Great Throughts Treasury

"The flight to authority is particularly dangerous for at least two reasons: first, because the work avoidance often occurs in response to our biggest problems and, second, because it disables some of our most important personal and collective resources for accomplishing adaptive work." - Ronald A. Heifetz

"Social democracy seeks and finds the ways, and particular slogans, of the workers' struggle only in the course of the development of this struggle, and gains directions for the way forward through this struggle alone." - Rosa Luxemburg, aka Rosalia Luxemburg, "Bloody Rosa"

"Social democracy... is only the advance guard of the proletariat, a small piece of the total working masses; blood from their blood, and flesh from their flesh." - Rosa Luxemburg, aka Rosalia Luxemburg, "Bloody Rosa"

"The Russo-Japanese War now gives to all an awareness that even war and peace in Europe – its destiny – isn’t decided between the four walls of the European concert, but outside it, in the gigantic maelstrom of world and colonial politics. And it’s in this that the real meaning of the current war resides for social-democracy, even if we set aside its immediate effect: the collapse of Russian absolutism. This war brings the gaze of the international proletariat back to the great political and economic connectedness of the world, and violently dissipates in our ranks the particularism, the pettiness of ideas that form in any period of political calm. The war completely rends all the veils which the bourgeois world – this world of economic, political and social fetishism – constantly wraps us in. The war destroys the appearance which leads us to believe in peaceful social evolution; in the omnipotence and the untouchability of bourgeois legality; in national exclusivism; in the stability of political conditions; in the conscious direction of politics by these statesmen or parties; in the significance capable of shaking up the world of the squabbles in bourgeois parliaments; in parliamentarism as the so-called center of social existence. War unleashes – at the same time as the reactionary forces of the capitalist world – the generating forces of social revolution which ferment in its depths." - Rosa Luxemburg, aka Rosalia Luxemburg, "Bloody Rosa"

"So I will say it with relish. Give me a hamburger but hold the lawsuit." - S. I. Hayakawa, fully Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa

"Either the trade unionists are right or they are wrong. If they are wrong, every one of us who counts himself a trade unionist ought to be shunted aside and thrown overboard. If we are right, we ought to stick and fight and take whatever consequences may come, conscious in the knowledge and conviction that the right will prevail." - Samuel Gompers

"In my opinion, we have been tolerant too long of men who have gone about the country declaring the size of their hearts, and repeatedly offering up their necks for the hangmen's noose as their stock in trade for practical work in the labor movement." - Samuel Gompers

"The history of labor is littered with the skeletons of organizations done to death because of hasty strikes gone into, for the best of reasons but unprepared." - Samuel Gompers

"The worst crime against working people is a company which fails to operate at a profit." - Samuel Gompers

"The beneficent effects of the regular quarter-hour's exercise before breakfast is more than offset by the mental wear and tear involved in getting out of bed fifteen minutes earlier than one otherwise would" - Simeon Strunsky

"There is no detachment where there is no pain. And there is no pain endured without hatred or lying unless detachment is present too." - Simone Weil

"God has implanted a natural tendency to the monarchial form of government not only in the hearts of men but in practically all things." - Robert Bellarmine, fully Saint Robert Bellarmine

"The attainment of an ideal is often the beginning of a disillusion" - Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl of Bewdley

"There was nothing like that three-four year period where, just the two of us, we were traveling across the United States. That's when I got to know the man." - Ted Sorensen, fully Theodore Chalkin "Ted" Sorensen

"A healthy-minded boy should feel hearty contempt for the coward and even more hearty indignation for the boy who bullies girls or small boys, or tortures animals....What we have a right to expect of the American boy is that he shall turn out to be a good American man." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"Ours is a government of liberty by, through, and under the law." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"To waste, to destroy our natural resources, to skin and exhaust the land instead of using it so as to increase its usefulness, will result in undermining in the days of our children the very prosperity which we ought by right to hand down to them amplified and developed." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"A departure from principle in one instance becomes a precedent for a second; that second for a third; and so on, till the bulk of the society is reduced to be mere automatons of misery, to have no sensibilities left but for sin and suffering." - Thomas Jefferson

"The desire to preserve our country from the calamities and ravages of war, by cultivating a disposition, and pursuing a conduct, conciliatory and friendly to all nations, has been sincerely entertained and faithfully followed. It was dictated by the principles of humanity, the precepts of the gospel, and the general wish of our country, and it was not to be doubted that the Society of Friends, with whom it is a religious principle, would sanction it by their support." - Thomas Jefferson

"The equal rights of man, and the happiness of every individual, are now acknowledged to be the only legitimate objects of government. Modern times have the signal advantage, too, of having discovered the only device by which these rights can be secured, to wit: government by the people, acting not in person, but by representatives chosen by themselves, that is to say, by every man of ripe years and sane mind, who contributes either by his purse or person to the support of his country." - Thomas Jefferson

"I am earth, earth. My heart's love bursts with hay and flowers. I am a lake of blue air in which my own appointed place, field and valley stand reflected" - Thomas Merton

"You tell me it is too early to be looking back, but that is because you have forgotten the perfect simplicity of being one and the beautiful complexity introduced by two." - William Collins

"Once a man wants to hold a Public Office, he is absolutely no good for honest work." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers

"One of the many things no one tells you about aging is that it is such a nice change from being young." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers

"But it required a disastrous, internecine war to bring this question of human freedom to a crisis, and the process of striking the shackles from the slave was accomplished in a single hour." - Wendell Lewis Willkie

"The modern airplane creates a new geographical dimension. A navigable ocean of air blankets the whole surface of the globe. There are no distant places any longer: the world is small and the world is one." - Wendell Lewis Willkie

"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." - 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." - 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." - Wilhelm Reich

"Only the liberation of the natural capacity for love in human beings can master their sadistic destructiveness." - 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?" - 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." - 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." - Wilhelm Reich

"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." - Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney

"What's good about March Well, for one thing, it keeps February and April apart." - Walt Kelley, fully Walter Crawford "Walt" Kelly, Jr.

"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." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"I sing the body that is electric! I celebrate the Self yet to be unveiled!" - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

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

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

"Unless our ideas are questioned, they become part of the furniture of eternity." - Walter Lippmann

"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." - Walter Savage Landor

""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." - Wei Wu Wei, pen name for Terence James Stannus Gray

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

"Preservation of the special character of nations is essential for progress." - Ze'ev Jabotinsky, born Vladimir Jabotinsky

"And there is only one way of smashing the resistance of those classes, and that is to find, in the very society which surrounds us, the forces which can—and, owing to their social position, must—constitute the power capable of sweeping away the old and creating the new, and to enlighten and organize those forces for the struggle." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"But by no means limit ourselves to address the problem of religion in the abstract-to-idealistically, as a matter of reasoning completely detached from the class struggle (as they often radical bourgeois democrats). It would be absurd to imagine that, in a society based on the endless oppression and degradation of the toiling masses, we may remove religious prejudices with a mere preaching. It would give evidence of a bourgeois narrow-mindedness, lose sight of the fact that religious oppression of humanity is only the fruit or reflection aspect of economic oppression in society. Neither the books nor preaching can enlighten the proletariat positively if it is not enlightened by its own struggle against the dark forces of capitalism. The union in this genuinely revolutionary struggle of the oppressed class to make the earth a heaven, is more important to us than unity of proletarian criteria about imaginary paradise of heaven. 's why we do not represent or declare in our program that we are atheists , which is why we do not ban or prohibit proletarians who still cling to the vestiges of the old prejudices that come into closer contact with our party. Always preach a scientific philosophy, we must combat the absurdities of Christians, but this does not mean that the religious question should be placed in the foreground where it does not belong. We must not allow the forces oriented in a genuinely revolutionary struggle, economic and political, where infringements on behalf of opinions and conceptions of much less importance, they quickly lose any political significance and are gradually relegated to the pile by the normal course of economic development. The reactionary bourgeoisie, here as elsewhere, always strives stoke religious antagonisms in order to divert attention from the masses of those really important and fundamental issues, both economic and political, that the Russian proletariat is in the process of deciding through the practice of the revolutionary struggle. This reactionary tactic of dividing the proletarian forces, which today is mainly manifested in the pogroms of the Black Hundreds, tomorrow can be expressed in more subtle forms. Anyway, we know oppose this our propaganda firm sustained and patient towards proletarian solidarity and scientific philosophy that will prevent differences arising secondary." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"Democracy is a form of the state, it represents, on the one hand, the organized, systematic use of force against persons; but, on the other hand, it signifies the formal recognition of equality of citizens, the equal right of all to determine the structure of, and to administer, the state." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"Destroy the family, you destroy the country." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin