Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

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"The use of text messaging for propaganda purposes – known as “red-texting” – reveals another creative streak among China’s propaganda virtuosos. The practice may have grown out of a competition organized by one of China’s mobile phone operators to compose the most eloquent Party-admiring text message. Fast forward a few years, and senior telecom officials in Beijing are already busily attending “red-texting” symposia. “I really like these words of Chairman Mao: ‘The world is ours, we should unite for achievements. Responsibility and seriousness can conquer the world and the Chinese Communist Party members represent these qualities.’ These words are incisive and inspirational.” This is a text message that thirteen million mobile phone users in the Chinese city of Chongqing received one day in April 2009. Sent by Bo Xilai, the aggressive secretary of the city’s Communist Party who is speculated to have strong ambitions for a future in national politics, the messages were then forwarded another sixteen millions times. Not so bad for an odd quote from a long-dead Communist dictator." - Evgeny Morozov

"The angel shook her head slowly and said. "Six pairs of hands.... no way."" - Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste

"As the world's resources of non-renewable fuels—coal, oil, and natural gas—are exceedingly unevenly distributed over the globe and undoubtedly limited in quantity, it is clear that their exploitation at an ever-increasing rate is an act of violence against nature which must almost inevitably lead to violence between men." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

"If the splitter of hairs has a sharp enough knife, the fact of life itself can be chopped into nothing." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

"It is inaccurate to say I hate everything. I am strongly in favor of common sense, common honesty, and common decency. This makes me forever ineligible for any public office." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"The tongue goes to where the tooth aches." - Italian Proverbs

"After some time he felt for his pipe. It was not broken, and that was something. Then he felt for his pouch, and there was some tobacco in it, and that was something more. Then he felt for matches and he could not find any at all, and that shattered his hopes completely." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"Each day before the end of eve she sought her lover, nor would him leave, until the stars were dimmed, and day came glimmering eastward silver-grey. Then trembling-veiled she would appear, and dance before him, half in fear; there flitting just before his feet she gently chid with laughter sweet: 'Come! dance now, Beren, dance with me! For fain thy dancing I would see!" - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"Eomer said, How is a man to judge what to do in such times? As he has ever judged, said Aragorn. Good and evil have not changed since yesteryear, nor are they one thing among Elves and another among Men. It is a man?s part to discern them, as much in the Golden Wood as in his own house." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"I will not give you counsel, saying do this, or do that. For not in doing or contriving, nor in choosing between this course and another, can I avail; but only in knowing what was and is, and in part also what shall be." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien