Great Throughts Treasury

"I own it to be my opinion, that good will arise from the destruction of our credit. I see nothing else which can restrain our disposition to luxury, and to the change of those manners which alone can preserve republican government. As it is impossible to prevent credit, the best way would be to cure its ill effects by giving an instantaneous recovery to the creditor. This would be reducing purchases on credit to purchases for ready money. A man would then see a prison painted on everything he wished, but had not ready money to pay for." - Thomas Jefferson

"If all be true that I do think, there are five reasons we should drink. Good friends, good times, or being dry, or lest we should be by and by, or any other reason why" - Thomas Jefferson

"It is as useless to argue with those who have renounced the use and authority of reason as to administer medication to the dead." - Thomas Jefferson

"The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." - Thomas Jefferson

"The Creator has not thought proper to mark those in the forehead who are of stuff to make good generals. We are first, therefore, to seek them blindfold, and then let them learn the trade at the expense of great losses." - Thomas Jefferson

"The people, being the only safe depository of power, should exercise in person every function which their qualifications enable them to exercise consistently with the order and security of society. We now find them equal to the election of those who shall be invested with their executive and legislative powers, and to act themselves in the judiciary as judges in questions of fact. The range of their powers ought to be enlarged." - Thomas Jefferson

"The people, especially when moderately instructed, are the only safe, because the only honest, depositaries of the public rights, and should therefore be introduced into the administration of them in every function to which they are sufficient; they will err sometimes and accidentally, but never designedly, and with a systematic and persevering purpose of overthrowing the free principles of the government." - Thomas Jefferson

"The way to prevent irregular interpositions of the people is to give them full information of their affairs through the channel of the public papers, and to contrive that those papers should penetrate the whole mass of the people. The basis of our governments being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right; and were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter." - Thomas Jefferson

"We confide in our strength, without boasting of it, we respect that of others, without fearing it." - Thomas Jefferson

"We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honour." - Thomas Jefferson

"When angry count to ten before you speak. If very angry, count to one hundred." - Thomas Jefferson

"What a revelation it was, to discover so many ordinary people in a place together, more conscious of God than of one another: not there to show off their hats or their clothes, but to pray, or at least to fulfill a religious obligation, not a human one. For even those who might have been there for no better motive than that they were obliged to be, were at least free from any of the self-conscious and human constraint which is never absent from a Protestant church where people are definitely gathered together as people, as neighbors, and always have at least half an eye for one another, if not all of both eyes." - Thomas Merton

"I should not really object to dying were it not followed by death." - Thomas Nagel

"Love-Contradictions - As rare to heare as seldome to be seene, It cannot be nor never yet hathe bene That fire should burne with perfecte heate and flame Without some matter for to yealde the same. A straunger case yet true by profe I knowe A man in joy that livethe still in woe: A harder happ who hathe his love at lyste Yet lives in love as he all love had miste: Whoe hathe enougehe, yet thinkes he lives wthout, Lackinge no love yet still he standes in doubte. What discontente to live in suche desyre, To have his will yet ever to requyre." - Edward Dyer, fully Sir Edward Dyer

"It is usually true that the man who is unintelligible is not unintelligible because he is ‘deep,’ but because he does not himself understand what he is talking about." - William Barclay

"Can a woman's tender care cease towards the child she bare? Yes, she may forgetful be, yet will I remember thee." - William Cowper

"Such dupes are men to custom, and so prone to rev'rence what is ancient, and can plead a course of long observance for its use, that even servitude, the worst of ills, because deliver'd down from sire to son, is kept and guarded as a sacred thing!" - William Cowper

"When the British warrior queen, bleeding from the Roman rods, sought, with an indignant mien, counsel of her country's gods." - William Cowper

"Yes, and because we grow old we become more and more the stuff our forbears put into us. I can feel his savagery strengthen in me. We think we are so individual and so misunderstood when we are young; but the nature our strain of blood carries is inside there, waiting, like our skeleton." - Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather

"Give to the masses nothing to do, and they will topple down thrones and cut throats; give them the government here, and they will make pulpits useless, and colleges an impertinence." - Wendell Phillips

"And then there is the thrill of creatively sowing ideas and inspiration into the minds of others. Often our contributions will actually change lives by sharing appreciation, courage, love, and joy. Carry the ideal of being a creative sower, that you are on the side of growth, plenty, peace, and progress. Make it a point to scatter creative seeds every day of your life!" - Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson

"What's good about March Well, for one thing, it keeps February and April apart." - Walt Kelley, fully Walter Crawford "Walt" Kelly, Jr.

"In the confusion we stay with each other, happy to be together, speaking without uttering a single word." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"Is this then a touch? quivering me to a new identity, flames and ether making a rush for my veins, treacherous tip of me reaching and crowding to help them, my flesh and blood playing out lightning to strike what is hardly different from myself, on all sides prurient provokers stiffening my limbs." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"The shrubs and trees, (as I lift my eyes they seem to be stealthily watching me.) While wind in procession thoughts, O tender and wondrous thoughts, of life and death, of home and the past and loved, and of those that are far away." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"What do you think has become of the young and old men? And what do you think has become of the women and children? They are alive and well somewhere, the smallest sprout shows there is really no death, and if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it, and ceas'd the moment life appear'd. All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses, and to die is different from what any one supposed, and luckier." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"It is the very essence of despotism that it can never afford to fail. This is what distinguishes it most vitally from democracy. In a despotism there is no organized opposition which can take over the power when the Administration in office has failed. All the eggs are in one basket. Everything is staked on one coterie of men. When the going is good, they move more quickly and efficiently than democracies, where the opposition has to be persuaded and conciliated. But when they lose, there are no reserves. There are no substitutes on the bench ready to go out on the field and carry the ball. That is why democracies with the habit of party government have outlived all other forms of government in the modern world. They have, as it were, at least two governments always at hand, and when one fails they have the other. They have diversified the risks of mortality, corruption, and stupidity which pervade all human affairs. They have remembered that the most beautifully impressive machine cannot run for very long unless there is available a complete supply of spare parts." - Walter Lippmann

"We'd go down and play the best team. It would be fun for me and Bill to play the champions. And it might spur them on some." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha

"We've used derivatives for many, many years. I don't think derivatives are evil, per se, I think they are dangerous. ...So we use lots of things daily that are dangerous, but we generally pay some attention to how they're used. We tell the cars how fast they can go." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha

"Enlightenment demands that you take responsibility for your way of life." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

"Although we read with our minds, the seat of artistic delight is between the shoulder blades. That little shiver behind is quite certainly the highest form of emotion that humanity has attained when evolving pure art and pure science. Let us worship the spine and its tingle." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"What moment in that gradual decay does resurrection choose? What year? Who has the stopwatch? Who rewinds the tape? Are some less lucky, or do all escape? A syllogism; other men die but I am not another: therefore I'll not die." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"The cleverness of the human mind has led us to the complex, horrifying, and all-encompassing crisis that we now face. The familiar solutions, based on a limited view of what a human being is, continue to fail, to be pathetically inadequate. Yet we pour vast resources into these tired solutions and feel that if we achieve a grand enough scale, the old solutions will meet the new challenges. Do we have the courage to see failures as failures and leave them to the past? Do we have the vitality to go beyond narrow, one-sided views of human life and to open ourselves to totality and wholeness? The call of the hour is to move beyond the fragmentary, to awaken to total revolution." - Vimala Thakar

"We have our responsibilities as readers and even our importance. The standards we raise and the judgments we pass steal in the air and become part of the atmosphere which writers breathe as they work. An influence is created which tells upon them even if it never finds its way into print." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"A young man wanted to know the difference between Heaven and Hell. The sage led him to two rooms with observation portals, one labeled Heaven and one Hell. Looking in at Hell he saw a banquet table filled with luscious food but the people at the table were emaciated and distressed. Their spoons had long handles to reach the food, but the handles were too long to bring the food to their mouths. Then he looked in on Heaven. Same table full of luscious food. Same long spoons. But the people were healthy and happy and using their long-handled spoons to feed one another." - Vicki Robin

"Children know perfectly well that unicorns aren’t real, but they also know that books about unicorns, if they are good books, are true books." - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

"What we call a personality is nothing more or less than an amazingly interwoven fabric of impermanent events" - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

"Anger is the enemy which takes one’s life. Anger is enemy with the face of a friend. Anger is like a very sharp sword. Anger destroys everything." - Valmiki NULL

"When you cannot trace God’s hand you can trust his heart." - Vance Havner

"Constancy to truth and principle may sometimes lead to what the world calls inconstancy in conduct." - Tryon Edwards

"Call your husband cuckold in jest, an he'll never suspect you." - Turkish Proverbs

"The first rule of holes is when you’re in one, stop digging. When you’re in three, bring a lot of shovels." - Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman

"And the true and healthy Americanism is to be found, let us believe, in this attitude of hope; an attitude not necessarily connected with culture nor with the absence of culture, but with the consciousness of a new impulse given to all human progress. The most ignorant man may feel the full strength and heartiness of the American idea, and so may the most accomplished scholar. It is a matter of regret if thus far we have mainly had to look for our Americanism and our scholarship in very different quarters, and if it has been a rare delight to find the two in one." - Thomas Wentworth Higginson

"There are blessed intervals when I forget by one means or another that I am President of the United States." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

"I've never forgotten for long at a time that living is struggle. I know that every good and excellent thing in the world stands moment by moment on the razor-edge of danger and must be fought for - whether it's a field, or a home, or a country." - Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder

"Whenever you get near the human race, there's layers and layers of nonsense." - Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder

"Be convinced that to be happy means to be free and that to be free means to be brave. Therefore do not take lightly the perils of war." - Thucydides NULL

"It's been a positive thing for us. I think it's excellent." - Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins

"There is nothing that makes us love a man so much as praying for him." - William Law

"When you blame others, you give up your power to change." - Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams