Great Throughts Treasury

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

Mary Ritter Beard

American Historian and Archivist, Wife of Charles A. Beard, Writer on Women's Sufferage Movement

"Action without study is fatal. Study without action is futile."

"Viewed narrowly, all life is universal hunger and the expression of energy associated with it."

"The dogma of woman's complete historical subjection to men must be rated as one of the most fantastic myths ever created by the human mind."

"The volumes which record the history of the human race are filled with the deeds and the words of great men... The Twentieth Century Woman ... questions the completeness of the story."

"In their quest for rights they have naturally placed emphasis on their wrongs rather than their achievements and possessions, and have retold history as a story of their long martyrdom."

"While it is generally agreed that the visible expressions and agencies are necessary instruments, civilization seems to depend far more fundamentally upon the moral and intellectual qualities of human beings -- upon the spirit that animates mankind."

"Certainly, travel is more than the seeing of sights; it is a change that goes on, deep and permanent, in the ideas of living."

"It is grievous to read the papers in most respects, I agree. More and more I skim the headlines only, for one can be sure what is carried beneath them quite automatically, if one has long been a reader of the press journalism."

"It's only very recently that women have succeeded in entering those professions which, as Muses, they typified for the Greeks."

"The results of philanthropy are always beyond calculation."

"One must learn, if one is to see the beauty in Japan, to like an extraordinarily restrained and delicate loveliness."

"Wherever we go, across the Pacific or Atlantic, we meet, not similarity so much as 'the bizarre'. Things astonish us, when we travel, that surprise nobody else."

"Those who sit at the feast will continue to enjoy themselves even though the veil that separates them from the world of toiling reality below has been lifted by mass revolts and critics."

"Unless one's philosophy is all-inclusive, nothing can be understood."

"Woman's success in lifting men out of their way of life nearly resembling that of the beasts -- who merely hunted and fished for food, who found shelter where they could in jungles, in trees, and caves -- was a civilizing triumph."