Great Throughts Treasury

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

Related Quotes

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

There is not one human problem that could not be solved if people would simply do as I advise.

Eugene McCarthy, fully Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy

The Senate is the last primitive society in the world. We still worship the elders of the tribe and honor the territorial imperative.

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

I came from a guiltless world as far as sex went — the world I grew up in was Southern, Washington and political. Everyone in my world did absolutely everything. I am speaking now of the Thirties. No one I knew denied himself anything. Of course, there was a great deal of care about appearances. People in public life had to be careful.

Eugene McCarthy, fully Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy

Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it, misdiagnosing it, and then misapplying the wrong remedies.

Time |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

We are the United States of amnesia, we learn nothing because we remember nothing.

Time |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

We should stop going around babbling about how we're the greatest democracy on earth, when we're not even a democracy. We are a sort of militarized republic. The founding fathers hated two things, one was monarchy and the other was democracy, they gave us a constitution that saw to it we will have neither. I don't know how wise they were.

Important | Life | Life | Object | World |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

I have always found men quite fathomable. They look entirely to their own interest.

Imagination | Important | Novels | Think |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

We have ceased to be a nation under law but instead a homeland where the withered Bill of Rights, like a dead trumpet vine, clings to our pseudo-Roman columns.

Battle | Criticism | Day | Life | Life | Literature | Nothing | Order | Present | Will |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

World events are the work of individuals whose motives are often frivolous, even casual.

Desire |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

The elimination of rent, interest, profit and the production of wealth to satisfy the wants of all the people. That is the demand.

Equality | Philosophy | Principles | Race |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

There is no such thing as a true account of anything.

People |

Euripedes NULL

Human misery must somewhere have a stop; there is no wind that always blows a storm; great good fortune comes to failure in the end. All is change; all yields its place and goes; to persevere, trusting in what hopes he has, is courage in a man. The coward despairs.

Man | Struggle | Will |

Eustace Budgell

But what has been often urged as a consideration of much more weight, is not only the opinion of the better sort, but the general consent of mankind to this great truth; which I think could not possibly have come to pass, but from one of the three following reasons: either that the idea of a God is innate and co-existent with the mind itself; or that this truth is so very obvious that it is discovered by the first exertion of reason in persons of the most ordinary capacities; or, lastly, that it has been delivered down to us through all ages by a tradition from the first man. The Atheists are equally confounded, to whichever of these three causes we assign it.

Better | Desire | Good | Impression | Order | Time | Will | Words |

Euripedes NULL

Along with success comes a reputation for wisdom.

Children | Love | People | Virtue | Virtue |

Euripedes NULL

It is behind the evil sought would only cast evil.

Better | Good |

Eugenio Montale

In reality art is always for everyone and for no one.

Beginning | Desire | Life | Life | Meaning | Myth | Question |

Eustace Budgell

Lastly, if you propose to yourself the true end of argument, which is information, it may be a seasonable check to your passion; for if you search purely after truth, it will be almost indifferent to you where you find it. I cannot in this place omit an observation which I have often made, namely, That nothing procures a man more esteem and less envy from the whole company, than if he chooses the part of moderator, without engaging directly on either side in a dispute.

Desire |

Eustace Budgell

There is something so gross in the carriage of some wives that they lose their husbandsÂ’ hearts for faults which, if a man has either good-nature or good-breeding, he knows not how to tell them of. I am afraid, indeed, the ladies are generally most faulty in this particular; who at their first giving into love find the way so smooth and pleasant that they fancy it is scarce possible to be tired in it. There is so much nicety and discretion required to keep love alive after marriage, and make conversation still new and agreeable after twenty or thirty years, that I know nothing which seems readily to promote it but an earnest endeavor to please on both sides, and superior good sense on the part of the man.

Change | Desire | Despair | Esteem | Mind | Friendship | Value |

Euripedes NULL

It is a good thing to be rich, it is a good thing to be strong, but it is a better thing to be beloved of many friends.

Better | Good |

Euripedes NULL

Forgive, son; men are men; they needs must err.

Desire |