Great Throughts Treasury

"Experts often arrive at different results, both in fundamental matters, and in application who does not know of at least one case in his family where one doctor recommends a certain operation, another argues against it, while a third suggests an entirely different procedure? Who has not read of the debates about nuclear safety, the end of the economy, the effects of pesticides, aerosol sprays, the efficiency of methods of education, the influence of race on intelligence? Two, three, five and even more views arise in such debates, and scientific supporters can be found for all of them. Occasionally one almost feels inclined to say: as many scientists, as many opinions. There are of course areas in which scientists agree- but this cannot raise our confidence. Unanimity is often the result of a political decision: dissenters are suppressed, or remain silent to preserve the reputation of science as a source of trustworthy and almost infallible knowledge. On other occasions, unanimity is the result of shared prejudices: positions are taken without detail examination of the matter under review and are infused with the same authority that proceeds from detailed research." - Paul Feyerabend, fully Paul Karl Feyerabend

"The honor of parents is a fair and noble treasure to their posterity, but to have the use of a treasure of wealth and honor, and to leave none to your successors, because you have neither money nor reputation of your own, is alike base and dishonorable." - Plato NULL

"It is generally much more shameful to lose a good reputation than never to have acquired it. " - Pliny the Elder, full name Casus Plinius Secundus NULL

"Our aim was to insure repeat business based on the system's reputation rather than on the quality of a single store or operator." - Ray Kroc, fully Raymond Albert Kroc

"At the time, my grandparents told my mom, "Lordy, what is Shannen doing?" Now I've calmed down. [on her reputation for bad behavior]" - René Descartes

"We've learned from experience that the truth will come out. Other experimenters will repeat your experiment and find out whether you were wrong or right. Nature's phenomena will agree or they'll disagree with your theory. And, although you may gain some temporary fame and excitement, you will not gain a good reputation as a scientist if you haven't tried to be very careful in this kind of work. And it's this type of integrity, this kind of care not to fool yourself, that is missing to a large extent in much of the research in cargo cult science." - Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman

"Some men's reputation seems like seed-wheat, which thrives best when brought from a distance." - Richard Whately

"The Washingtonians who watch a President have more to think about than his professional reputation. They also have to think about his standing with the public outside Washington. They have to gauge his popular prestige. Because they think about it, public standing is a source of influence for him, another factor bearing on their willingness to give him what he wants.Prestige, like reputation, is a subjective factor, a matter of judgment. It works on power just as reputation does through the mechanism of anticipated reactions. The same men, Washingtonians, to the judging. In the case of reputation they anticipate reactions from the President. In the instance of prestige they anticipate reactions from the public. Most members of the Washington community depend upon outsiders to support them or their interests. The dependence may be as direct as votes, or it may be as indirect as passive toleration. Dependent men must take account of popular reaction to their actions. What their publics may think of them becomes a factor, therefore, in deciding how to deal with the desires of a President. His prestige enters into that decision; their publics are part of his. Their view from inside Washington of how outsiders view him thus affects his influence with them." - Richard Neustadt, fully Richard Elliott Neustadt

"For a nation which has an almost evil reputation for bustle, bustle, bustle, and rush, rush, rush, we spend an enormous amount of time standing around in line in front of windows, just waiting." - Robert Benchley, fully Robert Charles Benchley

"Nowadays love is a matter of chance, matrimony a matter of money and divorce a matter of course." - Helen Rowland

"All we have of freedom - all we use or know - This our fathers bought for us, long and long ago." - Rudyard Kipling

"Loyalty of your people is a key to most any business success." - S. Truett Cathy

"If you think something should be done, take the trouble to write to me about it, and together we will decide the time and manner of doing it." - Saint Vincent de Paul

"A fire-eater must eat fire even if he has to kindle it himself." - Salvor Hardin

"The most important service rendered by the press and the magazines is that of educating people to approach printed matter with distrust." - Samuel Butler

"Such are the vicissitudes of the world, through all its parts, that day and night, labor and rest, hurry and retirement, endear each other. Such are the changes that keep the mind in action; we desire, we pursue, we obtain, we are satiated; we desire something else, and begin a new pursuit." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"I cannot put in danger the lives of my two children, my musicians and my technicians, so I have decided to cancel this concert." - Sinéad O’Connor, fully Sinéad Marie Bernadette O'Connor

"What a blessing this smoking is! Perhaps the greatest that we owe to the discovery of America." - Arthur Helps, fully Sir Arthur Helps

"One man writes a novel. One man writes a symphony. It is essential that one man make a film." - Stanley Kubrick

"Sometimes the impact of Mozart's music is so immediate that the vision in the mind remains blurred and incomplete, while the soul seems to be directly invaded, drenched in wave upon wave of melancholy." - Stendhal, pen name of Marie Henn Beyle or Marie-Henri Beyle NULL

"Of thoughts, feelings, memories, and beliefs held together by a sense of identity—and no longer mistakenly take it to be the truth of who you are or feel compelled to follow its directives. In" - Stephan Bodian

"Now, the essence, the very spirit of Christmas is that we first make believe a thing is so, and lo, it presently turns out to be so." - Stephen Leacock, fully Stephen Butler Leacock

"Carrie felt this as a personal reproof. She read Dora Thorne, or had a great deal in the past. It seemed only fair to her, but she supposed that people thought it very fine. Now this clear- eyed, fine-headed youth, who looked something like a student to her, made fun of it. It was poor to him, not worth reading. She looked down, and for the first time felt the pain of not understanding." - Theodore Dreiser, fully Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser

"The miser, starving his brother's body, starves also his own soul, and at death shall creep out of his great estate of injustice, poor and naked and miserable." - Theodore Parker

"What is the use of beauty in woman? Provided a woman is physically well made and capable of bearing children, she will always be good enough in the opinion of economists. What is the use of music? -- of painting? Who would be fool enough nowadays to prefer Mozart to Carrel, Michael Angelo to the inventor of white mustard? There is nothing really beautiful save what is of no possible use. Everything useful is ugly, for it expresses a need, and man's needs are low and disgusting, like his own poor, wretched nature. The most useful place in a house is the water-closet. For my part, saving these gentry's presence, I am of those to whom superfluities are necessaries, and I am fond of things and people in inverse ratio to the service they render me. I prefer a Chinese vase with its mandarins and dragons, which is perfectly useless to me, to a utensil which I do use, and the particular talent of mine which I set most store by is that which enables me not to guess logogriphs and charades. I would very willingly renounce my rights as a Frenchman and a citizen for the sight of an undoubted painting by Raphael, or of a beautiful nude woman, -- Princess Borghese, for instance, when she posed for Canova, or Julia Grisi when she is entering her bath. I would most willingly consent to the return of that cannibal, Charles X., if he brought me, from his residence in Bohemia, a case of Tokai or Johannisberg; and the electoral laws would be quite liberal enough, to my mind, were some of our streets broader and some other things less broad. Though I am not a dilettante, I prefer the sound of a poor fiddle and tambourines to that of the Speaker's bell. I would sell my breeches for a ring, and my bread for jam. The occupation which best befits civilized man seems to me to be idleness or analytically smoking a pipe or cigar. I think highly of those who play skittles, and also of those who write verse. You may perceive that my principles are not utilitarian, and that I shall never be the editor of a virtuous paper, unless I am converted, which would be very comical." - Théophile Gautier, fully Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier, aka Le Bon Theo

"Stupidity may be defined as mental slowness in speech and action." - Theophrastus NULL

"From the nature of things, every society must at all times possess within itself the sovereign powers of legislation." - Thomas Jefferson

"I have lent myself willingly as the subject of a great experiment, which was to prove that an administration conducting itself with integrity and common understanding cannot be battered down even by the falsehoods of a licentious press. . . . The fact being once established that the press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood, I leave it to others to restore it to its strength by recalling it within the pale of truth. Within that it is a noble institution, equally the friend of science and civil liberty." - Thomas Jefferson

"I say, the earth belongs to each of these generations during its course, fully and in its own right. The second generation receives it clear of the debts and incumbrances of the first, the third of the second, and so on. For if the first could charge it with a debt, then the earth would belong to the dead and not to the living generation. Then, no generation can contract debts greater than may be paid during the course of its own existence." - Thomas Jefferson

"No man will ever bring out of the Presidency the reputation which carries him into it...To myself, personally, it brings nothing but increasing drudgery and daily loss of friends." - Thomas Jefferson

"No man will labor for himself who can make another labor for him." - Thomas Jefferson

"A man will pass better through the world with a thousand open errors upon his back than in being detected in one sly falsehood. When one is detected, a thousand are suspected." - Thomas Paine

"I bid you farewell, sincerely wishing, that as men and Christians, ye may always fully and uninterruptedly enjoy every civil and religious right." - Thomas Paine

"If a God, he could not suffer death, for immortality cannot die, and as a man his death could be no more than the death of any other person." - Thomas Paine

"A great civilization is not conquered from without until it has destroyed itself within. The essential cause of Rome's decline lay in her people, her morals, her class struggle, her failing trade, her bureaucratic despotism, her stifling taxes, her consuming wars." - Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant

"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

"Your soul - that inner quiet space - is yours to consult. It will always guide you in the right direction." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

"How happy the lot of the mathematician. He is judged solely by his peers, and the standard is so high that no colleague or rival can ever win a reputation he does not deserve." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"How should we like it were stars to burn with a passion for us we could not return? If equal affection cannot be, Let the more loving one be me." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden

"Making every allowance for the errors of the most extreme fallibility, the history of Catholicism would on this hypothesis represent an amount of imposture probably unequaled in the annals of the human race." - W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky

"I am ignorant of how I was formed and how I was born. Through a quarter of my lifetime I was absolutely ignorant of the reasons for everything I saw and heard and felt, and was merely a parrot prompted by other parrots... When I sought to advance along that infinite course, I could neither find one single footpath or fully discover one single object, and from the upward leap I made to contemplate eternity I fell back into the abyss of my ignorance." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"When the first savage saw his hut destroyed by a bolt of lightning, he fell down upon his face in terror. He had no conception of natural forces, of laws of electricity ; he saw this event as the act of an individual intelligence. To-day we read about fairies and demons, dryads and fauns and satyrs, Wotan and Thor and Vulcan, Freie and Flora and Ceres, and we think of all these as pretty fancies, play-products of the mind; losing sight of the fact that they were originally meant with entire seriousness—that not merely did ancient man believe in them, but was forced to believe in them, because the mind must have an explanation of things that happen, and an individual intelligence was the only explanation available. The story of the hero who slays the devouring dragon was not merely a symbol of day and night, of summer and winter; it was a literal explanation of the phenomena, it was the science of early times." - Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

"One should not let one’s mind to be overcome by melancholy. Melancholy or moroseness is a very bad thing. It kills (destroys) a man just as an angered serpent kills a child." - Valmiki NULL

"You may be sure that we are as well aware as you of the difficulty of contending against your power and fortune, unless the terms be equal. But we trust that the gods may grant us fortune as good as yours, since we are just men fighting against unjust, and that what we want in power will be made up by the alliance of the Lacedaemonians, who are bound, if only for very shame, to come to the aid of their kindred. Our confidence, therefore, after all is not so utterly irrational." - Thucydides NULL

"A soldier's a man, o, man's life's but a span, why then, let a soldier drink. Othello, Act ii, Scene 3" - William Shakespeare

"And simple truth miscalled simplicity, and captive good attending captain ill." - William Shakespeare

"Censure me in your wisdom, and awake your senses, that you may the better judge. Julius Caesar, Act iii, Scene 2" - William Shakespeare

"In modern eyes, precious though wars may be they must not be waged solely for the sake of the ideal harvest. Only when forced upon one, is a war now thought permissible. It was not thus in ancient times. The earlier men were hunting men, and to hunt a neighboring tribe, kill the males, loot the village and possess the females, was the most profitable, as well as the most exciting, way of living. Thus were the more martial tribes selected, and in chiefs and peoples a pure pugnacity and love of glory came to mingle with the more fundamental appetite for plunder. Modern war is so expensive that we feel trade to be a better avenue to plunder; but modern man inherits all the innate pugnacity and all the love of glory of his ancestors. Showing war's irrationality and horror is of no effect on him. The horrors make the fascination. War is the strong life; it is life in extremis; war taxes are the only ones men never hesitate to pay, as the budgets of all nations show us." - William James

"The art of putting well into play mediocre qualities often begets more reputation than true merit achieves." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt

"The art of using moderate abilities to advantage wins praise, and often acquires more reputation than actual brilliancy." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt