Great Throughts Treasury

"People in a hurry cannot think, cannot grow, nor can they decay. They are preserved in a state of perpetual puerility."

"Scratch an intellectual and you find a would-be aristocrat who loathes the sight, the sound and the smell of common folk."

"The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do."

"Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many."

"The central task of education is to implant a will and facility for learning; It should produce not learned but learning people. The truly human society, where grandparents, parents, and children are students together. In a time of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists."

"The compulsion to take ourselves seriously is in inverse proportion to our creative capacity. When the creative flow dries up, all we have left is our importance."

"Successful action tends to become an end in itself."

"The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of final loneliness."

"The inability to know what is happening in the present is an aspect of a wider phenomenon: we know very little about ourselves - what we look like, how we sound, what is really going on inside us. We need insights about things that we have to divine them, and we are most credulous about them."

"The end comes when we no longer talk with ourselves. It is the end of genuine thinking and the beginning of the final loneliness. The remarkable thing is that the cessation of the inner dialogue marks also the end of our concern with the world around us. It is as if we note the world and think about it only when we have to report to ourselves."

"The only way to predict the future is to have power to shape the future. Those in possession of absolute power can not only prophesy and make their prophecies come true, but they can also lie and make their lies come true."

"The link between ideas and action is rarely direct. There is almost always an intermediate step in which the idea is overcome. De Tocqueville points out that it is at times when passions start to govern human affairs that ideas are most obviously translated into political action. The translation of ideas into action is usually in the hands of people least likely to follow rational motives. Hence, it is that action is often the nemesis of ideas, and sometimes of the men who formulate them. One of the marks of the truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of action - the ability to pass directly from thought to action."

"The pleasure we derive from doing favors is partly in the feeling it gives us that we are not altogether worthless."

"The Paleolithic hunters who painted the unsurpassed animal murals on the ceiling of the cave at Altamira had only rudimentary tools. Art is older than production for use, and play older than work. Man was shaped less by what he had to do than by what he did in playful moments. It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities."

"The poor on the border line of starvation live purposeful lives. To be engaged in a desperate struggle for food and shelter is to be wholly free from a sense of futility."

"There can be no real freedom without the freedom to fail."

"The source of man's creativeness is in his deficiencies; he creates to compensate himself for what he lacks. He became Homo faber - a maker of weapons and tools - to compensate for his lack of specialized organs. He became Homo ludens - a player, tinker, and artist - to compensate for his lack of inborn skills. He became a speaking animal to compensate for his lack of the telepathic faculty by which animals communicate with each other. He became a thinker to compensate for the ineffectualness of his instincts."

"The well-adjusted make poor prophets."

"There is radicalism in all getting, and conservatism in all keeping. Lovemaking is radical, while marriage is conservative."

"To grow old is to grow common. Old age equalizes - we are aware that what is happening to us has happened to untold numbers from the beginning of time. When we are young we act as if we were the first young people in the world."

"They who lack talent expect things to happen without effort. They ascribe failure to a lack of inspiration or ability, or to misfortune, rather than to insufficient application. At the core of every true talent there is an awareness of the difficulties inherent in any achievement, and the confidence that by persistence and patience something worthwhile will be realized. Thus talent is a species of vigor."

"To have a grievance is to have a purpose in life. A grievance can almost serve as a substitute for hope; and it not infrequently happens that those who hunger for hope give their allegiance to him who offers them a grievance."

"We are least open to precise knowledge concerning the things we are most vehement about."

"To some, freedom means the opportunity to do what they want to do; to most it means not to do what they do not want to do. It is perhaps true that those who can grow will feel free under any condition."

"To wrong those we hate is to add fuel to our hatred. Conversely, to treat an enemy with magnanimity is to blunt our hatred for him."

"We are told that talent creates its own opportunities. But it sometimes seems that intense desire creates not only its own opportunities, but is own talents."

"We find it hard to apply the knowledge of ourselves to our judgment of others. The fact that we are never of one kind, that we never love without reservations and never hate with all our being cannot prevent us from seeing others as wholly black or white."

"A feeling of utter worthlessness levels a man's attitude toward his fellow beings. He views the whole of humanity as being of one kind. He will despise equally those who love him and those who hate him, those who are noble and those who are mean, those who are compassionate and those who are cruel. It is as if the feeling of worthlessness cuts one off from the rest of mankind. One sees humanity as a foreign species."

"We do not usually look for allies when we love. Indeed, we often look on those who love with us as rivals and trespassers. But we always look for allies when we hate."

"You can discover what your enemy fears most by observing the means he uses to frighten you."

"We used to think that revolutions are the cause of change. Actually it is the other way around: change prepares the ground for revolution."

"What are we when we are alone? Some, when they are alone, cease to exist."

"You can do what you want to do, accomplish what you want to accomplish, attain any reasonable objective you may have in mind - not all of a sudden, but you can do it gradually, day by day and play by play, if you want to do it, if you work to do it, over a sufficiently long period of time."

"A sensitive conscience is often a by-product of a decline of vigor."

"All social disturbances and upheavals have their roots in crises of individual self-esteem, and the great endeavor in which the masses most readily unite is basically a search for pride."

"Action is basically a reaction against loss of balance – a flailing of the arms to regain one’s balance. To dispose a soul to action we must upset its equilibrium."

"Discontent is at the root of the creative process… the most gifted members of the human species are at their creative best when they cannot have their way, and must compensate for what they miss by realizing and cultivating their capacities and talents."

"Estrangement from the self… is a precondition for both plasticity and conversion."

"In times of drastic change, it is the learners who inherit the future. The learned usually find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists."

"Good judgment in our dealings with others consists not in seeing through deceptions and evil intentions but in being able to waken the decency dormant in every person."

"Mass movements do not usually rise until the prevailing order has been discredited."

"In the alchemy of man’s soul almost all noble attributes - courage, honor, love, hope, faith, duty, loyalty, and so on - can be transmuted into ruthlessness. Compassion alone stands apart from the continuous traffic between good and evil proceeding within us. Compassion is the antitoxin of the soul: where there is compassion, even the most poisonous impulses remain relatively harmless."

"His momentous achievements are rarely the result of a clean forward thrust but rather of a soul intensity generated in front of an apparently insurmountable obstacle which bars his way to a cherished goal."

"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them."

"Nationalism, Socialism, Communism, Fascism, militarism, cartelization and unionization, propaganda and advertising are all aspects of a general relentless drive to manipulate men and neutralize the unpredictability of human nature."

"Our sense of power is more vivid when we break a man’s spirit than when we win his heart. For we can win a man’s heart one day and lose it the next. But when we break a proud spirit, we achieve something that is final and absolute."

"Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength."

"Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves."

"Resistance, whether to one’s appetites or to the ways of the world, is a chief factor in the shaping of character."

"The differences between the conservative and the radical seem to spring mainly from their attitude toward the future. Fear of the future causes us to lean against and cling to the present, while faith in the future renders us receptive to change."