Great Throughts Treasury

"It will be proper to take a review of the several sources from which governments have arisen, and on which they have been founded." - Thomas Paine

"The pride of the peacock is the glory of God. The lust of the goat is the bounty of God. The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God. The nakedness of woman is the work of God." - William Blake

"Forced to choose, the poor, like the rich, love money more than political liberty; and the only political freedom capable of enduring is one that is so pruned as to keep the rich from denuding the poor by ability or subtlety and the poor from robbing the rich by violence or votes." - Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant

"Today we are aware of the high price that had to be paid for it [materi­al progress] and that we will contin­ue to have to pay, and we are by no means still certain that the price is not too high. We distrust the opti­mistic assertion that technology and the machine are complete­ly inno­cent of all this and that the blame rests squarely on man alone who is using them in the wrong way and will just have to learn the right one...The problem of the machine - which happens to be something else than just a highly developed tool - is not merely one of its use, but also one of the machine itself, which, follow­ing its own laws and imposing them on man, extracts its tribute from him." - Wilhelm Röepke

"Ambition has but one reward for all: A little power, a little transient fame; A grave to rest in, and a fading name!" - Walter Savage Landor

"But I have sinuous shells of pearly hue… Shake one, and it awakens; then apply its polished lips to your attentive ear, and it remembers its august abodes, and murmurs as the ocean murmurs there… Past are three summers since she first beheld t The ocean; all around the child await some exclamation of amazement here: she coldly said, her long-lasht eyes abased, is this the mighty ocean? is this all?" - Walter Savage Landor

"The most alarming sign of the state of our society now is that our leaders have the courage to sacrifice the lives of young people in war, but have not the courage to tell us that we must be less greedy and less wasteful." - Wendell Berry

"Use, do not abuse; the wise man arrange things so. I flee Epictetus and Petronius alike. Neither abstinence nor excess ever renders man happy." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"Verses which do not teach men new and moving truths do not deserve to be read." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"It is the role of the poet to look at what is happening in the world and to know that quite other things are happening." - V. S. Pritchett, fully Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett

"The laboring poor, to use a vulgar expression, seem always to live from hand to mouth. Their present wants employ their whole attention, and they seldom think of the future. Even when they have an opportunity of saving they seldom exercise it, but all that is beyond their present neccessities goes, generally speaking, to the ale house." - Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus

"Condemn the fault, and not the actor of it? Why, every fault's condemned ere it be done: Mine were the very cipher of a function, To fine the faults whose fine stands in record, And let go by the actor. Measure for Measure. Act ii. Sc. 2." - William Shakespeare

"This is rather as if you imagine a puddle waking up one morning and thinking, 'This is an interesting world I find myself in — an interesting hole I find myself in — fits me rather neatly, doesn't it? In fact it fits me staggeringly well, must have been made to have me in it!' This is such a powerful idea that as the sun rises in the sky and the air heats up and as, gradually, the puddle gets smaller and smaller, frantically hanging on to the notion that everything's going to be alright, because this world was meant to have him in it, was built to have him in it; so the moment he disappears catches him rather by surprise. I think this may be something we need to be on the watch out for." - Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams

"We must learn how to explode! Any disease is healthier than the one provoked by a hoarded rage." - Emil M. Cioran

"Never underestimate what it takes to watch someone you love in pain." - Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste

"For with slight efforts how should we obtain great results? It is foolish even to desire it." - Euripedes NULL

"When one receives the generosity of the gods, do not need it to friends, as sufficient for divine help, if God willing!" - Euripedes NULL

"To speak of them out loud, to speak of their hunger and pain and loneliness and humor, to make them visible so that cannot be ravaged in the dark without great consequence." -

"Historians today are priests of a cult of truth, called to the service of a god whose existence they are doomed to doubt." - Felipe Fernández-Armesto