Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Revolution

"The rich man's dog gets more in the way of vaccination, medicine and medical care than do the workers upon whom the rich man's wealth is built." - Samora Machel, fully Samora Moisés Machel

"It's time we reduced the federal budget and left the family budget alone." - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

"Being human means throwing your whole life on the scales of destiny when need be, all the while rejoicing in every sunny day and every beautiful cloud." - Rosa Luxemburg, aka Rosalia Luxemburg, "Bloody Rosa"

"The masses are in reality their own leaders, dialectically creating their own development process." - Rosa Luxemburg, aka Rosalia Luxemburg, "Bloody Rosa"

"The modern proletarian class doesn’t carry out its struggle according to a plan set out in some book or theory; the modern workers’ struggle is a part of history, a part of social progress, and in the middle of history, in the middle of progress, in the middle of the fight, we learn how we must fight… That’s exactly what is laudable about it, that’s exactly why this colossal piece of culture, within the modern workers’ movement, is epoch-defining: that the great masses of the working people first forge from their own consciousness, from their own belief, and even from their own understanding the weapons of their own liberation." - Rosa Luxemburg, aka Rosalia Luxemburg, "Bloody Rosa"

"The times when the centre of gravity of political development and the crystallising agent of capitalist contradictions lay on the European continent, are long gone by. To-day Europe is only a link in the tangled chain of international connections and contradictions." - Rosa Luxemburg, aka Rosalia Luxemburg, "Bloody Rosa"

"We will be victorious if we have not forgotten how to learn." - Rosa Luxemburg, aka Rosalia Luxemburg, "Bloody Rosa"

"The human condition, but what of the angelic? Halfway between Allah-god and homosap, did they ever doubt? They did: challenging God's will one day they hid muttering beneath the Throne, daring to ask forbidden things: anti-questions. Is it right that. Could it not be argued. Freedom, the old antiquest. He calmed them down, naturally, employing management skills a la god. Flattered them: you will be the instruments of my will on earth, the salvation-damnation of man, all the usual etcetera. And hey presto, the end of protest, on with the haloes, back to work. Angels are easily pacified; turn them into instruments and they'll play your harpy tune. Human beings are tougher nuts, can doubt anything, even the evidence of their own eyes. Of being-their-own-eyes. Of what, as they sink heavy-lidded, transpires behind closed peepers ... angels, they don't have much in the way of a will. To will is to disagree; not to submit; to dissent." - Salman Rushdie, fully Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie

"Every American has the constitutional right not to be taxed or have his tax money expended for the establishment of religion." - Sam Ervin, fully Samuel James "Sam" Ervin, Jr.

"If the European discovery had been delayed for a century or two, it is possible that the Aztec in Mexico or the Iroquois in North America would have established strong native states capable of adopting European war tactics and maintaining their independence to this day, as Japan kept her independence from China." - Samuel Eliot Morison

"No big modern war has been won without preponderant sea power; and, conversely, very few rebellions of maritime provinces have succeeded without acquiring sea power." - Samuel Eliot Morison

"Among the popular and representative systems of government I do not approve of the federal system: it is too perfect; and it requires virtues and political talents much superior to our own." - Simón Bolívar, fully Simón José Antonio de la Santísima Trinidad Bolívar y Palacios Ponte y Blanco

"It is not the cause for which men took up arms that makes a victory more just or less, it is the order that is established when arms have been laid down." - Simone Weil

"I love these tales because, in more reasonable attributions of motive, they so beautifully embody a fundamental theme of historical explanation - that consequences of substantial import often arise from triggers of entirely different intent. In other words, current utility bears no necessary relationship with historical origin." - Stephan Jay Gould

"Since the universe must contain millions of appropriate planets, consciousness in some form - but not with the paired eyes and limbs, and the brain built of neurons in the only example we know - may evolve frequently. But if only one origin of life in a million ever leads to consciousness, then Martian bacteria most emphatically do not imply Little Green Men.)" - Stephan Jay Gould

"The enemy is not fundamentalism; it is intolerance. In this case, the intolerance is perverse since it masquerades under the liberal rhetoric of equal time. But mistake it not." - Stephan Jay Gould

"The facts of nature are what they are, but we can only view them through the spectacles of our mind. Our mind works largely by metaphor and comparison, not always (or often) by relentless logic. When we are caught in conceptual traps, the best exit is often a change in metaphor — not because the new guideline will be truer to nature (for neither the old nor the new metaphor lies out there in the woods), but because we need a shift to more fruitful perspectives, and metaphor is often the best agent of conceptual transition." - Stephan Jay Gould

"When I see a man in a state of anxiety, I say, “What can this man want? If he did not want something which is not in his power, how could he still be anxious?” [Epictetus]" - Stoics, The Stoics or Stoicism NULL

"A judiciary independent of a king or executive alone is a good thing; but independence of the will of the nation is a solecism, at least in a republican government." - Thomas Jefferson

"Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to, convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty." - Thomas Jefferson

"Certainly no nation ever before abandoned to the avarice and jugglings of private individuals to regulate according to their own interests, the quantum of circulating medium for the nation — to inflate, by deluges of paper, the nominal prices of property, and then to buy up that property at 1s. in the pound, having first withdrawn the floating medium which might endanger a competition in purchase. Yet this is what has been done, and will be done, unless stayed by the protecting hand of the legislature. The evil has been produced by the error of their sanction of this ruinous machinery of banks; and justice, wisdom, duty, all require that they should interpose and arrest it before the schemes of plunder and spoliation desolate the country." - Thomas Jefferson

"In case of an abuse of the delegated powers, the members of the General Government, being chosen by the people, a change by the people would be the constitutional remedy." - Thomas Jefferson

"Our rulers can have authority over such natural rights only as we have submitted to them." - 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

"The true foundation of republican government is the equal right of every citizen in his person and property and in their management." - Thomas Jefferson

"It is not a field of a few acres of ground, but a cause, that we are defending, and whether we defeat the enemy in one battle, or by degrees, the consequences will be the same." - Thomas Paine

"The essential character of Neo-Platonism comes out in its theory of the mystical exaltation of the subject to God. It is the extremity of subjectivism, the forcing of the individual subject to the centre of the universe, to the position of the Absolute Being. And it follows naturally upon the heels of Scepticism. In the Sceptics all faith in the power of thought and reason had finally died out. They {377} took as their watchword the utter impotence of reason to reach the truth. From this it was but a step to the position that, if we cannot attain truth by the natural means of thought, we will do so by a miracle. If ordinary consciousness will not suffice, we will pass beyond ordinary consciousness altogether. Neo-Platonism is founded upon despair, the despair of reason. It is the last frantic struggle of the Greek spirit to reach, by desperate means, by force, the point which it felt it had failed to reach by reason. It seeks to take the Absolute by storm. It feels that where sobriety has failed, the violence of spiritual intoxication may succeed. It was natural that philosophy should end here. For philosophy is founded upon reason. It is the effort to comprehend, to understand, to grasp the reality of things intellectually. Therefore it cannot admit anything higher than reason. To exalt intuition, ecstasy, or rapture, above thought--this is death to philosophy. Philosophy in making such an admission, lets out its own life-blood, which is thought. In Neo-Platonism, therefore, ancient philosophy commits suicide. This is the end. The place of philosophy is taken henceforth by religion. Christianity triumphs, and sweeps away all independent thought from its path. There is no more philosophy now till a new spirit of enquiry and wonder is breathed into man at the Renaissance and the Reformation. Then the new era begins, and gives birth to a new philosophic impulse, under the influence of which we are still living. But to reach that new era of philosophy, the human spirit had first to pass through the arid wastes of Scholasticism." - W. T. Stace, fully Walter Terence Stace

"Florentine Ingratitude: Sir Joshua sent his own portrait to The birthplace of Michael Angelo, And in the hand of the simpering fool He put a dirty paper scroll, And on the paper, to be polite, Did ‘Sketches by Michael Angelo’ write. The Florentines said ‘’Tis a Dutch-English bore, Michael Angelo’s name writ on Rembrandt’s door.’ The Florentines call it an English fetch, For Michael Angelo never did sketch; 10 Every line of his has meaning, And needs neither suckling nor weaning. ’Tis the trading English-Venetian cant To speak Michael Angelo, and act Rembrandt: It will set his Dutch friends all in a roar To write ‘Mich. Ang.’ on Rembrandt’s door; But you must not bring in your hand a lie If you mean that the Florentines should buy. Giotto’s circle or Apelles’ line Were not the work of sketchers drunk with wine; Nor of the city clock’s running … fashion; Nor of Sir Isaac Newton’s calculation." - William Blake

"Sing louder around to the bells' cheerful sound, while our sports shall be seen on the echoing green." - William Blake

"The past is not dead. Indeed, it is often not even past." - Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant

"Most history is guessing, and the rest is prejudice." - Will and Ariel Durant

"Popular opinion is oftenest, what Carlyle pronounced it to be, a lie!" - Wendell Phillips

"The Columbia faculty was not, of course, composed wholly of young skeptics and esthetes. By any count of academic noses, they were a small minority." - Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers

"The pessimist stared at his visitor. He had never talked with the Devil before. But he had read descriptions of him by people who had and who remembered Satan as a goat, a bull, a dog, a cat, a big black man with horns, claws and a tail. The presence beside him looked distinguished, relaxed, urbane. Except for a face too characterful to be contemporary, the Devil might have been a movie magnate, an airline executive, a college president, a great surgeon or a grain speculator. “And yet,” thought the pessimist, “those are certainly not the eyes of a Yale man.”" - Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers

"Make it a point to scatter creative seeds every day of your life!" - Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson

"Sail Forth- Steer for the deep waters only. Reckless O soul, exploring. I with thee and thou with me. For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared go. And we will risk the ship, ourselves, and all." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman

"It did not compute the profound contradiction between the claim of "leader of the free world" and the rapacious occupation of the world for the sake of markets, resources, and control. The empire doesn't question itself; it "sucks it up" and moves on, restoring its hegemony and bringing the dissenters to justice." - Walter Brueggemann

"An oral culture simply does not deal in such items as geometrical figures, abstract categorization, formally logical reasoning processes, definitions, or even comprehensive descriptions, or articulated self-analysis, all of which derive not simply from thought itself but from text-formed thought." - Walter J. Ong, fully Walter Jackson Ong

"I've waited decades for this chance to exercise my rights to free speech. But the Chinese people have been waiting for centuries." - Wei Jingsheng or Jing-sheng

"The theory of democratic government is not that the will of the people is always right, but rather that normal human beings of average intelligence will, if given a chance, learn the right and best course by bitter experience." - W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois

"It is widely recognized that the weakest students can be very unhappy if their special needs are not met. It is often not recognized that the ablest too can suffer acutely, if they are captive in a lockstep class and have to work, at what seems to them a snail's pace, through material they could have disposed of quickly when they were several years younger. The root of the trouble lies in the concept that education is something done to a pupil by a teacher. This is entirely untrue, at any rate for mathematics. Young mathematicians are hungry for knowledge and nothing delights them more than to be given the opportunity to read ahead on their own. The strongest students will then reach topics far beyond anything that a school curriculum could possibly contain or a school teacher be expected to expound. Even those, who are slightly above the level the curriculum envisages, will benefit from the relief of boredom and the extra knowledge acquired." - W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer

"All the gifts which fortune bestows she can easily take away; but education, when combined with intelligence, never fails, but abides steadily on to the very end of life." - Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL

"A bourgeois revolution is absolutely necessary in the interests of the proletariat. The more complete and determined, the more consistent the bourgeois revolution, the more assured will be the proletarian struggle against the bourgeoisie for Socialism. Only those who are ignorant of the rudiments of scientific Socialism can regard this conclusion as new or strange, paradoxical." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"A full 'definition of an object must include the whole of human experience, both as a criterion of truth and a practical indicator of its connection with human wants." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"A revolutionary class cannot but wish for the defeat of its government in a reactionary war." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"America has become one of the foremost countries in regard to the depth of the abyss which lies between the handful of arrogant multimillionaires who wallow in filth and luxury, and the millions of working people who constantly live on the verge of pauperism." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"Discrimination among citizens on account of their religious convictions is wholly intolerable. Even the bare mention of a citizen's religion in official documents should unquestionably be eliminated." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"In view of the fact that this criticism of Marxism has long been directed from the political platform, from university chairs, in numerous pamphlets and in a series of learned treatises, in view of the fact that the entire younger generation of the educated classes has been systematically reared for decades on this criticism, it is not surprising that the new critical trend in Social-Democracy should spring up, all complete, like Minerva from the head of Jove." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"It is not done in modern socialist parties to talk or even think about the significance of this idea, — the “withering away” of the state." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin