Great Throughts Treasury

"All a child has to do is to learn to abandon ecstasy, to do without awe, to leave fear and trembling behind. Only then can he act with a certain oblivious self-confidence, when he has naturalized his world. We say naturalized but we mean unnaturalized, falsified, with the truth obscured, the despair of the human condition hidden" - Ernest Becker

"And so, the question for the science of mental health must be­come an absolutely new and revolutionary one, yet one that re­flects the essence of the human condition: On what level of illusion does one live? We will see the import of this at the close of this chapter, but right now we must remind ourselves that when we talk about the need for illusion we are not being cynical. True, there is a great deal of falseness and self-deception in the cultural causa-sui project, but there is also the necessity of this project. Man needs a "second" world, a world of humanly created meaning, a new reality that he can live, dramatize, nourish himself in. "Illusion" means creative play at its highest level. Cultural illusion is a necessary ideology of self-justification, a heroic dimension that is life itself to the symbolic animal. To lose the security of heroic cultural illusion is to die—that is what "deculturation" of primitives means and what it does. It kills them or reduces them to the animal level of chronic fighting and fornication. Life becomes possible only in a continual alcoholic stupor. Many of the older American Indians were relieved when the Big Chiefs in Ottawa and Washington took control and prevented them from warring and feuding. It was a relief from the constant anxiety of death for their loved ones, if not for themselves. But they also knew, with a heavy heart, that this eclipse of their traditional hero-systems at the same time left them as good as dead." - Ernest Becker

"Anthropological and historical research also began, in the nine­teenth century, to put together a picture of the heroic since primi­tive and ancient times. The hero was the man who could go into the spirit world, the world of the dead, and return alive. He had his descendants in the mystery cults of the Eastern Mediterranean, which were cults of death and resurrection. The divine hero of each of these cults was one who had come back from the dead. And as we know today from the research into ancient myths and rituals, Christianity itself was a competitor with the mystery cults and won out—among other reasons—because it, too, featured a healer with supernatural powers who had risen from the dead. These cults, as G. Stanley Hall so aptly put it, were an attempt to attain "an immunity bath" from the greatest evil: death and the dread of it. All historical reli­gions addressed themselves to this same problem of how to bear the end of life. Religions like Hinduism and Buddhism performed the ingenious trick of pretending not to want to be reborn, which is a sort of negative magic: claiming not to want what you really want most." - Ernest Becker

"In seeking to avoid evil, [humanity] is responsible for bringing more evil into the world than organisms could ever do merely by exercising their digestive tracts. It is [our] ingenuity, rather than [our] animal nature, that has given [our] fellow creatures such a bitter earthly fate." - Ernest Becker

"The real world is simply too terrible to admit." - Ernest Becker

"I am opposed to writing about the private lives of living authors and psychoanalyzing them while they are alive. Criticism is getting all mixed up with a combination of the Junior F.B.I.-men, discards from Freud and Jung and a sort of Columnist peep-hole and missing laundry list school.... Every young English professor sees gold in them dirty sheets now. Imagine what they can do with the soiled sheets of four legal beds by the same writer and you can see why their tongues are slavering." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"'What if I'm not straight and simple and good? Do you think I can write that way?'" - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway

"In this respect, the idea of private enterprise fits exactly into the idea of The Market, which, in an earlier chapter, I called "the institutionalization of individualism and non-responsibility."" - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

"It is of little use trying to suppress terrorism if the production of deadly devices continues to be deemed a legitimate employment of man's creative powers. Nor can the fight against pollution be successful if the patterns of production and consumption continue to be of a scale, a complexity, and a degree of violence which, as is becoming more and more apparent, do not fit into the laws of the universe, to which man is just as much subject as the rest of creation." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

"Man talks of a battle with Nature, forgetting that if he won the battle, he would find himself on the losing side." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

"Now, one does not have to be a believer in total equality, whatever that may mean, to be able to see that the existence of inordinately rich people in any society today is a very great evil." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

"To mention these things, no doubt, means laying oneself open to the charge of being against science, technology, and progress. Let me therefore, in conclusion, add a few words about future scientific research. Man cannot live without science and technology any more than he can live against nature." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher

"Democritus introduces the intellect having an argument with the senses about what is 'real'." - Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger

"Why are atoms so small?... Many examples have been devised to bring this fact home to an audience, none of them more impressive than the one used by Lord Kelvin: Suppose that you could mark the molecules in a glass of water, then pour the contents of the glass into the ocean and stir the latter thoroughly so as to distribute the marked molecules uniformly throughout the seven seas; if you then took a glass of water anywhere out of the ocean, you would find in it about a hundred of your marked molecules." - Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger

"Speaking on the near skepticism of the study of the history of philosophy:" - Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson

"We do not need to project out own ideas into the economy of nature; they belong there in their own right. Our own ideas are in the economy of nature because we ourselves are in it. Any and every one of the things which a man does intelligently is done with a purpose and to a certain end which is the final cause why he does itÂ… Through man, who is part and parcel of nature, purposiveness most certainly is part and parcel of nature. In what sense is it arbitrary, knowing from within that where there is organization there always is a purpose, to conclude that there is a purpose wherever there is organization?" - Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson

"And the great question for mankind is what is to be loved or hated next, whenever and old love or fear has lost its hold." - Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy

"He who suffers wins in politics. The martyr does not obtain the victory personally, but his group, his successors, win in the long run." - Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy

"So we will not make excuses for the psalmistÂ’s vindictiveness. What we will do is admire its energy. For it is apathetic, sluggish neutrality that is death to perseverance, acts like a virus in the bloodstream and enervates the muscles of discipleship." - Eugene Peterson

"Patriotism is as sickening today as it has ever been. I was watching the news before you came and there was a lot of coverage of Kosovo and the problems there. They showed footage of people burning an American flag. And the newscaster got all broken up and teary-eyed. He says, "I guess [sob] I just feel something here, folks, when I see the American flag being burned." And I said, You fucking asshole. Whatever happened to the news?" - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

"What other culture could have produced someone like Hemmingway and not seen the joke?" - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal

"Of course, Socialism is violently denounced by the capitalist press and by all the brood of subsidized contributors to magazine literature, but this only confirms the view that the advance of Socialism is very properly recognized by the capitalist class as the one cloud upon the horizon which portends an end to the system in which they have waxed fat, insolent and despotic through the exploitation of their countless wage-working slaves." - Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs

"In reality art is always for everyone and for no one." - Eugenio Montale

"Too many lives are needed to make just one." - Eugenio Montale

"Time will explain it all. He is a talker, and needs no questioning before he speaks." - Euripedes NULL

"The offertory is the first essential action of the Liturgy, because in it we make the costly and solemn oblation, under tokens, of our very selves and all our substance; that they may be transformed, quickened, and devoted to the interests of God." - Evelyn Underhill

"I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times." - Everett Dirksen, fully Everett McKinley Dirksen

"God help us to be grateful for our blessings, never to be guilty of the sin of ingratitude, and to instill this same gratitude into the lives of our children. Someone has said that an ungrateful man is like a hog under a tree eating apples and never looking up to see where they come from." - Ezra Taft Benson

"The sad and shocking story of what has happened in America in recent years must be told. Our people must have the facts. There is safety in an informed public. There is real danger in a complacent, uninformed citizenry. This is our real danger today. Yes, the truth must be told even at the risk of destroying, in large measure, the influence of men who are widely respected and loved by the American people. The stakes are high. Freedom and survival is the issue." - Ezra Taft Benson

"Here are two kinds of light, the light on the hither side of the darkness and the light beyond the darkness. We must press on through the darkness and the terror of it if we would reach the holier light beyond. We are here — no matter who put us here, or how we came here — to fulfill a task. We cannot afford to go of our own volition until the last item of our duty is discharged." - Felix Adler

"The divine in man is our sole ground for believing that there is anything divine in the universe outside of man. Man is the revealer of the divine. At bottom, the world is to be interpreted in terms of joy, but of a joy that includes all the pain, includes it and transforms it and transcends it. The Light of the World is a light that is saturated with the darkness which it has overcome and transfigured." - Felix Adler

"The radiant future stretches forth its arms toward us, and binds us to be willing servants to its work, willingly to accept those limitations of the individual will which are indispensable in the service of a far-off cause, a service which at the same time disciplines and ennobles the individual himself." - Felix Adler

"I am firmly convinced that poverty?this sub-human condition in which the majority of humanity lives today?is more than a social issue. Poverty poses a major challenge to every Christian conscience and therefore to theology as well. People today often talk about contextual theologies but, in point of fact, theology has always been contextual. Some theologies, it is true, may be more conscious of and explicit about their contextuality, but all theological investigation is necessarily carried out within a specific historical context. When Augustine wrote The City of God, he was reflecting on what it meant for him and for his contemporaries to live the Gospel within a specific context of serious historical transformations. Our context today is characterized by a glaring disparity between the rich and the poor. No serious Christian can quietly ignore this situation. It is no longer possible for someone to say, ?Well, I didn?t know? about the suffering of the poor. Poverty has a visibility today that it did not have in the past. The faces of the poor must now be confronted. And we also understand the causes of poverty and the conditions that perpetuate it. There was a time when poverty was considered to be an unavoidable fate, but such a view is no longer possible or responsible. Now we know that poverty is not simply a misfortune; it is an injustice." - Gustavo Gutiérrez

"In the superman Nietzsche gave the world the conceivable and possible goal for all human effort. Remained there but still a problem and it was this: When the Superman Appears at last on earth, what then? Will there be another super superman to follow and another super-superman after that? In the end, man will become the equal of the creator of the universe, whoever or whatever He may be? Or will a period of decline after eating, with long return down the line, down through the superman to man again, and then on to the anthropoid ape, to the lower mammals, to the asexual cell, and, finally, to mere inert matter, gas, ether, and empty space?" - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken

"No day but has its evening." - Italian Proverbs

"Starting properly ensures the speedy completion of a process. A beginning is often blocked by one or more obstacles (potential barriers) the removal of which may ensure the smooth course of the process." - Italian Proverbs

"The virtue of silence is a great piece of knowledge." - Italian Proverbs

"There is no beard so well shaven but another barber will find something more to shave from it." - Italian Proverbs

"To every saint his torch." - Italian Proverbs

"When a wife sins the husband is never innocent." - Italian Proverbs

"When all men say you are an ass it is time to bray." - Italian Proverbs

"When the danger is past God is cheated." - Italian Proverbs

"You cannot discover new oceans unless you have the courage to lose sight of the shore." - Italian Proverbs

"If human beings could be propagated by cutting, like apple trees, aristocracy would be biologically sound." - J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane

"All stories are ultimately about the fall." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"And long there he lay, an image of the splendor of the Kings of Men in glory undimmed before the breaking of the world." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"And still Meriadoc the hobbit stood there blinking through his tears, and no one spoke to him, indeed none seemed to heed him. He brushed away the tears, and stooped to pick up the green shield that Eowyn had given him, and he slung it at his back. Then he looked for his sword that he had let fall; for even as he struck his blow his arm was numbed, and now he could only use his left hand." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"And that's the way of a real tale. Take any one that you're fond of. You may know, or guess, what kind of a tale it is, happy-ending or sad-ending, but the people in it don't know. And you don't want them to." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"At the hill?s foot Frodo found Aragorn, standing still and silent as a tree; but in his hand was a small golden bloom of elanor, and a light was in his eyes. He was wrapped in some fair memory: and as Frodo looked at him he knew that he beheld things as they had been in this same place. For the grim years were removed from the face of Aragorn, and he seemed clothed in white, a young lord fall and fair; and he spoke words in the Elvish tongue to one whom Frodo could not see. Arwen vanimelda, namarie! He said, and then he drew a breath, and returning out of his thought he looked at Frodo and smiled. `Here is the heart of Elvendom on earth,? he said, `and here my heart dwells ever, unless there be a light beyond the dark roads that we still must tread, you and I. Come with me!? And taking Frodo?s hand in his, he left the hill of Cerin Amroth and came there never again as a living man." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien

"Courage Merry, courage for our friends!" - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien