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

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 |

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

The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so.

Attention | Mind | Writing |

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 |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country — and we haven't seen them since.

Mind |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

The capitalist class is represented by the Republican, Democratic, Populist and Prohibition parties, all of which stand for private ownership of the means of production, and the triumph of any one of which will mean continued wage-slavery to the working class.

People | Trouble |

Eugene McCarthy, fully Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy

Let us pick up again these lost strands and weave them again into the fabric of America, sort out the music from the sounds and again respond to the trumpet and the steady drum.

People |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

I believe there's something very salutary in, say, beating up a gay-bashing policeman. Preferably one fights through the courts, through the laws, through education, but if at a neighborhood level violence is necessary, I'm all for violence. It's the only thing Americans understand.

Heart | People |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

The great unmentionable evil at the center of our culture is monotheism. From a barbaric Bronze Age text known as the Old Testament, three anti-human religions have evolved — Judaism, Christianity, Islam. These are sky-god religions. They are, literally, patriarchal — God is the Omnipotent Father — hence the loathing of women for 2,000 years in those countries afflicted by the sky-god and his earthly male delegates. The sky-god is a jealous god, of course. He requires total obedience from everyone on earth, as he is in place not for just one tribe but for all creation. Those who would reject him must be converted or killed for their own good. Ultimately, totalitarianism is the only sort of politics that can truly serve the sky-god's purpose.

Genius | Majority | Nothing | People | System |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

There is only one party in the United States, the Property Party...and it has two right wings: Republican and Democrat. Republicans are a bit stupider, more rigid, more doctrinaire in their laissez-faire capitalism than the Democrats, who are cuter, prettier, a bit more corrupt—until recently... and more willing than the Republicans to make small adjustments when the poor, the black, the anti-imperialists get out of hand. But, essentially, there is no difference between the two parties.

People |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

A man should take to himself no discomfort from an opinion expressed or implied by his adversary, but it is difficult, and oftentimes humiliating to attempt to justify the kindness of one's friends.

Age | Disguise | People |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

If war is right let it be declared by the people. You who have your lives to lose, you certainly above all others have the right to decide the momentous issue of war or peace.

Better | Education | Men | People | Prison | Service |

Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

The people can have anything they want, the only problem is they do not want anything.

Freedom | People |

Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

Every time a friend succeeds, I die a little.

Despair | Individual | Land | Man | People | Sense | Will | Woman |