Great Throughts Treasury

"Man is endowed by nature with organic relations to his fellow men; and natural impulse prompts him to consider the needs of others even when they compete with his own." - Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr

"While it is possible for intelligence to increase the range of benevolent impulse, and thus prompt a human being to consider the needs and rights of other than those to whom he is bound by organic and physical relationship, there are definite limits in the capacity of ordinary mortals which makes it impossible for them to grant to others what they claim for themselves." - Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr

"There is no such thing as a fixed policy, because policy like all organic entities is always in the making." - Richard Cecil

"Survival machines began as passive receptacles for the genes, providing little more than walls to Protect them from the chemical warfare of their rivals and the ravages of accidental molecular bombardment. In the early days they 'fed' on organic molecules freely available in the soup. This easy life came to an end when the organic food in the soup, which had been slowly built up under the energetic influence of centuries of sunlight, was all used up, A major branch of survival machines, now called plants, started to use sunlight directly themselves to build up complex molecules from simple ones, re-enacting at much higher speed the synthetic processes of the original soup." - Richard Dawkins

"Most musical, most melancholy bird! A melancholy bird! Oh! idle thought! In nature there is nothing melancholy... While many a glowworm in the shade Lights up her love torch... 'Tis the merry nightingale That crowds, and hurries, and precipitates With fast thick warble his delicious notes, As he were fearful that an April night Would be too short for him to utter forth His love-chant, and disburthen his full soul Of all its music!" - Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"To reestablish peace and harmony on earth... and to bring the glory of God back to earth, is proclaimed on every page of the Word of God as the result and aim of Torah." - Samson Raphael Hirsch

"The trade union movement represents the organized economic power of the workers... It is in reality the most potent and the most direct social insurance the workers can establish." - Samuel Gompers

"An intimate friend and a hated enemy have always been indispensable requirements for my emotional life; I have always been able to create them anew, and not infrequently my childish ideal has been so closely approached that friend and enemy coincided in the same person." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"In general people experience their present naively, as it were, without being able to form an estimate of its contents; they have first to put themselves at a distance from it — the present, that is to say, must have become the past — before it can yield points of vantage from which to judge the future." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"we seem to have developed the misconception that awakening involves assassinating the ego and dropping its body in the ocean of the Self. But the ego isn’t your archenemy, it’s merely a function, a diligent worker that goes about its self-appointed task of monitoring your survival and holding on to control. When you wake up, you see the ego for what it is—a collection of thoughts, feelings, memories, and beliefs held together by a sense of identity—and no longer mistakenly take it to be the truth of who you are or feel compelled to follow its directives." - Stephan Bodian

"Evolution is an inference from thousands of independent sources, the only conceptual structure that can make unified sense of all this disparate information." - Stephan Jay Gould

"I contend that the continued racial classification of Homo sapiens represents an outmoded approach to the general problem of differentiation within a species. In other words, I reject a racial classification of humans for the same reasons that I prefer not to divide into subspecies the prodigiously variable West Indian land snails that form the subject of my own research." - Stephan Jay Gould

"If genius has any common denominator, I would propose breadth of interest and the ability to construct fruitful analogies between fields." - Stephan Jay Gould

"The legends of fieldwork locate all important sites deep in inaccessible jungles inhabited by fierce beasts and restless natives, and surrounded by miasmas of putrefaction and swarms of tsetse flies. (Alternative models include the hundredth dune after the death of all camels, or the thousandth crevasse following the demise of all sled dogs.)" - Stephan Jay Gould

"The world is full of signals that we don't perceive. Tiny creatures live in a different world of unfamiliar forces. Many animals of our scale greatly exceed our range of perception for sensations familiar to us… What an imperceptive lot we are. Surrounded by so much, so fascinating and so real, that we do not see (hear, smell, touch, taste) in nature, yet so gullible and so seduced by claims for novel power that we mistake the tricks of mediocre magicians for glimpses of a psychic world beyond our ken. The paranormal may be a fantasy; it is certainly a haven for charlatans. But parahuman powers of perception lie all about us in birds, bees, and bacteria." - Stephan Jay Gould

"We have become, by the power of a glorious evolutionary accident called intelligence, the stewards of life's continuity on earth. We did not ask for this role, but we cannot abjure it. We may not be suited to it, but here we are." - Stephan Jay Gould

"Environmentalists have long been fond of saying that the sun is the only safe nuclear reactor, situated as it is some ninety-three million miles away." - Stephanie Mills

"The soul is made of stuff so mysteriously elastic that a single event can make it big enough to contain the infinite." - Stefan Zweig

"Every work of art is an uncommitted crime." - Theodor W. Adorno, born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund

"If time is money, it seems moral to save time, above all one's own, and such parsimony is excused by consideration for others. One is straight-forward." - Theodor W. Adorno, born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund

"The overbearing matter-of-factness which sacrifices the subject to the ascertainment of the truth, rejects at once truth and objectivity." - Theodor W. Adorno, born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund

"To say 'we' and mean 'I' is one of the most recondite insults." - Theodor W. Adorno, born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund

"At any moment, you have a choice, that either leads you closer to your spirit or further away from it." - Thich Nhất Hanh

"A secret and ardent stirring within the frozen chastity of the universal." - Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

"What an absurd torture for the artist to know that an audience identifies him with a work that, within himself, he has moved beyond and that was merely a game played with something in which he does not believe." - Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann

"All Religions are One - THE ARGUMENT AS the true method of Knowledge is Experiment, the true faculty of knowing must be the faculty which experiences. This faculty I treat of: Principle 1 That the Poetic Genius is the True Man, and that the Body or Outward Form of Man is derived from the Poetic Genius. Like-wise that the Forms of all things are derived from their Genius, which by the Ancients was call’d an Angel and Spirit and Demon. Principle 2 As all men are alike in Outward Form; so, and with the same infinite variety, all are alike in the Poetic Genius. Principle 3 No man can think, write, or speak from his heart, but he must intend Truth. Thus all sects of Philosophy are from the Poetic Genius, adapted to the weaknesses of every individual. Principle 4 As none by travelling over known lands can find out the unknown; so, from already acquired knowledge, Man could not acquire more; therefore an universal Poetic Genius exists. Principle 5 The Religions of all Nations are derived from each Nation’s different reception of the Poetic Genius, which is everywhere call’d the Spirit of Prophecy. Principle 6 The Jewish and Christian Testaments are an original derivation from the Poetic Genius. This is necessary from the confined nature of bodily sensation. Principle 7 As all men are alike, tho’ infinitely various; so all Religions: and as all similars have one source the True Man is the source, he being the Poetic Genius." - William Blake

"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

"A large part of the mischief and folly of the world comes from rushing in, taking a position, and then not knowing how to retreat. There is something about making a speech or writing an article which perverts the human mind. When the utterance is published, the Rubicon has been crossed and the bridges have been burned. It seems to end in the inquiry, after that we almost cease to be interested in the truth, being so preoccupied to prove that we already possess it." - Walter Lippmann

"There’s nothing under the ground that’s worth more than the little layer of topsoil sitting on top of it." - Wendell Berry

"A thousand years ago five minutes were equal to forty ounces of fine sand. Outstare the stars. Infinite foretime and infinite after time: above your head they close like giant wings, and you are dead." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov

"With machines for advanced analysis no such situation existed; for there was and is no extensive market; the users of advanced methods of manipulating data are a very small part of the population." - Vannevar Bush

"And the more profoundly the science of biology reveals the laws of the life and development of living bodies, the more effective is the science of agronomy." - Trofim Lysenko, fully Trofim Denisovich Lysenko

"Of course, when all is said, it is not learning but the spirit of service that will give a college place in the public annals of the nation." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson

"The outcome of any serious research can only be to make two questions grow where only one grew before." - Thorstein Veblen, fully Thorstein Bunde Veblen, born Torsten Bunde Veblen

"Like chip dip with a short shelf life, the imported Scandinavian sunshine had commenced to degenerate, reverting to the cod paste from which it was synthesized. Scud blew by close to the surface of the sound like dank puffballs of bacterial fuss, and the men could almost taste mildew in the air. The atmosphere was leaden and thin simultaneously, as if composed of some new element that defied known laws of atomic weight and could be properly breathed only by lifelong residents of the Pacific Northwest. Feathery and innocuous on one hand, sodden and ill-willed on the other, it was the meterorological equivalent of Pat Boone sing heavy metal." - Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins

"Love easily confuses us because it is always in flux between illusion and substance, between memory and wish, between contentment and need." - Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins

"Romeo wants Juliet as the filings want the magnet; and if no obstacles intervene he moves towards her by as straight a line as they. But Romeo and Juliet, if a wall be built between them, do not remain idiotically pressing their faces against its opposite sides like the magnet and the filings with the card. Romeo soon finds a circuitous way, by scaling the wall or otherwise, of touching Juliet's lips directly. With the filings the path is fixed; whether it reaches the end depends on accidents. With the lover it is the end which is fixed, the path may be modified indefinitely." - William James

"To spend life for something which outlasts it." - William James

"We have overdeveloped the individualism that arose in a pioneer country. We are destined to become more co-operative, more collectivistic, and to find in this direction still greater opportunity for the individual, not so much restricted and defeated by competition but enlarged and enhanced by the support of a common will. It may be that the problem of material goods--of the necessary but yet external goods of food, clothing, shelter, and money-is about to be solved through new discoveries and developments, with the energies of men left freer than they have ever been to cultivate on higher levels the sharable goods of life, such as love and wisdom. These values grow with use and multiply by being freely shared." - Edward Scribner Ames

"Formed for the sake of the purpose of the Self (purusha), the subtle body (linga) appears in different roles like adramatic performer, owing to the connection of causes and effects and through conjunction with the universal power of Nature (prakriti)." - Ishvarakrishna, aka Iśvarakṛṣṇa NULL

"At the lowest stage, the rude--we may say animal--phase of prehistoric primitive man, is the "ape-man," who, in the course of the tertiary period, has only to a limited degree raised himself above his immediate pithecoid ancestors, the anthropoid apes. Next come successive stages of the lowest and simplest kind of culture, such as only the rudest of still existing primitive peoples enable us in some measure to conceive. These "savages" are succeeded by peoples of a low civilization, and from these again, by a long series of intermediate steps, we rise little by little to the more highly civilized nations. To these alone--of the twelve races of mankind only to the Mediterranean and Mongolian--are we indebted for what is usually called "universal history." This last, extending over somewhat less than six thousand years, represents a period of infinitesimal duration in the long millions of years of the organic world's development." - Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

"At the same time, it has to recognize in the shades of difference in form the degree of blood-relationship, and make an effort to construct the ancestral tree of the animal world. In this way, comparative anatomy enters into the closest relations with comparative embryology on the one hand, and with the science of classification on the other." - Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

"Comparative psychology teaches us to recognize a very long series of successive steps in the development of soul in the animal kingdom. But it is only in the most highly developed vertebrates-birds and mammals--that we discern the first beginnings of reason, the first traces of religious and ethical conduct. In them we find not only the social virtues common to all the higher socially-living animals,--neighborly love, friendship, fidelity, self-sacrifice, etc.,--but also consciousness, sense of duty, and conscience; in relation to man their lord, the same obedience, the same submissiveness, and the same craving for protection, which primitive man in his turn shows towards his "gods."" - Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel

"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

"The stigmatized individual is asked to act so as to imply neither that his burden is heavy nor that bearing it has made him different from us; at the same time he must keep himself at that remove from us which assures our painlessly being able to confirm this belief about him. Put differently, he is advised to reciprocate naturally with an acceptance of himself and us, an acceptance of him that we have not quite extended to him in the first place. A PHANTOM ACCEPTANCE is thus allowed to provide the base for a PHANTOM NORMALCY." - Erving Goffman

"If we're trying to set education policy, we have to listen to the education experts." - Eugene Peterson

"Literature is the right use of language irrespective of the subject or reason of utterance." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh

"What could be better, really, than to sit by the fire in the evening with a book, while the wind beats against the windowpanes, and the lamp burns?... You forget everything ... and hours go by. Without moving, you walk through lands you imagine you can see, and your thoughts, weaving in and out of the story, delight in the details or follow the outlines of the adventures. You merge with the character; you think you're the one whose heart is beating so hard within the clothes he's wearing." - Gustave Flaubert

"Do I not say truly, Gandalf,' said Aragorn at last, 'that you could go whithersoever you wished quicker than I? And this I also say: you are our captain and our banner. The Dark Lord has Nine. But we have One, mightier than they: the White Rider. He has passed through the fire and the abyss, and they shall fear him. We will go where he leads." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien