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

Wilhelm Reich

Nature and culture, instinct and morality, sexuality and achievement become incompatible as a result of the split in the human structure. The unity and congruity of culture and nature, work and love, morality and sexuality, longed for from time immemorial, will remain a dream as long as man continues to condemn the biological demand for natural (orgastic) sexual gratification.

Democracy | Intention | Rule | Will | Work |

Wilhelm Reich

Work-democracy adds a decisive piece of knowledge to the scope of ideas related to freedom. The masses of people who work and bear the burden of social existence on their shoulders neither are conscious of their social responsibility nor are they capable of assuming the responsibility for their own freedom. This is the result of the century-long suppression of rational thinking, the natural functions of love, and scientific comprehension of the living. Everything related to the emotional plague in social life can be traced back to this incapacity and lack of consciousness. It is work-democracy’s contention that, by its very nature, politics is and has to be unscientific, i.e., that it is an expression of human helplessness, poverty, and suppression.

Democracy | Existence | Insight | Love | Necessity | Politics | Responsibility | Suppression | Thinking | Work |

Wilhelm Reich

Only the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings can master their sadistic destructiveness.

Democracy | Experience | Offense | People | Responsibility | Will | Work |

Wilhelm Reich

I am well aware of the fact that the human race has known about the existence of a universal energy related to life for many ages. However, the basic task of natural science consisted of making this energy usable. This is the sole difference between my work and all preceding knowledge.

Democracy | Determination | Life | Life | Love | Responsibility | Thinking |

Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney

Or heritage and ideals, our code and standards - the things we live by and teach our children - are preserved or diminished by how freely we exchange ideas and feelings.

Better | Democracy | Family | Freedom | God | Ideals | Man | Men | Right | Thinking | Tomorrow | Will | God |

Wilhelm Reich

It is precisely this "simplicity" in human intercourse that is so incomprehensible to the armored organism. Everything natural and profound is simple. The simple, grand lines of emotional expression are known to characterize the great painter, musician, poet, novelist and scientist. But the simple is alien to the armored organism. Its impulses are so complicated in their form of expression, the manner of their utterance is so muddled and contradictory that it has no organ for the simple and unequivocal emotional expression. It even lacks a sense of simplicity. Its love is mixed with hatred and anxiety. The unarmored organism loves unequivocally in love situations, hates unequivocally where hatred is legitimate, and fears unequivocally where fear is rational. The armored organism hates where it should love, loves where it should hate, and is frightened where it should love or hate. Complexity is the specific life expression of the armored person He is trapped, as it were, in the multiple contradictions of his existence. Since he approaches all experiences with his complex character structure, his experiences become equally complicated. He is amazed at the accomplishments in the area of special talent barred to him. "Genius" become a kind of abnormal monster, because he cannot understand the great simplicity in the life expression of "genius." In the consistent stripping away of the layers of character, one discovers that complexity epitomizes the defensive mechanism in its purest form. The armored person is complicated because he has a mortal terror of everything simple, straightforward and direct. I say: mortal terror. This is no literary exaggeration. The word accurately describes the process: the simple, straightforward, direct expression inescapably leads periodically to orgastic plasma convulsions.

Democracy | Discovery | Past | Will | Work | Discovery |

Wilhelm Reich

What would you think of an engineer who expounded the art of flying without revealing the secrets of the engine and propeller? That's what you do, you engineer of the human soul. Just that. You're a coward. You want the raisins out of my cake but you don't want the thorns of my roses. Haven't you too, little psychiatrist, been cracking silly jokes about me? Haven't you ridiculed me as the prophet of bigger and better orgasms? Have you never heard the whimpering of a young wife whose body has been desecrated by an impotent husband? Or the anguished cry of an adolescent bursting with unfulfilled love? Does your security still mean more to you than your patient? How long will you go on valuing your respectability above your medical mission? How long will you refuse to see that your pussyfooting procrastination is costing millions their lives?

Democracy | Future | History | Means | Order | Organic | People | Politics | Responsibility | Society | Time | Work | Society |

Wilhelm Reich

Work democracy introduces into liberal thinking a decisive new insight: the working masses who carry the burden of social existence are not conscious of their social responsibility. Nor are they — as the result of thousands of years of suppression of rational thinking, of the natural love function and of the scientific comprehension of living functioning — capable of the responsibility for their own freedom. Another insight contributed by work democracy is the finding that politics is in itself and of necessity unscientific: it is an expression of human helplessness, impoverishment and suppression.

Democracy | Intention | Life | Life | Work |

Walt Kelley, fully Walter Crawford "Walt" Kelly, Jr.

What's good about March Well, for one thing, it keeps February and April apart.

Democracy | Safe |

Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

I sing the body that is electric! I celebrate the Self yet to be unveiled!

Democracy |

Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

I say to mankind, Be not curious about God. For I, who am curious about each, am not curious about God - I hear and behold God in every object, yet understand God not in the least.

Democracy |

Walter Lippmann

The principles of the good society call for a concern with an order of being -- which cannot be proved existentially to the sense organs -- where it matters supremely that the human person is inviolable, that reason shall regulate the will, that truth shall prevail over error.

Democracy | Force | Majority | Rule | Sacred | War | Trouble |

Walter Lippmann

Every fairly intelligent person is aware that the price of respectability is a muffled soul bent on the trivial and the mediocre.

Democracy | Rest | Inertia |

Walter Lippmann

Football strategy does not originate in a scrimmage it is useless to expect solutions in a political campaign.

Absurd | Democracy | Equality | Majority | Meaning | Method | Opinion | Regard | Rule | Sacred | Sense | Sophistry | Tyranny | Virtue | Virtue | Trouble |

Walter Lippmann

Unless our ideas are questioned, they become part of the furniture of eternity.

Democracy | Principles | Rights | Suicide | Will |

Walter Savage Landor

A smile is ever the most bright and beautiful with a tear upon it. What is the dawn without the dew? The tear is rendered by the smile precious above the smile itself.

Democracy | Govern |

Wei Wu Wei, pen name for Terence James Stannus Gray

"The action of non-action," is the central paradox of Taoism and as a concept is second in importance only to the Tao itself, which incorporates it; Lao Tzu describes the action/non-action of someone who has realized the Tao as wu-wei: Thus, the wise man deals with things through wu-wei and teaches through no-words. The ten thousand things flourish without interruption. They grow by themselves, and no one possesses them.

Democracy | Existence | Freedom | Need | Objectives | World | Happiness |

W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

How shall Integrity face Oppression? What shall Honesty do in the face of Deception, Decency in the face of Insult, Self-Defense before Blows? How shall Desert and Accomplishment meet Despising, Detraction, and Lies? What shall Virtue do to meet Brute Force? There are so many answers and so contradictory; and such differences for those on the one hand who meet questions similar to this once a year or once a decade, and those who face them hourly and daily.

Criticism | Democracy | Government | Soul | Government |

Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.

Abuse | Democracy | Power | Tyranny | Understand |

Ze'ev Jabotinsky, born Vladimir Jabotinsky

Preservation of the special character of nations is essential for progress.

Democracy | Freedom | Influence | Man | Meaning | Tradition |