Great Throughts Treasury

"The contempt for law and the contempt for the human consequences of lawbreaking go from the bottom to the top of American society." - Margaret Mead

"There are moments when society people seem ready to be assessed at their true value. I've often noticed that they appreciate those who show little regard for them, which seems a sort of invitation to express your contempt openly, providing you do it sincerely, without affectation of ignorance, and from the heart." - Nicolas Chamfort,fully Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort, also spelled Nicholas

"Those who knew that the judgements of many centuries had reinforced the opinion that the Earth is placed motionless in the middle of heaven, as though at its centre, if I on the contrary asserted that the Earth moves, I hesitated for a long time whether to bring my treatise, written to demonstrate its motion, into the light of day, or whether it would not be better to follow the example of the Pythagoreans and certain others, who used to pass on the mysteries of their philosophy merely to their relatives and friends, not in writing but by personal contact, as the letter of Lysis to Hipparchus bears witness. And indeed they seem to me to have done so, not as some think from a certain jealousy of communicating their doctrines, but so that their greatest splendours, discovered by the devoted research of great men, should not be exposed to the contempt of those who either find it irksome to waste effort on anything learned, unless it is profitable, or if they are stirred by the exhortations and examples of others to a high-minded enthusiasm for philosophy, are nevertheless so dull-witted that among philosophers they are like drones among bees. " - Nicholas Copernicus

"In her contempt and dread of yielding to mere amorous weakness had she stifled and denied the cry of pity, the cry of conscience? " - Ouida, pseudonym of Maria Louise Ramé, preferred to be called Marie Louise de la Ramée NULL

"I've lived a very long life, and I've seen a lot of stupidity. But very little of it beats the stupidity with which we have been downsizingÂ…Don't be surprised that morale is very low. The contempt for top management is dreadful. And the present generation of management is not going to regain the trust of their people. It is our greatest disadvantage in this country today." - Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker

"If you reason instead of repeating what is taught you; if you analyze the law and strip off those cloudy fictions with which it has been draped in order to conceal its real origin, which is the right of the stronger, and its substance, which has ever been the consecration of all the tyrannies handed down to mankind through its long and bloody history; when you have comprehended this, your contempt for the law will be profound indeed. You will understand that to remain the servant of the written law is to place yourself every day in opposition to the law of conscience, and to make a bargain on the wrong side; and, since this struggle cannot go on forever, you will either silence your conscience and become a scoundrel, or you will break with tradition, and you will work with us for the utter destruction of all this injustice, economic, social and political." - Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin

"His consuming interest remains in the world of men, their institutions, their history, their passions. And because he is interested in men, nothing that men do can be altogether tedious...He will naturally be interested in the events that engage men’s ultimate beliefs, their moments of tragedy and grandeur and ecstasy. But he will also be fascinated by the commonplace, the everyday. He will know reverence, but this reverence will not prevent him from wanting to see and to understand. He may sometimes feel revulsion or contempt , but this will also not deter him from wanting to have his questions answered. ...in his quest for understanding, moves through the world of men without respect for the usual lines of demarcation. Nobility ad degradation, power and obscurity, intelligence and folly -- these are equally interesting to him, however unequal they may be in his personal values or tastes. This his questions may lead him to all possible levels of society, the best and least known places, the most respected and the most despised. ...he will find himself in all these places because his own questions have so taken possession of him that he has little choice but to seek for answers." - Peter L. Berger, fully Peter Ludwig Berger

"Our contempt for egoists begins very early in life. Children who fulfill their parents' conscious or unconscious wishes are good, but if they ever refuse to do so or express wishes of their own that go against those of their parents they are called egoistic and inconsiderate. It usually does not occur to the parents that they might need and use the child to fulfill their own egoistic wishes. They often are convinced that they must teach their child how to behave because it is their duty to help him along on the road to socialization. If a child bought up this way does not wish to lose his parents' love (And what child can risk that?), he must learn very early to share, to give, to make sacrifices, and to be willing to do without and forgo gratification-long before he is capable of true sharing or of the real willingness to do without." - Alice Miller, née Rostovski

"As punishment for my contempt for authority, Fate has made me an authority myself. " - Albert Einstein

"THE lessons of fear which the child receives from its parents are intensified by the methods employed at the school in which he receives his education and life-training. We glory in the fact that we have made great strides in the science of education, that we are more practical in the choice of subjects for study, that we have a deeper insight into the soul of the child. And yet, in our method of imparting knowledge and in the relations between teacher and pupil, we can boast of but little progress. We still look upon the child as a more or less unwilling receptacle that must be stuffed with learning. The teacher is still a being to be feared, the school room still a prison house, and learning a punishment. Our system of education is still based on reward and punishment. A high mark is still the encouragement for zeal in study, while the backward student is haunted by the prospect of a low grade. The child, under present methods, prepares his lessons either in order to gain the reward of a high mark, or for fear of the contempt and humiliation that accompanies a low grade. In other words, he works not because of the intrinsic interest of his work but in the hope of reward or in the fear of punishment. The first motive breeds the harmful spirit of competition in the young mind. " - Rabbi Morris Lichtenstein

"In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast. Those who once inhabited the suburbs of human contempt find that without changing their address they eventually live in the metropolis." - Quentin Crisp, born Denis Charles Pratt

"To punish me for my contempt for authority, fate made me an authority myself." - Albert Einstein

"It is clear according to what we have said that these (doctrines) do not only lead to dogmatic relativism, but already contain it in act; the contempt of the doctrine commonly taught and of the terms in which it expressed itself are already too close to it... .The expressions that, during the course of several centuries, were established by a common consent of Catholic doctors in order to arrive at some understanding of dogma surely do not rest on such a fragile foundation. They rest, in fact, on principles and notions taken from the true knowledge of created things; in the research of these notions revealed truth enlightened the human mind like a star by means of the Church. That is why it is not surprising that some of these notions have not only been used in ecumenical Councils but have received such a sanction that it is not permitted to distance oneself from them. Thus it is very imprudent to substitute for them fl oating and vague notions and expressions of a new philosophy that are used today and will disappear tomorrow like the fl owers of the fi eld; this would be to make dogma itself a reed shaken by the wind. In fact, unfortunately these lovers of novelty easily pass from contempt of Scholastic theology to a lack of respect for and even contempt of the magisterium of the Church which has so strongly supported this theology by its authority." - Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange, fully Réginald Marie Garrigou-Lagrange

"Microsoft doesn't respect the antitrust laws, and it has amply demonstrated that it can't be trusted. The company has shown its contempt for any court-imposed changes in its conduct. If the government ends the antitrust case by seeking changes in its conduct, but not in its structure, Microsoft can be expected to creatively evade the thrust of such agreements." - Ralph Nader

"Never before has a civilization reached such a degree of a contempt for life; never before has a generation, drowned in mortification, felt such a rage to live." - Raoul Vaneigem

"He is a relatively poor man, or he would not be a detective at all. He is a common man or he could not go among common people. He has a sense of character, or he would not know his job. He will take no man's money dishonestly and no man's insolence without due and dispassionate revenge. He is a lonely man and his pride is that you will treat him as a proud man or be very sorry you ever saw him. He talks as the man of his age talks -- that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for pettiness." - Raymond Chandler, fully Raymond Thornton Chandler

"It is proper I should desire you particularly to distinguish between the love of our country and that spirit of rivalship and ambition which has been common among nations. What has the love of their country hitherto been among mankind? What has it been but a love of domination; a desire of conquest, and a thirst for grandeur and glory, by extending territory, and enslaving surrounding countries? What has it been but a blind and narrow principle, producing in every country a contempt of other countries, and forming men into combinations and factions against their common rights and liberties? This is the principle that has been too often cried up as a virtue of the first rank: a principle of the same kind with that which governs clans of Indians, or tribes of Arabs, and leads them out to plunder and massacre. As most of the evils which have taken place in private life, and among individuals, have been occasioned by the desire of private interest overcoming the public affections; so most of the evils which have taken place among bodies of men have been occasioned by the desire of their own interest overcoming the principle of universal benevolence: and leading them to attack one another’s territories, to encroach on one another’s rights, and to endeavor to build their own advancement on the degradation of all within the reach of their power? What was the love of their country among the Jews, but a wretched partiality to themselves, and a proud contempt of all other nations? What was the love of their country among the old Romans? We have heard much of it; but I cannot hesitate in saying that, however great it appeared in some of its exertions, it was, in general, no better than a principle holding together a band of robbers in their attempts to crush all liberty but their own. What is now the love of his country in a Spaniard, a Turk, or a Russian? Can it be considered as anything better than a passion for slavery, or a blind attachment to a spot where he enjoys no rights, and is disposed of as if he was a beast?" - Richard Price

"I am often accused of expressing contempt and despising religious people. I don't despise religious people, I despise what they stand for. I like to quote the British journalist Johann Hari who said, I have so much respect for you, that I cannot respect your ridiculous ideas." - Richard Dawkins

"The human psyche has two great sicknesses: the urge to carry vendetta across generations, and the tendency to fasten group labels on people rather than see them as individuals. Abrahamic religion mixes explosively with (and gives strong sanction to) both. Only the willfully blind could fail to implicate the divisive force of religion in most, if not all, of the violent enmities in the world today. Without a doubt it is the prime aggravator of the Middle East. Those of us who have for years politely concealed our contempt for the dangerous collective delusion of religion need to stand up and speak out. Things are different now. " - Richard Dawkins

"Speak with contempt of no man. Every one hath a tender sense of reputation. And every man hath a sting, which he may, if provoked too far, dart out at one time or other." - Robert Burton

"We know one another's faults, virtues, catastrophes, mortifications, triumphs, rivalries, desires, and how long we can each hang by our hands to a bar. We have been banded together under pack codes and tribal laws." - Rose Macauley, fully Dame Emilie Rose Macaulay

"You are a hidden God. Neither is the sublime communication nor the sensible awareness of His nearness a sure testimony of His gracious presence, nor is dryness and a lack of these a reflection of His absence. A person who wants to find Him should leave all things through affection and will, enter within himself in deepest recollection, and regard things as though they were nonexistence. God is hidden in the soul. You yourself are His dwelling and His secret chamber and hiding place. God is never absent. In order to find Him you should forget all your possessions and all creatures and hide in the interior, secret chamber of your spirit. And there, closing the door behind you, you should pray to your Father in secret. Remaining hidden with Him, you will experience Him in hiding, and love and enjoy Him in hiding. God is the substance and concept of faith, and faith is the secret and the mystery. Faith and love are like the blind man’s guides. They will lead you along a path unknown to you, to the place where God is hidden. Pay no attention to anything which your faculties can grasp. You should never desire satisfaction in what you understand about God, but in what you do not understand about Him Never stop with loving and delighting in your understanding and experience of God, but love and delight in what is neither understandable nor perceptible of Him. Spiritual wounds of love are very delightful and desirable. The soul would desire to be ever dying a thousand deaths from the thrusts of the lance, for they make her go out of herself and enter into God. The wounded soul, strengthened from the fire caused by the wound, went out after her Beloved Who wounded her, calling for Him, that He might heal her. One goes out from oneself through self-forgetfulness." - Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL

"Have patience to walk with short steps until you have wings to fly." - Saint Francis de Sales NULL

"The perfection of life is the perfection of love. Love is the life of the soul." - Saint Francis de Sales NULL

"The public cannot be too curious concerning the characters of public men." - Samuel Adams

"Some force whole regions, in despite O' geography, to change their site; Make former times shake hands with latter, And that which was before come after. But those that write in rhyme still make The one verse for the other's sake; For one for sense, and one for rhyme, I think 's sufficient at one time." - Samuel Butler

"We deny the assertion made by some of our opponents when they say the American Federation of Labor is against political action. We are against the the American labor movement being made a political party machine." - Samuel Gompers

"Agriculture not only gives riches to a nation, but the only riches she can call her own." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"I am a great friend of public amusements, they keep people from vice." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is generally one of the chief motives to disclose it." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"In horror, in terror, she accepted the metamorphosis — gnat, foam, ant, until death. And it's only the beginning, she thought. She stood motionless, as if it were possible to play tricks with time, possible to stop it from following its course. But her hands stiffened against her quivering lips. When the bells began to sound the hour she let out the first scream." - Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir

"Is boredom anything less than the sense of one's faculties slowly dying?" - Arthur Helps, fully Sir Arthur Helps

"He cannot have God for his father who has not the church for his mother." - Cyprian, aka Saint Cyprian of Carthage, fully Thascius Caecilius Cyprianus NULL

"Gender named literature simply fun hair." - Stephane Mallarme, born Étienne Mallarmé

"It is a folly to deny that which a man’s own nature witnesseth to him. The whole frame of bodies and souls bears the impress of the infinite power and wisdom of the Creator: a body framed with an admirable architecture, a soul endowed with understanding, will, judgment, memory, imagination. Man is the epitome of the world, contains in himself the substance of all natures, and the fullness of the whole universe; not only in regard of the universalness of his knowledge, whereby he comprehends the reasons of many things; but as all the perfections of the several natures of the world are gathered and united in man, for the perfection of his own, in a smaller volume. In his soul he partakes of heaven, in his body of the earth. There is the life of plants, the sense of beasts, and the intellectual nature of angels." - Stephen Charnock

"He was welcome everywhere he went, and was well-aware of his inability to tolerate solitude. He felt no inclination to be alone and avoided it as far as possible; he didn't really want to become any better acquainted with himself. He knew that if he wanted to show his talents to best advantage, he needed to strike sparks off other people to fan the flames of warmth and exuberance in his heart. On his own he was frosty, no use to himself at all, like a match left lying in its box." - Stefan Zweig

"A heavy progressive tax upon a very large fortune is in no way such a tax upon thrift or industry as a like would be on a small fortune. No advantage comes either to the country as a whole or to the individuals inheriting the money by permitting the transmission in their entirety of the enormous fortunes which would be affected by such a tax; and as an incident to its function of revenue raising, such a tax would help to preserve a measurable equality of opportunity for the people of the generations growing to manhood. We have not the slightest sympathy with that socialistic idea which would try to put laziness, thriftlessness and inefficiency on a par with industry, thrift and efficiency; which would strive to break up not merely private property, but what is far more important, the home, the chief prop upon which our whole civilization stands. Such a theory, if ever adopted, would mean the ruin of the entire country — a ruin which would bear heaviest upon the weakest, upon those least able to shift for themselves. But proposals for legislation such as this herein advocated are directly opposed to this class of socialistic theories. Our aim is to recognize what Lincoln pointed out: The fact that there are some respects in which men are obviously not equal; but also to insist that there should be an equality of self-respect and of mutual respect, an equality of rights before the law, and at least an approximate equality in the conditions under which each man obtains the chance to show the stuff that is in him when compared to his fellows." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"I need not go through sleet and snow to where I know she waits for me: she will tarry there till I find it fair, and have time to spare from company." - Thomas Hardy

"In books we never find anything but ourselves. Strangely enough, that always gives us great pleasure, and we say the author is a genius." - Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

"Faith is a light of such supreme brilliance that it dazzles the mind and darkens all its visions of other realities, but in the end when we become used to the new light, we gain a new view of all reality transfigured and elevated in the light itself." - Thomas Merton

"Wealth is so much the greatest good that Fortune has to bestow that in the Latin and English languages it has usurped her name." - William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne

"To a Desolate Friend - O friend, like some cold wind to-day Your message came, and chilled the light; Your house so dark, and mine so bright,— I could not weep, I could not pray! My wife and I had kissed at morn, My children’s lips were full of song; O friend, it seemed such cruel wrong, My life so full, and yours forlorn! We slept last night clasped hand in hand, Secure and calm—and never knew How fared the lonely hours with you, What time those dying lips you fanned. We dreamed of love, and did not see The shadow pass across our dream; We heard the murmur of a stream, Not death’s for it ran bright and free. And in the dark her gentle soul Passed out, but oh! we knew it not! My babe slept fast within her cot, While yours woke to the slow bell’s toll. She paused a moment,—who can tell?— Before our windows, but we lay So deep in sleep she went away, And only smiled a sad farewell! It would be like her; well we know How oft she waked while others slept— She never woke us when she wept, It would be like her thus to go! Ah, friend! you let her stray too far Within the shadow-haunted wood, Where deep thoughts never understood Breathe on us and like anguish are. One day within that gloom there shone A heavenly dawn, and with wide eyes She saw God’s city crown the skies, Since when she hasted to be gone. Too much you yielded to her grace; Renouncing self, she thus became An angel with a human name, And angels coveted her face. Earth’s door you set so wide, alack She saw God’s gardens, and she went A moment forth to look; she meant No wrong, but oh! she came not back! Dear friend, what can I say or sing, But this, that she is happy there? We will not grudge those gardens fair Where her light feet are wandering. The child at play is ignorant Of tedious hours; the years for you To her are moments: and you too Will join her ere she feels your want. The path she wends we cannot track: And yet some instinct makes us know Hers is the joy, and ours the woe,— We dare not wish her to come back!" - W. J. Dawson. fully William James Dawson

"For the unconquerable mind. We give You thanks, O God, for the harvest of knowledge, patiently gathered over long years by ongoing generations of scholars, and now laid up for the needs of humanity in our universities. For the increasing mastery of special skills, for victory over ills which people have suffered through ignorance, for confidence in the reliable order of nature, for the wisdom which long experience adds to much learning, for ever new light falling on old mysteries, as for all the joys of our part and portion in the unconquerable mind: we give thanks." - Willard L. Sperry, fully Willard Learoyd Sperry

"If youth did not matter so much to itself it would never have the heart to go on." - Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather

"He was a Southerner with the fine abandon some Southerners have about firearms and related matters. "Well, sir," he said with immense pleasure, "you've bought the right gun. Just hold it in front of you, squeeze the trigger, and, brother, it will be fay-ya-you-well."" - Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers

"All men cannot go to college but some men must; every isolated group or nation must have its yeast, must have for the talented few centers of training where men are not so mystified and befuddled by the hard and necessary toil of earning a living, as to have no aims higher than their bellies, and no God greater than Gold." - W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

"It is the trained, living human soul, cultivated and strengthened by long study and thought, that breathes the real breath of life into boys and girls and makes them human, whether they be black or white, Greek, Russian or American." - W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

"It would have been better to stay in the Paradise of Eldorado instead of returning to this accursed Europe. How right you are, my dear Martin! Everything is illusion and calamity!" - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"The only way to comprehend what mathematicians mean by Infinity is to contemplate the extent of human stupidity." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"I waited. I listened. Nothing came, nothing, I cried then with a sudden conviction of complete desertion, Now there is nothing. No fin breaks the waste of this immeasurable sea. Life has destroyed me. No echo comes when I speak, no varied words. This is more truly death than the death of friends, than the death of youth. I am the swathed figure in the hairdresser's shop taking up only so much space." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf