Great Throughts Treasury

"Evolution has encountered no intellectual trouble; no new arguments have been offered. Creationism is a home-grown phenomenon of American sociocultural history-- a splinter movement . . . who believe that every word in the Bible must be literally true, whatever such a claim might mean." - Stephan Jay Gould

"Facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away while scientists debate rival theories for explaining them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air pending the outcome." - Stephan Jay Gould

"If I could have those sixty seconds within Bradypus... would I not receive a plea for humans to pause, reassess - and above all, slow down?" - Stephan Jay Gould

"Since we proposed punctuated equilibria to explain trends, it is infuriating to be quoted again and again by creationists -- whether through design or stupidity, I do not know -- as admitting that the fossil record includes no transitional forms. The punctuations occur at the level of species; directional trends (on the staircase model) are rife at the higher level of transitions within major groups… Transitional forms are generally lacking at the species level, but they are abundant between larger groups." - Stephan Jay Gould

"The history of a species, or any natural phenomenon that requires unbroken continuity in a world of trouble, works like a batting streak. All are games of a gambler playing with a limited stake against a house with infinite resources. The gambler must eventually go bust. His aim can only be to stick around as long as possible, to have some fun while he's at it, and, if he happens to be a moral agent as well, to worry about staying the course with honor." - Stephan Jay Gould

"Unfortunately, all life on earth - the only life we know - represents, for all its current variety, the results of a single experiment, for every earthly species evolved from the common ancestry of a single origin. We desperately need a repetition of the experiment (several would be better, but let's not be greedy!) in order to make a judgement. Mars represents our first real hope for a second experiment - the sine qua non - for any proper answer for the question of questions." - Stephan Jay Gould

"When we look to presumed sources of origin for competing evolutionary explanations of the giraffe's long neck, we find either nothing at all, or only the shortest of speculative conjectures. Length, of course, need not correspond with importance. Garrulous old Polonius, in a rare moment of clarity, reminded us that brevity is the soul of wit (and then immediately vitiated his wise observation with a flood of woolly words about Hamlet's Madness.)" - Stephan Jay Gould

"The universe does not behave according to our pre-conceived ideas. It continues to surprise us." - Stephen Hawking

"There is what I call the American idea. I so name it, because it seems to me to lie at the basis of all our truly original, distinctive, and American institutions. It is itself a complex idea, composed of three subordinate and more simple ideas, namely: The idea that all men have unalienable rights; that in respect thereof, all men are created equal; and that government is to be established and sustained for the purpose of giving every man an opportunity for the enjoyment and development of all these unalienable rights. This idea demands, as the proximate organization thereof, a democracy, that is, a government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people; of course, a government after the principles of eternal justice, the unchanging law of God; for shortness' sake, I will call it the idea of Freedom." - Theodore Parker

"A society that will trade a little liberty for a little order will lose both, and deserve neither." - Thomas Jefferson

"History, in general, only informs us of what bad government is." - Thomas Jefferson

"I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and Constitutions. But laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors." - Thomas Jefferson

"I deem no government safe which is under the vassalage of any self-constituted authorities, or any other authority than that of the nation, or its regular functionaries." - Thomas Jefferson

"I do not find in orthodox Christianity one redeeming feature." - Thomas Jefferson

"I know it will give great offence to the New England clergy, but the advocate of religious freedom is to expect neither peace nor forgiveness from them." - Thomas Jefferson

"It behooves our citizens to be on their guard, to be firm in their principles, and full of confidence in themselves. We are able to preserve our self- government if we will but think so." - Thomas Jefferson

"Your reason is now mature enough to examine this object [religion]. In the first place divest yourself of all bias in favor of novelty and singularity of opinion. Indulge them in any other subject rather than that of religion. It is too important, and the consequences of error may be too serious. On the other hand shake off all the fears and servile prejudices under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear." - Thomas Jefferson

"It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man." - Thomas Paine

"The babbling sounds that mimic echo plays, The fairy shade, and its eternal maze? Nature and Art in all their charms combin'd, And all Elysium to one view confin'd! " - Thomas Tickell

"Here then, is modern man, disposed to treat himself as a denizen of this world and nothing more. What is the huge and patent result? Well, it is plain enough. He begins to work and strive exclusively for an object in this world. The purpose of his work is not the reasonable satisfaction of human needs in order that the spiritual destiny of man may be achieved, but the accumulation of material power, prestige, gain. And man himself becomes the servant, the slave of this process. The end of human activity is no longer a human end, but something inhuman. Man is not to be regarded as the master and ruler of the world process. He has banished God, he has banished the eternal meaning from his politics and economics, but it is not his humanity that is allowed to supply the meaning. And it must be so. For in turning from God he turned from himself. In starting a non-religious civilization he impoverished his own manhood, and stood, a poor defenseless organism of dust, before the mighty forces which he had unchained but could no longer control." - W. G. Peck, fully William George Peck

"But one day, some painter used ‘Abstraction’ as a title for one of his paintings. It was a still life. And it was a very tricky title. And it wasn’t really a very good one. From then on the idea became something extra. Immediately it gave some people the idea that they could free art from itself. Until then, Art meant everything that was in it – not what you could take off it. There was only one thing you could take out of it sometime when you were in the right mood – that abstract and indefinable sensation, the aesthetic part – and still leave it were it was." - Willem de Kooning

"In the primitive church were not prayers simple, unpremeditated, united; prayers of the well-taught apostle; prayers of the accomplished scholar; prayers of the rough but fervent peasant; prayers of the new and zealous convert; prayers which importuned and wrestled with an instant and irrepressible urgency; — were they not an essential part of that religion, which holy fire had kindled; and which daily supplications alone could fan?" - William Arthur

"Prayer is not a way of making use of God; prayer is a way of offering ourselves to God in order that He should be able to make use of us. It may be that one of our great faults in prayer is that we talk too much and listen too little. When prayer is at its highest we wait in silence for God's voice to us; we linger in His presence for His peace and His power to flow over us and around us; we lean back in His everlasting arms and feel the serenity of perfect security in Him." - William Barclay

"It is in your character of Prime Minister that I take the liberty of prefixing your Lordship's name to this “Tale of Irish Famine”. Had Sir Robert Peel been in office, I would have placed his name where that of your Lordship now stands. There is something not improper in this; for although I believe that both you and he are sincerely anxious to benefit our unhappy country, still I cannot help thinking that the man who in his ministerial capacity, must be looked upon as a public exponent of those principals of Government which have brought our country to her present calamitous condition, by a long course of illiberal legislation and unjustifiable neglect, ought to have his name placed before a story which details with truth the sufferings which such legislation and neglect have entailed upon our people." - William Carleton

"Your tears come easy, when you're young, and beginning the world. Your tears come easy, when you're old, and leaving it. I burst out crying." - Wilkie Collins, fully William Wilkie Collins

"If we wanted to construct a basic philosophical attitude from these scientific utterances of Pauli's, at first we would be inclined to infer from them an extreme rationalism and a fundamentally skeptical point of view. In reality however, behind this outward display of criticism and skepticism lay concealed a deep philosophical interest even in those dark areas of reality of the human soul which elude the grasp of reason. And while the power of fascination emanating from Pauli's analyses of physical problems was admittedly due in some measure to the detailed and penetrating clarity of his formulations, the rest was derived from a constant contact with the field of creative spiritual processes, for which no rational formulation as yet exists." - Werner Heisenberg, fully Werner Karl Heisenberg

"The Many can elect after the Few have nominated." - Walter Lippmann

"There is an ascendant feeling among the people that all achievement should be measured in human happiness." - Walter Lippmann

"If your purpose involves providing things that require money for others and for yourself, and if you are uncompromised about your own commitment to your purpose, then money will show up in your life to assist you with your heroic mission." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

"Repay eveil with good, and hell will not claim you." - Welsh Proverbs

"History leaves no doubt that among of the most regrettable crimes committed by human beings have been committed by those human beings who thought of themselves as civilized. What, we must ask, does our civilization possess that is worth defending? One thing worth defending, I suggest, is the imperative to imagine the lives of beings who are not ourselves and are not like ourselves: animals, plants, gods, spirits, people of other countries, other races, people of the other sex, places and enemies." - Wendell Berry

"A poet's hope to be, like some valley cheese, local, but prized elsewhere." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"Literature must become party literature. Down with unpartisan litterateurs! Down with the superman of literature! Literature must become a part of the general cause of the proletariat." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"Dark pictures, thrones, the stones that pilgrims kiss. Poems that take a thousand years to die. But ape the immortality of this red label on a little butterfly." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"Do well and you will have no need for ancestors." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"I have wanted to kill myself a hundred times, but somehow I am still in love with life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our more stupid melancholy propensities, for is there anything more stupid than to be eager to go on carrying a burden which one would gladly throw away, to loathe one’s very being and yet to hold it fast, to fondle the snake that devours us until it has eaten our hearts away?" - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"We can become involved in many acts of social service, according to our resources, without ever moving one inch from the center of our private interests; in fact, the very act of social service typically enhances self-image and self-centeredness. But we cannot become involved in true social action, which strikes at the roots of problems in the society and in the human psyche, without moving away from ego-centered motivation. We must look deep into the network of personal motivations and discover what our priorities are. Our yearning for peace must be so urgent that we are willing to free ourselves from the immaturity of ego-centered action, willing to grow into the sane maturity required to face the complex challenges that affect our existence. If we are motivated by desire for acceptance either by the dominant culture or the counterculture, clarity of right action and passion of precise purpose will not be there. We may be praised for our contributions, but unless there is a deep awareness of the essence of our lives, a penetrating clarity about the meaning of human existence, our contributions will not penetrate to the roots of human misery." - Vimala Thakar

"A strange thing has happened -- while all the other arts were born naked, this, the youngest, has been born fully-clothed. It can say everything before it has anything to say. It is as if the savage tribe, instead of finding two bars of iron to play with, had found scattering the seashore fiddles, flutes, saxophones, trumpets, grand pianos by Erhard and Bechstein, and had begun with incredible energy, but without knowing a note of music, to hammer and thump upon them all at the same time." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"In all the books love is one of the great facts that mold human life. But it is a catastrophe: it happens suddenly and overwhelmingly, and there is little to be said about it." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"A good deed is like peeing in your pants. Everyone knows you did it, but only you can feel it's warmth." - Zoroaster, aka Zarathustra or Zarathushtra Spitama NULL

"From one learn all." - Virgil, also Vergil, fully Publius Vergilius Maro NULL

"Let me rage before I die." - Virgil, also Vergil, fully Publius Vergilius Maro NULL

"The most marvelous experience of life is to transform life according to reality, not imagination." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"A moral character is attached to autumnal scenes. - The flowers fading like our hopes, the leaves falling like our years, the clouds fleeting like our illusions, the light diminishing like our intelligence, the sun growing colder like our affections, the rivers becoming frozen like our lives - all bear secret relations to our destinies." - François-René de Chateaubriand, fully François-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand

"You punch me, I punch back. I do not believe it's good for ones self-respect to be a punching bag." - Victor Hugo

"Don’t aim at success — the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one’s surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"I made a quick last round of my patients [just before I intended to escape], who were lying huddled on the rotten planks of wood on either side of the huts. I came to my only countryman, who was almost dying, and whose life it had been my ambition to save in spite of his condition. I had to keep my intention to escape to myself, but my comrade seemed to guess that something was wrong (perhaps I showed a little nervousness). In a tired voice he asked me, 'You, too, are getting out?' I denied it, but I found it difficult to avoid his sad look. After my round I returned to him. Again a hopeless look greeted me and somehow I felt it to be an accusation. The unpleasant feeling that had gripped me as soon as I had told my friend I would escape with him became more intense. Suddenly I decided to take fate into my own hands for once. I ran out of the hut and told my friend that I could not go with him. As soon as I had told him with finality that I had made up my mind to stay with my patients, the unhappy feeling left me. I did not know what the following days would bring, but I had gained an inward peace that I had never experienced before. I returned to the hut, sat down on the boards at my countryman's feet and tried to comfort him; then I chatted with the others, trying to quiet them in their delirium." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"It did not really matter what we expected from life, but rather what life expected from us. We needed to stop asking about the meaning of life, and instead to think of ourselves as those who were being questioned by life—daily and hourly. Our answer must consist, not in talk and meditation, but in right action and in right conduct. Life ultimately means taking the responsibility to find the right answer to its problems and to fulfill the tasks which it constantly sets for each individual." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"The difference between farce and humor in literature is, I suppose, that farce strums louder and louder on one string, while humor varies its note, changes its key, grows and spreads and deepens until it may indeed reach tragic depths." - V. S. Pritchett, fully Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett

"Two things are going on at the same time with the flattening of the world: The relentless quest for efficiency is squeezing some of the fat out of life." - Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman