Great Throughts Treasury

"It is not wisdom but Authority that makes a law." - Thomas Hobbes

"No instance exists of a person’s writing two languages perfectly. That will always appear to be his native language which was most familiar to him in his youth." - Thomas Jefferson

"You seem to consider the federal judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions, a very dangerous doctrine, indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have with others the same passions for the party, for power and the privilege of the corps. Their power is the more dangerous, as they are in office for life and not responsible, as the other functionaries are, to the elective control. The Constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots. It has more wisely made all departments co-equal and co-sovereign within themselves." - Thomas Jefferson

"I was not sure where I was going, and I could not see what I would do when I got [there]. But you saw further and clearer than I, and you opened the seas before my ship, whose track led me across the waters to a place I had never dreamed of, and which you were even then preparing to be my rescue and my shelter and my home." - Thomas Merton

"The dread of being open to the ideas of others generally comes from our hidden insecurity about our own convictions. We fear that we may be converted – or perverted – by a pernicious doctrine. On the other hand, if we are mature and objective in our open-mindedness, we may find that viewing things from a basically different perspective – that of our adversary – we discover our own truth in a new light and are able to understand our own ideal more realistically." - Thomas Merton

"Though I shall for convenience often speak of two standpoints, the subjective and the objective, and though the various places in which this opposition is found have much in common, the distinction between more subjective and more objective views is really a matter of degree, and it covers a wide spectrum." - Thomas Nagel

"The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government." - Thomas Paine

"We ought therefore to suspect that a great mass of information respecting the Bible, and the introduction of it into the world, has been suppressed by the united tyranny of Church and State, for the purpose of keeping people in ignorance, and which ought to be known." - Thomas Paine

"Wisdom is not the purchase of a day, and it is no wonder that we should err at the first setting off." - Thomas Paine

"The true gain is always in the struggle, not the prize. What we become must always rank as a far higher question than what we get." - W. J. Dawson. fully William James Dawson

"I have been accused of denying consciousness but I am not conscious of having done so." - Willard Quine, fully Willard Van Orman Quine

"Wretch even then, life's journey just begun." - William Cowper

"The first [quality] to be named must always be the power of attention, of giving one's whole mind to the patient without the interposition of anything of oneself. It sounds simple but only the very greatest doctors ever fully attain it. ... The second thing to be striven for is intuition. This sounds an impossibility, for who can control that small quiet monitor? But intuition is only interference from experience stored and not actively recalled. ... The last aptitude I shall mention that must be attained by the good physician is that of handling the sick man's mind." - Wilfred Trotter, fully Wilfred Batten Lewis Trotter

""What right do you have to tell me things?" I can see this question in your apprehensive look. I hear this question from your impertinent mouth, Little Man. You are afraid to look at yourself, you are afraid of criticism, Little Man, just as you are afraid of the power they promise you. You would not know how to use this power. You dare not think that you ever might experience yourself differently: free instead of cowed; open instead of tactical; loving openly instead of like a thief in the night. You despise yourself Little Man. You say: "Who am I to have an opinion of my own, to determine my own life and to declare the world to be mine?" You are right: Who are you to make a claim to your life?" - Wilhelm Reich

"Life springs from thousands of sources vibrant, hands up everyone who cling to, refuses to be expressed in phrases tedious, only accepts actions transparent, truthful words of love and pleasure" - Wilhelm Reich

"The real artist is in humanity. What are called bad manners are often the most picturesque and significant of them all." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"In all nations the atmosphere of the aristocratic groups drugs the sense of obligation, and possesses the mind with the notion that the life and labor of men are made to play tennis with. The existence of great permanent groups, feeding but not producing, dominating and directing the life of whole nations according to their own needs, may well seem a supreme proof of the power of evil in humanity." - Walter Rauschenbusch

"This may account for the extraordinary popularity of such works as the Tao Te Ching, and in a lesser degree for that of the Diamond and Heart Sutras and Padma Sambhava's Knowing the Mind. For despite the accretion of superfluous verbiage in which the essential doctrine of some of the latter has become embedded, their direct pointing at the truth, instead of explaining it, goes straight to the heart of the matter and allows the mind itself to develop its own vision. An elaborately developed thesis must always defeat its own end where this subject matter is concerned, for only indication could produce this understanding, which requires an intuitional faculty, and it could never be acquired wholesale from without." - Wei Wu Wei, pen name for Terence James Stannus Gray

"This 'real' nature with whose revelation the Chan Masters are primarily concerned, or the Atman-'I' of the Vedantists, is not the far-off, unreachable will-o'-the-wisp we are apt to imagine, but just the within of which we know the without. It is just the other side of the medal, and it lies wherever our senses and our intellect cease to function." - Wei Wu Wei, pen name for Terence James Stannus Gray

"The passive American consumer, sitting down to a meal of pre-prepared food, confronts inert, anonymous substances that have been processed, dyed, breaded, sauced, gravied, ground, pulped, strained, blended, prettified, and sanitized beyond resemblance to any part of any creature that ever lived. The products of nature and agriculture have been made, to all appearances, the products of industry. Both eater and eaten are thus in exile from biological reality." - Wendell Berry

"Terror is everywhere the beginning of religion." - W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky

"The essence of that spirit [the rationalistic spirit applied to religion] is to interpret the articles of special creeds by the principles of universal religion -- by the wants, the aspirations, and the moral sentiments which seem inherent in human nature. It leads men, in other words, to judge what is true and what is good, not by the teachings of tradition, but by the light of reason and of conscience; and where it has not produced an avowed change of creed. It has at least produced a change of realisations. Doctrines which shock our sense of right have been allowed gradually to become obsolete, or if they are brought forward they are stated in language which is so colourless and ambiguous, and with so many qualifications and exceptions, that their original force is almost lost.... Men have come instinctively and almost unconsciously to judge all doctrines by their intuitive sense of right, and to reject or explain away or throw into the background those that will not bear the test, no matter how imposing may be the authority that authenticates them. This method of judgment, which was once very rare, has now become very general.... When the peace of the Church has long been undisturbed, and when the minds of men are not directed with very strong interest to dogmatic questions, conscience will act insensibly upon the belief, obscuring or effacing its true character. Men will instinctively endeavour to explain it away, or to dilute its force, or to diminish its prominence. But when the agitation of controversy has brought the doctrine vividly before the mind, and when the enthusiasm of the contest has silenced the revolt of conscience, theology will be developed more and more in the same direction, till the very outlines of natural religion are obliterated." - W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky

"The period of Catholic ascendancy was on the whole one of the most deplorable in the history of the human mind.... The spirit that shrinks from enquiry as sinful and deems a state of doubt a state of guilt, is the most enduring disease that can afflict the mind of man. Not till the education of Europe passed from the monasteries to the universities, not till Mohammedan science, and clasical free thought, and industrial independence broke the sceptre of the Church, did the intellectual revival of Europe begin." - W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky

"The masses must be made to see that the Soviets of Workers’ Deputies are the only possible form of revolutionary government, and that therefore our task is, as long as this government yields to the influence of the bourgeoisie, to present a patient, systematic, and persistent explanation of the errors of their tactics, an explanation especially adapted to the practical needs of the masses." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"Your destiny is that of a man, and your vows those of a god." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"Even the knowledge of my own fallibility cannot keep me from making mistakes. Only when I fall do I get up again." - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

"Every parting is a form of death, as every reunion is a type of heaven." - Tryon Edwards

"Taste and genius are two words frequently joined together, and therefore, by inaccurate thinkers, confounded. They signify, however, two quite different things. The difference between them can be clearly pointed out, and it is of importance to remember it. Taste consists in the power of judging; genius, in the power of executing. One may have a considerable degree of taste in poetry, eloquence, or any of the fine arts, who has little or hardly any genius for composition or execution in any of these arts; but genius cannot be found without including taste also. Genius, therefore, deserves to be considered as a higher power of the mind than taste. Genius always imports something inventive or creative, which does not rest in mere sensibility to beauty where it is perceived, but which can, moreover, produce new beauties, and exhibit them in such a manner as strongly to impress the minds of others. Refined taste forms a good critic; but genius is further necessary to form the poet or the orator." - Hugh Blair

"A great nation is not saved by wars, it is saved by acts without external picturesqueness; by speaking, writing, voting reasonably; by smiting corruption swiftly; by good temper between parties; by the people knowing true men when they see them, and preferring them as leaders to rabid partisans and empty quacks." - William James

"Men are now proud of belonging to a conquering nation, and without a murmur they lay down their persons and their wealth, if by so doing they may fend off subjection." - William James

"The prevalent fear of poverty among the educated classes is the worst moral disease from which our civilization suffers." - William James

"The best way for the Government to maintain its credit is to pay as it goes—not by resorting to loans, but by keeping out of debt—through an adequate income secured by a system of taxation, external or internal, or both." - William McKinley

"This supreme purificatory wisdom was imparted, through the compassion of the Sage, to Asuri. Asuri transmitted it to Panchashikha, by whom the system (tantra) was elaborated." - Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL

"The old system of exploitation of colonies and the monopolization of their trade for the benefit of the mother country has practically disappeared." - Elihu Root

"So long as women are slaves, men will be knaves." - Elizabeth Cady Stanton

"The Jewish God's symbol vocalizes the reality of an all-encompassing and controlling "Justice," the One world-power, the all- pervading world-process, the all-shaping world-purpose. This Power, Process, and Purpose, conceived and carried out in Love, is an end unto itself, but man is a means to it. By making this purpose his own day's intention man gives music and value to his life." - Emil G. Hirsch, fully Emil Gustav Hirsch

"The forgiveness of sins is the central problem of life. Sin is a sense of separation from God, and is the major tragedy of human experience. It is, of course, rooted in selfishness. It is essentially an attempt to gain some supposed good to which we are not entitled in justice. It is a sense of isolated, self-regarding, personal existence, whereas the Truth of Being is that all is One. Our true selves are at one with God, undivided from Him, expressing His ideas, witnessing to His nature--the dynamic Thinking of that Mind. Because we are all one with the great Whole of which we are spiritually a part, it follows that we are one with all men. Just because in Him we live and move and have our being, we are, in the absolute sense, all essentially one." - Emmet Fox

"I know you are here to kill me. Shoot, coward, you are only going to kill a man." - Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara

"The doctrine of elimination, or the selection theory, as the doctrine especially of "choice of breed or selection," assumes that almost all, or at any rate most, organic species have originated by a process of selection; the artificial varieties under conditions of domestication—as the races of domestic animals and cultivated plants—through artificial choice of breeds; and the natural varieties of animals and plants in their wild state by natural choice of breeds: in the first case, the will of man effects the selection to suit a purpose; in the second, it is effected in a purposeless way by the "struggle for existence." In both cases the transformation of the organic forms takes place through the reciprocal action of the laws of inheritance and of adaptation; in both cases it depends on the survival or selection of the better-qualified minority." - Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

"The gulf between this thoughtful mind of civilized man and the thoughtless animal soul of the savage is enormous -- greater than the gulf that separates the latter from the soul of the dog." - Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

"Though the great differences in the mental life and the civilisation of the higher and lower races are generally known, they are, as a rule, under-valued, and so the value of life at the different levels is falsely estimated. It is civilisation, and the fuller development of the mind that makes civilisation possible, that raise mans so much above the other animals, even his nearest animal relatives, the mammals. But this is, as a rule, peculiar to the higher races, and is found only in a very imperfect form or not at all among the lower. These lower races (such as the Veddahs or Austrailan negroes) are psychologically nearer to the mammals (apes or dogs) than to civilised Europeans; we must, therefore, assign a totally different value to their lives." - Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

"I have no doubt that it is possible to give a new direction to technological development, a direction that shall lead it back to the real needs of man, and that also means: to the actual size of man. Man is small, and, therefore, small is beautiful." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

"This life of yours which you are living is not merely a piece of this entire existence, but in a certain sense the whole; only this whole is not so constituted that it can be surveyed in one single glance." - Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger

"I testify that wickedness is rapidly expanding in every segment of our society. It is more highly organized, more cleverly disguised, and more powerfully promoted than ever before. Secret combinations lusting for power, gain, and glory are flourishing. A secret combination that seeks to overthrow the freedom of all lands, nations, and countries is increasing its evil influence and control over America and the entire world." - Ezra Taft Benson

"[A conductor's] happiness does not come from only his own story and his joy of the music. The joy is about enabling other people's stories to be heard at the same time." - Itay Talgam