of evolution, we naturally think first of liars and deceivers as belonging to different species: predators, prey, parasites, and so on. However, we must expect lies and deceit, and selfish exploitation of communication to arise whenever the interests of the genes of different individuals diverge. This will include individuals of the same species. As we shall see, we must even expect that children will deceive their parents, that husbands will cheat on wives, and that brother will lie to brother." - Richard Dawkins

"Science alone of all the subjects contains within itself the lesson of the danger of belief in the infallibility of the greatest teachers in the preceding generation.... Learn from science that you must doubt the experts. As a matter of fact, I can also define science another way: Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts." - Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman

"One way in which fools succeed where wise men fail is that through ignorance of the danger they sometimes go coolly about a hazardous business." - Richard Whately

"To follow imperfect, uncertain, or corrupted traditions, in order to avoid erring in our own judgment, is but to exchange one danger for another." - Richard Whately

"The Chinese use two brush strokes to write the word 'crisis.' One brush stroke stands for danger; the other for opportunity. In a crisis, be aware of the danger - but recognize the opportunity." - Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon

"The game of life is to come up a winner, to be a success, or to achieve what we set out to do. Yet there is always the danger of failing as a human being." - Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon

"We shall continue, in this era of negotiation, to work for the limitation of nuclear arms, and to reduce the danger of confrontation between the great powers." - Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon

"The average politician goes through a sentence like a man exploring a disused mine shaftblind, groping, timorous and in imminent danger of cracking his shins on a subordinate clause or a nasty bit of subjunctive." - Robertson Davies

"The inert mind is a greater danger than the inert body, for it overlays and stifles the desire to live." - Robertson Davies

"I want answers - we all want answers - as to why it took so long for rescue teams to get on the ground. There is no excuse for the days of delay and the inexplicable lack of coordination in the response effort... We knew the danger was coming. Yet, the government failed to respond. Lives were lost because the government failed to do its job." - Robert Byrd, fully Robert Carlyle Byrd

"My fellow Americans, there's an old saying that nothing spreads so quickly as a rumor, so I thought it was time to speak with you directly, to tell you first-hand about our dealings with Iran." - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

"We're the party that wants to see an America in which people still can get rich." - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

"The frontier in space, embodied in the space colony, is one in which the interactions between humans and their environment is so much more sensitive and interactive and less tolerant of irresponsibility than it is on the whole surface of the Earth. We are going to learn how to relate to the Earth and our own natural environment here by looking seriously at space colony ecologies." - Russell Schweikart, fully Russell Louis "Rusty" Schweickart aka Schweikart

"As cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far place." - Russian Proverbs

"Each time it is different." - Russian Proverbs

"In avoiding the appearance of evil, I am not sure but I have sometimes unnecessarily deprived myself and others of innocent enjoyments." - Rutherford B. Hayes, fully Rutherford Birchard Hayes

"One of the tests of the civilization of people is the treatment of its criminals." - Rutherford B. Hayes, fully Rutherford Birchard Hayes

"A Platonic friendship is perhaps only possible when one or other of the Platonists is in love with a third person." - S.G. Tallentyre, nom de plume for Evelyn Beatrice Hall

"Actions speak louder than words; let your words teach and your actions speak. We are full of words but empty of actions, and therefore are cursed by the Lord, since he himself cursed the fig tree when he found no fruit but only leaves. It is useless for a man to flaunt his knowledge of the law if he undermines its teaching by his actions. But the apostles “spoke as the Spirit gave them the gift of speech.” Happy the man whose words issue from the Holy Spirit and not from himself! We should speak, then, as the Holy Spirit gives us the gift of speech. Our humble and sincere request to the Spirit for ourselves should be that we may bring the day of Pentecost to fulfillment, insofar as he infuses us with his grace, by using our bodily senses in a perfect manner by keeping the commandments. Likewise we shall request that we may be filled with a keen sense of sorrow and with fiery tongues for confessing the faith so our deserved reward may be to stand in the blazing splendor of the saints and to look upon the triune God." - Saint Anthony of Padua or Anthony of Lisbon, born Fernando Martins de Bulhões NULL

"The desire is thy prayers; and if thy desire is without ceasing, thy prayer will also be without ceasing. The continuance of your longing is the continuance of your prayer." - Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL

"To seek the highest good is to live well." - Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL

"What a man is before God, that he is, and nothing more." - Saint Francis of Assisi, born Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone NULL

"When the demons see us disdaining the things of the world in order through them not to hate men and fall away from love, they then incite slanders against us, hoping that, unable to bear the hurt, we will come to hate those who slander us." - Saint Maximus the Confessor NULL

"Oh, what great happiness and bliss, what exaltation it is to address oneself to the Eternal Father. Always, without fail, value this joy which has been accorded to you by God's infinite grace and do not forget it during your prayers; God, the angels and God's holy men listen to you." - Saint John of Kronstadt, fully John Il’ich Serguiev, aka Holy Father John of the Kronstadt NULL

"If after so much effort and prayer, the matter is not successful, it will be a clear sign that God does not will it." - Saint Vincent de Paul

"If we divested ourselves, once and for all, of all self-will, we would then be in a position of being sure of doing the Will of God, in which the angels find all their delight and men all their happiness." - Saint Vincent de Paul

"The purpose of food is to relieve hunger and thirst, not to minister to caprice and luxury." - Sallust, full name Carus Valerius Sailustius Crispus NULL

"Anyone who emerges in the midst of mankind as a herald who knows how to employ the gift of poetry to inspire the human mind with enthusiasm for all that is pure and true and godly, anyone who knows how to make man proud to be human and to enable him to recognize his God in every breath of his existence, anyone who can snatch man from the dust to have him stand upright in all his dignity and nobility, is, in the view of Judaism, a messenger of God on earth." - Samson Raphael Hirsch

"It is not unfrequent to hear men declaim loudly upon liberty, who, if we may judge by the whole tenor of their actions, mean nothing else by it but their own liberty, to oppress without control or the restraint of laws all who are poorer or weaker than themselves." - Samuel Adams

"The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on Earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule." - Samuel Adams

"It is not he who gains the exact point in dispute who scores most in controversy - but he who has shown the better temper." - Samuel Butler

"The best thing of our life, our rest, and give us up to toil." - Samuel Daniel

"The attempt to divert the thoughts and interest of the American people from the wrongs that need attention at home, by occupying them with foreign complications of any kind, is criminal folly. The idea that we shall escape the duties which we owe to the people by becoming a nation of conquerors, is clearly in the minds of prominent advocates of expansion and imperialism. They have indicated that they hope to see changes in our boundaries, talk of alliances and wars, and perhaps war and conquests, all to keep the workers and the lovers of reforms and simple justice diverted and powerless to dig out abuses and cure existing injustice. . . . Imperialism points to large armaments and more frequent wars. It means means greater demands upon the workers in taxes, blood, and life. It tends to the more frequent and unblushing use of force against the weak and lowly. It subordinates right and justice to an unwise or blind greed of gain, and the exploitation of islands whose millions are to be made the tools, willing or unwilling, of the few thousand. And this is what some men call a cure for social unrest!" - Samuel Gompers

"He that has much to do will do something wrong." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"I would not give half a guinea to live under one form of government other than another. It is of no moment to the happiness of an individual." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"People in distress never think that you feel enough." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"The three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements, but moral acts: to return love for hate, to include the excluded, and to say, "I was wrong"." - Sydney J. Harris

"Anxiety in children is originally nothing other than an expression of the fact they are feeling the loss of the person they love." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"The unconscious is the larger circle which includes within itself the smaller circle of the conscious; everything conscious has its preliminary step in the unconscious, whereas the unconscious may stop with this step and still claim full value as a psychic activity. Properly speaking, the unconscious is the real psychic; its inner nature is just as unknown to us as the reality of the external world, and it is just as imperfectly reported to us through the data of consciousness as is the external world through the indications of our sensory organs." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"I'm here to assure you that our city is prepared to handle these situations... Power was restored to the vast majority of D.W.P. customers, 90 percent, within the first two hours." - Simon Wiesenthal

"The end was surely near, ... The Nazis killed you only when you were naked, because they knew, psychologically, that naked people never resist." - Simon Wiesenthal

"The destruction of the past is perhaps the greatest of all crimes." - Simone Weil