Great Throughts Treasury

"Everyone is a prisoner of his own experiences. No one can eliminate prejudices - just recognize them."

"I was greatly influenced by one of my teachers. She had a zeal not so much for perfection as for steady betterment - she demanded not excellence so much as integrity."

"We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes which were, for the moment, unpopular"

"Anyone who isn't confused really doesn't understand the situation. "

"Just once in a while let us exalt the importance of ideas and information."

"Difficulty is the excuse history never accepts. "

"No one can terrorize a whole nation, unless we are all his accomplices. "

"Fame is morally neutral. "

"The obscure we see eventually. The completely obvious, it seems, takes longer. "

"The speed of communications is wondrous to behold. It is also true that speed can multiply the distribution of information that we know to be untrue. "

"We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home. "

"Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions. "

"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it. "

"A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves."

"We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. We must remember always that accusation is not proof and that conviction depends upon evidence and due process of law. We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our doctrine, and remember that we are not descended from fearful men – not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend causes that were, for the moment, unpopular."

"Just because your voice reaches halfway around the world doesn't mean you are wiser than when it reached only to the end of the bar."

"We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late. "

"A great many people think they are thinking when they are really rearranging their prejudices."