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

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

First stanza: Millions now living will never die. Second stanza: No more war.

Individual | People |

Gustave Flaubert

The more humanity advances, the more it is degraded.

Men |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

In the superman Nietzsche gave the world the conceivable and possible goal for all human effort. Remained there but still a problem and it was this: When the Superman Appears at last on earth, what then? Will there be another super superman to follow and another super-superman after that? In the end, man will become the equal of the creator of the universe, whoever or whatever He may be? Or will a period of decline after eating, with long return down the line, down through the superman to man again, and then on to the anthropoid ape, to the lower mammals, to the asexual cell, and, finally, to mere inert matter, gas, ether, and empty space?

Question | Talking |

Gustave Flaubert

The truth is that fullness of soul can sometimes overflow in utter vapidity of language, for none of us can ever express the exact measure of his needs or his thoughts or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked kettle on which we tap crude rhythms for bears to dance to, while we long to make music that will melt the stars.

Body |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

In war the heroes always outnumber the soldiers ten to one.

Television | Wrong |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

Criticism is prejudice made plausible.

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

Immorality: the morality of those who are having a better time.

Hate | Little | Think |

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The objection to Puritans is not that they try to make us think as they do, but that they try to make us do as they think.

Truth |

Haile Selassie

If a strong government finds that it can, with impunity, destroy a weak people, then the hour has struck for that weak people to appeal to the League of Nations to give its judgment in all freedom. God and history will remember your judgment.

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

Philosophy, as the modern world knows it, is only intellectual club-swinging.

Good |

Hannah Arendt

Loving life is easy when you are abroad. Where no one knows you and you hold your life in your hands all alone, you are more master of yourself than at any other time

H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is na‹ve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.

Hans Reichenbach

There is no pure visualization in the sense of a priori philosophies; every visualization is determined by previous sense perceptions, and any separation into perceptual space and space of visualization is not permissible, since the specifically visual elements of the imagination are derived from perceptual space. What led to the mistaken conception of pure visualization was rather an improper interpretation of the normative function... an essential element of all visual representations. Indeed, all arguments which have been introduced for the distinction of perceptual space and space of visualization are based on this normative component of the imagination.

Memory |

Italian Proverbs

The devil turns away from a closed door.

Italian Proverbs

She who is born a beauty is born betrothed.

Italian Proverbs

The best advice one can give to the hungry is bread.

Memory | Understand |

Italian Proverbs

No man is indispensable.

Computer | Wrong |

Italian Proverbs

The best way to get praise is to die.

Fun | Memory | Training |

Italian Proverbs

The eagle does not wage war against frogs.

Important |

Italian Proverbs

The danger past, the saint cheated.

Children | Memory |