Great Throughts Treasury

"I suspect it was...the old story of the implacable necessity of a man having honour within his own natural spirit. A man cannot live and temper his mettle without such honour. There is deep in him a sense of the heroic quest; and our modern way of life, with its emphasis on security, its distrust of the unknown and its elevation of abstract collective values has repressed the heroic impulse to a degree that may produce the most dangerous consequences." - Laurens van der Post

"The national distrust of the contemplative temperament arises less from an innate Philistinism than from a suspicion of anything that cannot be counted, stuffed, framed or mounted over the fireplace in the den." - Lewis H. Lapham

"A certain amount of distrust is wholesome, but not so much of others as of ourselves. Neither vanity nor conceit can exist in the same atmosphere with it." - Madame de Staël, Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein, born Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Madame Necker

"Science reveals the possibility of achieving all good, and sets mortals at work to discover what God has already done; but distrust of one's ability to gain the goodness desired and to bring out better and higher results, often hampers the trial of one's wings and ensures failure at the outset." - Mary Baker Eddy

"We are made weak both by idleness and distrust of ourselves. Unfortunate, indeed, is he who suffers from both. If he is a mere individual he becomes nothing; if he is a king he is lost." - Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I

"When you disarm your subjects you offend them by showing that either from cowardliness or lack of faith, you distrust them; and either conclusion will induce them to hate you." - Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli

"I learnt to distrust all physical concepts as the basis for a theory. Instead one should put one's trust in a mathematical scheme, even if the scheme does not appear at first sight to be connected with physics. One should concentrate on getting interesting mathematics. " - Paul Dirac, fully Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac

"Thus our judgments, if they do not borrow from reason and philosophy a fixity and steadiness of purpose in their acts, are easily swayed and influenced by the praise or blame of others, which make us distrust our own opinions." - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL

"There seems to be a vicious cycle at work here, making ours not just an economy but a culture of extreme inequality. Corporate decision makers, and even some two-bit entrepreneurs like my boss at The Maids, occupy an economic position miles above that of the underpaid people whose labor they depend on. For reasons that have more to do with class — and often racial — prejudice than with actual experience, they tend to fear and distrust the category of people from which they recruit their workers. Hence the perceived need for repressive management and intrusive measures like drug and personality testing. But these things cost money — $20,000 or more a year for a manager, $100 a pop for a drug test, and so on — and the high cost of repression results in ever more pressure to hold wages down. The larger society seems to be caught up in a similar cycle: cutting public services for the poor, which are sometimes referred to collectively as the 'social wage,' while investing ever more heavily in prisons and cops. And in the larger society, too, the cost of repression becomes another factor weighing against the expansion or restoration of needed services. It is a tragic cycle, condemning us to ever deeper inequality, and in the long run, almost no one benefits but the agents of repression themselves. " - Barbara Ehrenreich, born Barbara Alexander

"Puritanism prolonged in America the medieval Christian view of the world and of human destiny. It taught men to distrust their natural inclinations as well as their natural faculties, and to find their origin and their salvation in a supernatural order.... The Enlightenment, on the other hand, was humane, optimistic, and eudaemonistic. The fact that Benjamin Franklin formulated maxims for conduct only served to accentuate the difference in the ultimate ground of moral appeal. The puritan maxims consisted largely in prohibitions, and were imposed by the will of God; the maxims of the new philosophy were recipes for success, discovered by common sense, and motivated by the end of happiness." - Ralph Barton Perry

"I distrust manifest knowledge." - Rita Mae Brown

"We deemed the secret lost, the spirit gone, Which spake in Greek simplicity of thought, And in the forms of gods and heroes wrought Eternal beauty from the sculptured stone — A higher charm than modern culture won, With all the wealth of metaphysic lore, Gifted to analyze, dissect explore. A many-colored light flows from our sun; Art, 'neath its beams a motley thread has spun; The prison modifies the perfect day; But thou hast known such mediums to shun, And cast once more on life a pure white ray. Absorbed in the creations of thy mind, Forgetting daily self, my truest friend I find." - Margaret Fuller, fully Sara Margaret Fuller, Marchese Ossoli

"Steering an organization through times of change can be hazardous, and it has been the ruin of many a leader." - Ronald A. Heifetz

"It seems to me that the best way will be the one that is most gentle and forbearing, which is more in conformity with the Spirit of Our Lord and more apt to win hearts." - Saint Vincent de Paul

"A true artist is not one who is inspired, but one who inspires others." - Salvador Dalí, fully Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech

"A cow is a very good animal in the field; but we turn her out of a garden." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"When I was as you are now, towering in the confidence of twenty-one, little did I suspect that I should be at forty-nine, what I now am." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"My life is spent in one long effort to escape from the commonplaces of existence. These little problems help me to do so." - Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle

"Repentance lifts a man up. Mourning knocks at heaven's gate. Holy humility opens it." - John Climacus, fully Saint John Climacus, aka John of the Ladder, John Scholasticus and John Sinaites

"Men's actions are derived from the opinions they of the good or evil, which from those actions rebound unto themselves." - Thomas Hobbes

"It is reasonable that everyone who asks justice should do justice" - Thomas Jefferson

"Peace and abstinence from European interferences are our objects, and so will continue while the present order of things in America remain uninterrupted." - Thomas Jefferson

"Downe shee ranne in her loose night-gowne, and her haire about her eares (euen as Semiramis ranne out with her lie-pot in her hand, and her blacke dangling tresses about her shoulders with her iuory combe ensnarled in them, when she heard that Babilon was taken), and thought to haue kist his dead corse aliue againe, but as on his blew iellied sturgeon lips she was about to clappe one of those warme plaisters, boystrous woolpacks of ridged tides came rowling in, and raught him from her, (with a mine belike to carrie him backe to Abidos.) At that she became a franticke Bacchanal outright, & made no more bones but sprang after him, and so resignd up her Priesthood, and left worke for Musaeus and Kit Marlowe." - Thomas Nashe

"And earth was heaven a little the worse for wear. And heaven was earth, done up again to look like new." - Wilkie Collins, fully William Wilkie Collins

"It is one of my rules in life, never to notice what I don't understand." - Wilkie Collins, fully William Wilkie Collins

"Just now I am trying to get ready for publication something on thermodynamics from the a priori point of view, or rather on 'statistical mechanics' . . . I do not know that I shall have anything particularly new in substance, but shall be contented if I can so choose my standpoint (as seems to me possible) as to get a simpler view of the subject." - Willard Gibbs, fully Josiah Willard Gibbs

"We are not the helpless slaves of technology, but as before - if only we wish to be - captains of our fate.... this argument of technological inevitability is also misleading because it depends entirely on extra-techni­cal factors whether a certain technological process which, for example, favors mass production, is in actual fact really superior from the economic point of view or not." - Wilhelm Röepke

"And none will hear the postman’s knock without a quickening of the heart. For who can bear to feel himself forgotten?" - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"The fate of a nation has often depended on the good or bad digestion of a prime minister." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"I think, Tehanu said in her soft, strange voice, that when I die, I can breathe back the breath that made me live. I can give back to the world all that I didn't do. All that I might have been and couldn't be. All the choices I didn't make. All the things I lost and spent and wasted. I can give them back to the world. To the lives that haven't been lived yet. That will be my gift back to the world that gave me the life I did live, the love I loved, the breath I breathed." - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

"There is only one art, whose sole criterion is the power, the authenticity, the revelatory insight, the courage and suggestiveness with which it seeks its truth. Thus, from the standpoint of the work and its worth it is irrelevant to which political ideas the artist as a citizen claims allegiance, which ideas he would like to serve with his work or whether he holds any such ideas at all." - Václav Havel

"Faith is the consolation of the wretched and the terror of the happy." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

"If I am to speak ten minutes, I need a week for preparation; if fifteen minutes, three days; if half an hour, two days; if an hour, I am ready now." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

"Evil can be a teacher, if you look at the wisdom of its negative power." - Tom Brown, Jr.

"By accident most strange, bountiful Fortune (Now, my dear lady) hath mine enemies Brought to this shore; and by my prescience I find my zenith doth depend upon A most auspicious star, whose influence If now I court not, but omit, my fortunes Will ever after droop." - William Shakespeare

"However rare true love may be, it is less so than true friendship." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"It is not enough to have great qualities, we must also have the management of them." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"The pleasure of love is in the loving; and there is more joy in the passion one feels than in that which one inspires." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"Whatever good things people say of us, they tell us nothing new." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"In a certain reign there was a lady not of the first rank whom the emperor loved more than any of the others. The grand ladies with high ambitions thought her a presumptuous upstart, and lesser ladies were still more resentful. Everything she did offended someone." - Murasaki Shikibu, aka Lady Murasaki

"My mind was never to invade my neighbors." - Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL

"The parody is the last refuge of the frustrated writer. Parodies are what you write when you are associate editor of the Harvard Lampoon. The greater the work of literature, the easier the parody. The step up from writing parodies is writing on the wall above the urinal." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway