Great Throughts Treasury

"It would not be possible to praises nurses too highly."

"It's an honorable profession. Homer founded it. It's not bad company you're in when you make your living telling stories."

"I've walked every step of that trail. I've made wakes where Lewis made wakes, and I've sat around his campfires... You don't see power lines, you don't see bridges or ranches. You see what the explorers saw."

"Jefferson owned slaves. He did not believe that all were created equal. He was a racist."

"Jefferson could write, I tremble for my country when I reflect that God is just."

"I've always tried to be fair to my subjects. That's easy when they are as likable and admirable as Lewis and Clark, or Eisenhower."

"Johnson had been the most powerful man in the world, yet the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong had resisted, overcome his power, broken his will."

"Lieutenant Welsh remembered walking around among the sleeping men, and thinking to himself that 'they had looked at and smelled death all around them all day but never even dreamed of applying the term to themselves. They hadn't come here to fear. They hadn't come to die. They had come to win."

"Like their predecessors, the Presidents of today just throw up their hands."

"Lieutenant Edward S. Godfrey, who was present at the meeting and who later became the authority on the battle of the Little Bighorn, recorded the aftermath. This ?talk? of his [Custer?s] was considered at the time as something extraordinary for General Custer, for it was not his habit to unbosom himself to his officers. In it he showed concessions and a reliance on others; there was an indefinable something that was not Custer. His manner and tone, usually brusque and aggressive, or somewhat curt, was on this occasion conciliating and subdued. There was something akin to an appeal, as if depressed, that made a deep impression on all present. ? Lieutenant Wallace and myself walked to our bivouac, for some distance in silence, when Wallace remarked: ?Godfrey, I believe General Custer is going to be killed.? ?Why?? I replied, ?what makes you think so?? ?Because,? said he, ?I have never heard Custer talk in that way before."

"Like Crazy Horse, Custer lived his life to the full; again like Crazy Horse, he was so involved with living that he did not have time to fear death."

"My favorite book is the last one printed, which is always better than those that were published earlier."

"Nearly every artifact has a story connected to it, whether it be a hole in a helmet or a belt that a medic carried around with him as he treated the wounded on the beach."

"My first book was the book that changed my life."

"May works be the test of patriotism as they ought, of right, to be of religion."

"Nixon regarded himself as having been cheated by life. He never got my vote."

"No matter how bad things got, no matter how anxious the staff became, the commander had to preserve optimism in himself and in his command. Without confidence, enthusiasm and optimism in the command, victory is scarcely obtainable. Eisenhower realized that optimism and pessimism are infectious and they spread more rapidly from the head downward than in any other direction. He learned that a commander?s optimism has a most extraordinary effect upon all with whom he comes in contact. With this clear realization, I firmly determined that my mannerisms and speech in public would always reflect the cheerful certainty of victory?that any pessimism and discouragement I might ever feel would be reserved for my pillow."

"Neighbors are far better acoustic analyzers for determining the quality of their life versus any acoustic instrument left unattended by an expert."

"Neither Johnson nor his party nor the government as a whole were willing to raise, train, equip, and then send Vietnam sufficient manpower to do the job."

"Of courage undaunted, possessing a firmness and perseverance of purpose which nothing but impossibilities could divert from its direction, careful as a father of those committed to his charge, yet steady in the maintenance of order and discipline, intimate with the Indian character, customs, and principles; habituated to the hunting life, guarded by exact observation of the vegetables and animals of his own country against losing time in the description of objects already possessed; honest, disinterested, liberal, of sound understanding, and a fidelity to truth so scrupulous that whatever he should report would be as certain as if seen by ourselves ? with all these qualifications as if selected and implanted by nature in one body for this express purpose, I could have no hesitation in confiding the enterprise to him. To fill up the measure desired, he wanted nothing but a greater familiarity with the technical language of the natural sciences, and readiness in the astronomical observations necessary for the geography of his route. To acquire these he repaired immediately to Philadelphia, and placed himself under the tutorage of the distinguished professors of that place."

"Nothing is inevitable in life. People make choices, and those choices have results, and we all live with the results."

"No, I realize that you didn?t think of it! But I did."

"No wrong will ever be done you by our nation."

"Nor did the Americans find it necessary to wage a ruthless campaign. As has been mentioned previously, both sides respected"

"Older British observers complained, The trouble with you Yanks is that you are overpaid, oversexed, and over here. (To which the Yanks would reply, The trouble with you Limeys is that you are underpaid, undersexed, and under Eisenhower.)"

"Now what I soon learned was, the reason for that [being the foremost authority] was that nobody else cared about Charles A. Billinghurst. But I can make 'em care if I tell the story right."

"One observer estimated that in 1901 Texas alone had eight hundred million prairie dogs.4 Jack rabbits were nearly as numerous. Antelope and deer numbered in the millions, as did the wolves and coyotes, and there were thousands of elk, bear, and other game."

"One of these traders brought in some newspapers and translated them for the Oglalas, reading aloud a report that called the Oglalas bloodthirsty savages and murdering hounds of hell. The word hell confused Crazy Horse. What was hell? The trader tried to explain but only confused Crazy Horse more- how could a great power do a bad thing like sending souls to hell?"

"Pvt. Robert Fruling said he spent two and a half days at Pointe-du-Hoc, all of it crawling on his stomach. He returned on the twenty-fifth anniversary of D-Day to see what the place looked like standing up (Louis Lisko interview, EC)."

"The Canadians have managed to live peacefully with their Indians. It is disgrace that the United States has not done the same."

"Sergeant Mercier...dressed in a full German officer's uniform, topped off with a monocle for his right eye. Someone got the bright idea to march him over to the company orderly room and turn him in at rifle point to Captain Speirs. Someone got word to Speirs before Mercier showed up. When troopers brought Mercier up to Speirs's desk, prodding him with bayonets, Speirs did not look up. One of the troopers snapped a salute and declared, Sir, we have captured this German officer. What should we do with him? Take him out and shoot him, Speirs replied, not looking up. Sir, Mercier called out, sir, please, sir, it's me, Sergeant Mercier. Mercier, get out of that silly uniform, Speirs ordered. (In Austria after VE Day)"

"The copied words they discovered amounted to about 10 pages out of a total work of some 15,000 pages in print... The investigative reporters found them by using my footnotes."

"Reading your own material aloud forces you to listen."

"The American Constitution is the greatest governing document, and at some 7,000 words, just about the shortest."

"The Enlightenment taught that observation unrecorded was knowledge lost."

"Shaef had prepared for everything except the weather. It now became an obsession. It was the one thing for which no one could plan, and the one thing that no one could control. In the end, the most completely planned military operation in history was dependent on the caprice of winds and waves. Tides and moon conditions were predictable, but storms were not. From the beginning, everyone had counted on at least acceptable weather for D-Day."

"The German today is like the June Bride. He knows he is going to get it, but he doesn't know how big it is going to be."

"The first man stepped up to the open door. All the men had been ordered to look out at the horizon, not straight down, for obvious psychological reasons."

"The great wars of the 20th Century made it into the worst Century ever."

"The irony here is the man who has done the most to keep these papers from becoming available, Dick Nixon, is the man who's going to benefit the most from them because people are going to start seeing the problems from his point of view."

"The more sophisticated we get, the more advanced our buildings and vehicles become, the more vulnerable we are."

"The Holocaust was the most evil crime ever committed."

"The number one secret of being a successful writer is this: marry an English major."

"The myths emphasized the relatedness of life, for in them plants and animals talked and exhibited other human characteristics. The myths taught young Curly that everything had its place and function and that all things and animals were important The stories also gave him a feeling of balance; one, for example, told how the animals got together one day and decided to get back at mankind for killing and eating them. Each animal decided on a different disease he would give to man in retribution. Upon hearing of this, the plants got together and each one decided to provide a remedy for a specific disease. The telling of this myth might lead to the handing down of ancient wisdom about the medicinal properties of various leaves, bark, roots, and herbs."

"There are many rules of good writing, but the best way to find them is to be a good reader."

"The war in Vietnam I thought a dreadful mistake."

"There was no room on this new road for Crazy Horse, the greatest warrior of them all. Perhaps Touch-the-Clouds had this in mind as he looked down on those courageous, confused people. It?s well, he said quietly, reassuringly. He has looked for death and it has come. The Oglalas filed away, silently, into the night."

"The past is a source of knowledge, and the future is a source of hope. Love of the past implies faith in the future."

"There are many more want-to-be writers out there than good editors."

"They hid, Bos came over the hill, looked puzzled, and Custer let loose with a bullet that whizzed over his brother?s head. Bos turned"