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

I can understand companionship. I can understand bought sex in the afternoon, but I cannot understand the love affair.

Care | Life | Life | People | Public | World |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Literature in the written sense represents the triumph of language over writing: the subversion of writing for purposes that have little or nothing to do with social and economic control.

Death | Equanimity | Eternal | Evil | Fear | Grace | Life | Life | Men | Reward | Will |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

My family helped start [this country], we've been in political life ... since the 1690s, and I have a very possessive sense about this country.

Heart | Kill | Love | Past | Reading | Time |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Religions are manipulated in order to serve those who govern society and not the other way around.

Human race | Race |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

Wherever capitalism appears, in pursuit of its mission of exploitation, there will Socialism, fertilized by misery, watered by tears, and vitalized by agitation be also found, unfurling its class-struggle banner and proclaiming its mission of emancipation.

Change | Heart | Joy | Looks | People | Rest | Time |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

If the people would but analyze the human equation of a prison they might better account for the crimes that are visited upon them in cities, towns, and hamlets, oft times by men who graduated with an education and equipment for just that sort of retributive service from some penal institution.

Self-interest | Slavery | Work |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

It is not enough merely to win; others must lose.

Future | Hope | Television | Will |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

You think of the Republican Party as a party, like the British Conservative Party - well it isn't! I don't say that the British Conservative Party is much better, I'm only saying the Republican Party is a mindset. They love war! They love money! They're out to hang on through all the connections that they have, through their various operatives.

Contempt | People |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

Intellectual darkness is essential to industrial slavery.

Abundance | Death | Fault | Labor | People | Poverty | Struggle | System | Youth | Youth | Child | Fault | Old |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

If Henry Miller often sounded like a village idiot, it is because, like Whitman, he was the rest of the village as well.

People | Relationship |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

If you want to rise in politics in the United States, there is one subject you must stay away from, and that is politics.

People | Spirit |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

Am I my brother's keeper? [That frequently asked question] has never been answered in a way that is satisfactory to civilized society. Yes, I am my brother's keeper. I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by maudlin sentimentality, but by the higher duty I owe myself.

Prison | Society | Society |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Happily for the busy lunatics who rule over us, we are permanently the United States of Amnesia. We learn nothing because we remember nothing.

People |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

If itÂ’s a battle between the Gores and the Bushes, the Gores will win. We are much meaner and cleverer. And we have more popular support.

Rest |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

As a rule, large capitalists are Republicans and small capitalists are Democrats, but workingmen must remember that they are all capitalists, and that the many small ones, like the fewer large ones, are all politically supporting their class interests, and this is always and everywhere the capitalist class.

Good | Health | Rule | Will | Old |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

I would no more teach children military training than teach them arson, robbery, or assassination.

Body | Love | People | Friends |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

A current pejorative adjective is narcissistic. Generally, a narcissist is anyone better looking than you are, but lately the adjective is often applied to those “liberals” who prefer to improve the lives of others rather than exploit them. Apparently, a concern for others is self-love at its least attractive, while greed is now a sign of the highest altruism. But then to reverse, periodically, the meanings of words is a very small price to pay for our vast freedom not only to conform but to consume.

Life | Life | People | Wrong |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Of course his dust would be absorbed in other living things and to that degree at least he would exist again, though it was plain enough that the specific combination which was he would never exist again.

People |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they''re scraping the top of the barrel

People |