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

Eugene Peterson

Forgiveness is the last word. I take no interest in eliminating the tension between justice and forgiveness by taking justice off the table.

Attention | Focus | People | Will | World | Wrong |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

In this country — the most favored beneath the bending skies — we have vast areas of the richest and most fertile soil, material resources in inexhaustible abundance, the most marvelous productive machinery on earth, and millions of eager workers ready to apply their labor to that machinery to produce in abundance for every man, woman, and child — and if there are still vast numbers of our people who are the victims of poverty and whose lives are an unceasing struggle all the way from youth to old age, until at last death comes to their rescue and lulls these hapless victims to dreamless sleep, it is not the fault of the Almighty: it cannot be charged to nature, but it is due entirely to the outgrown social system in which we live that ought to be abolished not only in the interest of the toiling masses but in the higher interest of all humanity…

Men | Nature | Prison | Progress |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Fifty percent of people won't vote, and fifty percent don't read newspapers. I hope it's the same fifty percent.

Wrong |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Since nothing is free, to each his price.

Life | Life | Wrong |

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

For certain people, after fifty, litigation takes the place of sex.

Good | Grave | Knowing | Memory | Wrong |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

A talent for drama is not a talent for writing, but is an ability to articulate human relationships.

Education | Nature |

Eugene McCarthy, fully Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy

Saying we should keep the two-party system simply because it is working is like saying the Titanic voyage was a success because a few people survived on life rafts.

Art | Wrong | Art |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

The theater needs continual reminders that there is nothing more debasing than the work of those who do well what is not worth doing at all.

Good | Human race | Nature | Race | Reason | Worth |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Until the rise of American advertising, it never occurred to anyone anywhere in the world that the teenager was a captive in a hostile world of adults.

Authority | Family | Nature | Politics |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

The united vote of those who toil and have not will vanquish those who have and toil not, and solve forever the problems of democracy.

Courage | Injustice | Injustice | Intelligence | Justice | Men | Power | Right | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Wrong |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Our form of democracy is bribery, on the highest scale.

Nature |

Euripedes NULL

What other creatures are bred so exquisitely and purposefully for mistreatment as women are?

Contradiction | Man | Mortal | Nature | World |

Eustace Budgell

We are generally so much pleased with any little accomplishments, either of body or mind, which have once made us remarkable in the world, that we endeavor to persuade ourselves it is not in the power of time to rob us of them. We are eternally pursuing the same methods which first procured us the applauses of mankind. It is from this notion that an author writes on, though he is come to dotage; without ever considering that his memory is impaired, and that he hath lost that life, and those spirits, which formerly raised his fancy and fired his imagination. The same folly hinders a man from submitting his behavior to his age, and makes Clodius, who was a celebrated dancer at five-and-twenty, still love to hobble in a minuet, though he is past threescore. It is this, in a word, which fills the town with elderly fops and superannuated coquettes.

Human nature | Life | Life | Man | Nature | Nothing | Will |