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

Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare

A statesman should follow public opinion as a coachman follows his horses; having firm hold on the reins, and guiding them.

Opinion | Public | Wisdom |

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

To be loved for what one is, is the greatest exception. The great majority love in others only what they lend him, their own selves, their version of him.

Love | Majority | Wisdom |

Robert Hutchins, fully Robert Maynard Hutchins

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.

Apathy | Death | Democracy | Indifference | Will | Wisdom |

Abbie Hoffman, fully Abbot Howard "Abbie" Hoffman

I grew up with the idea that democracy is not something you believe in, or a place you hang your hat, but it’s something you do. You participate. If you stop doing it, democracy crumbles and falls apart.

Democracy | Wisdom |

Aldous Leonard Huxley

The aging man of the middle twentieth century lives, not in the public world of atomic physics and conflicting ideologies, of welfare states and supersonic speed, but in his strictly private universe of physical weakness and mental decay.

Man | Public | Universe | Weakness | Wisdom | World |

Chester Himes, fully Chester Bomar Himes

Democracy is not tolerance. Democracy is a prescribed way of life erected on the premise that all men are created equal.

Democracy | Life | Life | Men | Wisdom |

Walter Judd, fully Walter Henry Judd

People often say that, in a democracy, decisions are made by a majority of the people. Of course, that is not true. Decisions are made by a majority of those who make themselves heard and who vote - a very different thing.

Democracy | Majority | People | Wisdom |

John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy

The basis of effective government is public confidence.

Confidence | Government | Public | Wisdom | Government |

Irving Robert Kaufman

The [Supreme] Court’s only armor is the cloak of public trust; its sole ammunition, the collective hopes of our society.

Public | Society | Trust | Wisdom |

Jeane Kirkpatrick

We are making the price of power much too high in this society. I worry that we are making the conditions of public life so tough that nobody except people really obsessed with power will be willing finally to pay that price. That would be tragic from the point of view of public well-being.

Life | Life | People | Power | Price | Public | Society | Will | Wisdom | Worry |

Nikolai Lenin, aka Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, born Vladimir llyich Ulyanov

Even if for every hundred correct things we did we committed ten thousand mistakes, our revolution would still be - and it will be in the judgment of history - great and invincible; for this is the first time that not a minority, not the rich alone, not the educated alone, but the real masses, the overwhelming majority of the working people are themselves building a new life and are by their own experience solving the most difficult problems of socialist organization.

Experience | History | Judgment | Life | Life | Majority | Organization | People | Problems | Revolution | Time | Will | Wisdom |

Abraham Lincoln

Plainly, the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks, and imitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible; the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy, or despotism in some form, is all that is left.

Anarchy | Majority | Necessity | People | Restraint | Rule | Wisdom |

Walter Lippmann

Politicians tend to live "in character," and many a public figure has come to imitate the journalism which describes him.

Character | Public | Wisdom |

Walter Lippmann

No amount of charters, direct primaries, or short ballots will make a democracy out of an illiterate people.

Democracy | People | Will | Wisdom |

Walter Lippmann

Successful democratic politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle, or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies. The decisive consideration is not whether the proposition is good but whether it is popular -- not whether it will work well and prove itself but whether the active talking constituents like it immediately. Politicians rationalize this servitude by saying that in a democracy public men are the servants of the people.

Consideration | Democracy | Good | Men | Public | Servitude | Talking | Will | Wisdom | Work |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

It doesn’t take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause.

Cause | Majority | Rebellion | Sound | Wisdom |

Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu

The principle of democracy is corrupted not only when the spirit of equality is extinct, but likewise when they fall into a spirit of extreme equality, and when each citizen would fain to be upon a level with those whom he has chosen to command him. Then the people, incapable of bearing the very power they have delegated, want to manage everything themselves, to debate for the senate, to execute for the magistrate, and to decide for the judges.

Democracy | Equality | Extreme | People | Power | Spirit | Wisdom |