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

My general response to boarding school was: anything to get away from that fucking mother of mine. She was a monster.

Contempt | Father |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

Socialism is very properly recognized by the capitalist class as the one cloud upon the horizon which portends an end to the system in which they have waxed fat, insolent and despotic through the exploitation of their countless wage-working slaves.

Right |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

It is notable how little empathy is cultivated or valued in our society. I put this down to our traditional racism and obsessive sectarianism. Even so, one would think that we would be encouraged to project ourselves into the character of someone of a different race or class, if only to be able to control him. But no effort is made.

Enough |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

Ten thousand times has the labor movement stumbled and fallen and bruised itself, and risen again; been seized by the throat and choked and clubbed into insensibility; enjoined by courts, assaulted by thugs, charged by the militia, shot down by regulars, traduced by the press, frowned upon by public opinion, deceived by politicians, threatened by priests, repudiated by renegades, preyed upon by grafters, infested by spies, deserted by cowards, betrayed by traitors, bled by leeches, and sold out by leaders, but notwithstanding all this, and all these, it is today the most vital and potential power this planet has ever known, and its historic mission of emancipating the workers of the world from the thraldom of the ages is as certain of ultimate realization as is the setting of the sun.

Better | Man | Order | Prison | System |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

As Brooks Adams put it, the sole problem of our ruling class is whether to coerce or to bribe the powerless majority.

Freedom | Greed | Price | Self-love | Words |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

They are distorted, deformed, hideous mentally and morally. Their trade is treason, their breath is pollution and yet the officials of the C.B.&Q. formed a conspiracy with these professional liars, perjurers, cut-throats and murderers to overcome a strike, the result of a policy of flagrant injustice.

Duty | Government | Talking | Time | War | Government |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

I've developed a total loathing for McCain, conceited little asshole. And he thinks he's wonderful. I mean, you can just tell, this little simper of self-love that he does all the time. You just want to kick him.

Enough |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

If you go to the city of Washington, you will find that almost all of those corporation lawyers and cowardly politicians, members of congress, and mis-representatives of the masses claim, in glowing terms, that they have risen from the ranks to places of eminence and distinction. I am very glad that I cannot make that claim for myself. I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from the ranks.

Right | War |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Southerners make good novelists: they have so many stories because they have so much family.

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

The greatest pleasure when I started making money was not buying cars or yachts but finding myself able to have as many freshly typed drafts as possible.

Age | Culture | Evil | Father | God | Loathing | Obedience | Politics | God | Old |

Eugenio Montale

Evidently the arts, all the visual arts, are becoming more democratic in the worst sense of the word.

Care | Man | Soul | Words |

Eugenio Montale

For my part, if I consider poetry as an object, I maintain that it is born of the necessity of adding a vocal sound (speech) to the hammering of the first tribal music.

Father |

Euripedes NULL

Of all the evils that infest a state, a tyrant is the greatest; his sole will commands the laws, and lords it over them.

Daughter | Evil | Father | God | Gold | Good | Heaven | Mind | Nature | Nothing | Order | Wife | Will | God |

Euripedes NULL

To die is a debt we must all of us discharge.

Father | Nothing | Old |

Evelyn Underhill

And so we take a holiday, a vacation, to gain release from this bondage for a space, to stand back from the rush of things and breathe again. But a holiday is a respite, not a cure. The more we need holidays, the more certain it is that the disease has conquered us and not we it. More and more holidays just to get away from it all is a sure sign of a decaying civilization; it was one of the most obvious marks of the breakdown of the Roman empire. It is a symptom that we haven't learned how to live so as to re-create ourselves in our work instead of being sapped by it. A car should always be charging its battery as it runs. If it simply uses up without putting back, it has to go into dock to be recharged. It is not a sign that we are running particularly well if we are constantly needing to go into dock.

Evil | Extreme | Love | Object | Time | Truth | Vision | World |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

Perhaps host and guest is really the happiest relation for father and son.

Sadness |

Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

Downstairs Peter Beste-Chetwynde mixed himself another brandy and soda and turned a page in Havelock Ellis, which, next to The Wind in the Willows, was his favourite book.

Church | Faith | Father | Hunger | People | Religion | Right | Words | Worth | Think |