Great Throughts Treasury

"General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!" - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan

"What we have found in this country, and maybe we're more aware of it now, is one problem that we've had, even in the best of times, and that is the people who are sleeping on the grates, the homeless, you might say, by choice." - 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"

"He should first show them in deeds rather than words all that is good and holy." - Saint Benedict of Nursia NULL

"Don't be fooled by my Beauty... the Light of my face comes from the Candle of my Spirit." - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL

"Man being imperfect, no perfect social order ever can be created." - Russell Kirk

"The devil is not so frightful as he is painted. (Any person of bad character is not so bad as people say he is." - Russian Proverbs

"Life is a jest; and all things show it. I thought so once; but now I know it." - Bette Davis, Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis

"The path to heaven lies through heaven, and all the way to heaven is heaven." - Saint Catherine of Siena NULL

"But in the holy love which is God, I beg all brothers, both the minister and the others, as they overcome every obstacle and put aside every care and anxiety, to strive as best they can to serve, love, honor, and adore the Lord God with a clean heart and a pure mind, for this is what He desires above all things." - Saint Francis of Assisi, born Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone NULL

"The secret consciousness of duty well performed; the public voice of praise that honors virtue, and rewards it; all these are yours." - Saint Francis of Assisi, born Giovanni Francesco di Bernardone NULL

"God is awakened in the soul. God breathes in the soul. Wisdom is more active than all active things. Oh, how happy is this soul that is ever conscious of God resting and reposing within its breast!" - Saint John of the Cross, born Juan de Yepes Álvarez NULL

"It is just as shameful for lovers of the flesh and the belly to search out spiritual things as it is for a harlot to discourse on chastity." - Saint Isaac of Nineveh, also Isaac the Syrian, Isaac of Qatar and Isaac Syrus NULL

"According to established popular usage, which the Philosopher considers should be our guide in the naming of things, they are called 'wise' who put things in their right* order and control them well. Now, in all things that are to be controlled and put in order to an end, the measure of control and order must be taken from the end in view; and the proper end of everything is something good. Hence we see in the arts that art A governs and, as it were, lords it over art B, when the proper end of art B belongs to A. Thus the art of medicine lords it over the art of the apothecary, because health, the object of medicine, is the end of all drugs that the apothecary's art compounds. These arts that lord it over others are called 'master-building,' or 'masterful arts'; and the 'master-builders' who practice them arrogate to themselves the name of 'wise men.' But because these persons deal with the ends in view of certain particular things, without attaining to the general end of all things, they are called 'wise in this or that particular thing,' as it is said, 'As a wise architect I have laid the foundation' while the name of 'wise' without qualification is reserved for him alone who deals with the last end of the universe, which is also the first beginning of the order of the universe. Hence, according to the Philosopher, it is proper to the wise man to consider the highest causes." - Saint Thomas Aquinas, aka Thomas of Aquin or Aquino, Doctor Angelicus, Doctor Communis or Doctor Universalis

"If, on the contrary, man is above all an eminently living being, every specimen of which is ever new and original, a being strongly influenced by ultra-physical faculties -- spirit, intellect, emotions -- if, in one word, man is a whole that can only be ruled from its own center, medicine, then, will be but an art or a craft to be applied in each case to a concrete individual. And then, rather than 'medicine', there will be medicine-men." - Salvador de Madariaga, fully Salvador de Madariaga y Rojo

"The world has reached such a degree of interdependence... that international cooperation has become essential... the only self-supporting region of the world is the whole world... Only one opinion and only one market cover the face of the earth." - Salvador de Madariaga, fully Salvador de Madariaga y Rojo

"As if religion was intended For nothing else but to be mended." - Samuel Butler

"Propositions prey upon and are grounded upon one another just like living forms. They support one another as plants and animals do; they are based ultimately on credit, or faith, rather than the cash of irrefragable conviction. The whole universe is carried on on the credit system, and if the mutual confidence on which it is based were to collapse, it must itself collapse immediately. Just or unjust, it lives by faith; it is based on vague and impalpable opinion that by some inscrutable process passes into will and action, and is made manifest in matter and in flesh; it is meteoric — suspended in mid-air; it is the baseless fabric of a vision to vast, so vivid, and so gorgeous that no base can seem more broad than such stupendous baselessness, and yet any man can bring it about his ears by being over-curious; when faith fails, a system based on faith fails also." - Samuel Butler

"There can be no doubt about faith and not reason being the ultimate ratio. Even Euclid, who has laid himself as little open to the charge of credulity as any writer who ever lived, cannot get beyond this. He has no demonstrable first premise. He requires postulates and axioms which transcend demonstration, and without which he can do nothing. His superstructure indeed is demonstration, but his ground his faith. Nor again can he get further than telling a man he is a fool if he persists in differing from him. He says which is absurd, and declines to discuss the matter further. Faith and authority, therefore, prove to be as necessary for him as for anyone else." - Samuel Butler

"What is faith but a kind of betting or speculation after all? It should be, I bet that my Redeemer liveth." - Samuel Butler

"When desperate ills demand a speedy cure, Distrust is cowardice, and prudence folly." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson

"He who is the cause of all and who enables all things to function according to their nature; who brings to maturity all that can be ripened; who, being non-dual, rules over the whole universe and engages the gunas in their respective functions-He is concealed in the Upanishads, the secret part of the Vedas. Brahma knew Him who can be known only from the evidence of the Vedas. The gods and seers of olden times who knew Him became Brahman and attained Immortality." - Shvetashvatara Upanishad

"The fateful question for the human species seems to me to be whether and to what extent their cultural development will succeed in mastering the disturbance of their communal life by the human instinct of aggression and self-destruction … One thing only do I know for certain and that is that man's judgments of value follow directly from his wishes for happiness—that, accordingly, they are an attempt to support his illusions with arguments." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud

"Art is the symbol of the two noblest human efforts: to construct... and to refrain from destruction." - Simone Weil

"Two prisoners whose cells adjoin communicate with each other by knocking on the wall. The wall is the thing which separates them but is also their means of communication. It is the same with us and God. Every separation is a link." - Simone Weil

"The greatest luxury of riches is that they enable you to escape so much good advice." - Arthur Helps, fully Sir Arthur Helps

"Concepts create idols; only wonder comprehends [grasps] anything. People kill one another over idols. Wonder makes us fall to our knees." - Gregory Nazianzen, aka Saint Gregory of Nazianzus or Gregory the Theologian

"To give, and not to count the cost to fight, and not to heed the wounds, to toil, and not to seek for rest, to labor, and not to ask for any reward, save that of knowing that we do thy will." - Ignatius Loyola, aka Saint Ignatius of Loyola

"Lift up your hands to heaven to draw down God’s blessings on those you are guiding." - Jean Baptiste Lacordaire, fully Jean Baptiste Henri Lacordaire

"All creatures have received from the Creator their order of being and their beginning, and some their consummation too. But the end of virtue is endless. For the Psalmist says: Of all perfection I have seen the end, but Thy commandment is exceeding spacious and endless. If some good ascetics go from the strength of action to the strength of divine vision, and if love never faileth, and if the Lord will guard the coming in of your fear and the going out of your love, then the end of love will be truly endless. We shall never cease to advance in it, either in the present or in the future life, continually adding light to light. And however strange what I have said may seem to many, nevertheless it shall be said. According to the testimonies we have given, I would say, blessed father, even the spiritual beings [i.e. the angels] do not lack progress; on the contrary, they ever add glory to glory, and knowledge to knowledge." - John Climacus, fully Saint John Climacus, aka John of the Ladder, John Scholasticus and John Sinaites

"It happens. I do not know how, that most of the proud never really discover their true selves. They think they have conquered their passions and they find out how poor they really are only after they die." - John Climacus, fully Saint John Climacus, aka John of the Ladder, John Scholasticus and John Sinaites

"To admire the labors of the saints is good; to emulate them wins salvation; but to wish suddenly to imitate their life in every point is unreasonable and impossible." - John Climacus, fully Saint John Climacus, aka John of the Ladder, John Scholasticus and John Sinaites

"Secular or Civil authority is instituted by men; it is in the people unless they bestow it on a Prince. This Power is immediately in the Multitude, as in the subject of it; for this Power is in the Divine Law, but the Divine Law hath given this power to no particular man. If the Positive Law be taken away, there is left no Reason amongst the Multitude (who are Equal) one rather than another should bear the Rule over the Rest. Power is given to the multitude to one man, or to more, by the same Law of Nature; for the Commonwealth cannot exercise this Power, therefore it is bound to bestow it upon some One man or some Few. It depends upon the Consent of the multitude to ordain over themselves a King or other Magistrates, and if there be a lawful cause, the multitude may change the Kingdom into an Aristocracy or Democracy." - Robert Bellarmine, fully Saint Robert Bellarmine

"To assert that the earth revolves around the sun is as erroneous to claim that Jesus was not born of a virgin." - Robert Bellarmine, fully Saint Robert Bellarmine

"The terrain of the mysteries is the ordinary. To seek out mystery, we don't have to go anywhere. We must simply change our perception, our description, our consciousness of where we are." - Starhawk, born Miriam Simos NULL

"Do not men then disown God when they will walk in ways edged with thorns, wherein they meet with the arrows of conscience, at every turn, in their sides; and slide down to an everlasting punishment, sink under an intolerable slavery, to contradict the will of God? when they will prefer a sensual satisfaction, with a combustion in their consciences, violation of their reasons, gnawing cares and weary travels before the honor of God, the dignity of their natures, the happiness of peace and health, which might be preserved at a cheaper rate than they are at to destroy them?" - Stephen Charnock

"Man witnesseth to a God in the operations and reflections of conscience. Their thoughts are accusing or excusing. An inward comfort attends good actions, and an inward torment follows bad ones; for there is in every man’s conscience fear of punishment and hope of reward: there is, therefore, a sense of some superior judge, which hath the power both of rewarding and punishing. If man were his supreme rule, what need he fear punishment, since no man would inflict any evil or torment on himself; nor can any man be said to reward himself, for all rewards refer to another, to whom the action is pleasing, and is a conferring some good a man had not before; if an action be done by a subject or servant, with hopes of reward, it cannot be imagined that he expects a reward from himself, but from the prince or person whom he eyes in that action, and for whose sake he doth it." - Stephen Charnock

"Motions from Satan will thrust themselves in with our most raised and angelical frames; he loves to take off the edge of our spirits from God; he acts but after the old rate; he from the first envied God an obedience from man, and envied man the felicity of communion with God; he is unwilling God should have the honor of worship, and that we should have the fruit of it; he hath himself lost it, and therefore is unwilling we should enjoy it; and being subtle, he knows how to make impressions upon us suitable to our inbred corruptions, and assault us in the weakest part. He knows all the avenues to get within us (as he did in the temptation of Eve), and being a spirit, he wants not a power to dart them immediately upon our fancy; and being a spirit, and therefore active and nimble, he can shoot those darts faster than our weakness can beat them off." - Stephen Charnock

"Since nothing but God is eternal, nothing but God is worth the loving." - Stephen Charnock

"On seeing the Enterprise's warp engine while visiting the set of Star Trek: The Next Generation (where he would briefly play himself in the 1993 episode Descent, Part I), Hawking smiled and said: I'm working on that." - Stephen Hawking

"With Nietzsche, the black pirates' flag appears for the first time on the high sea of German knowledge. (He is) a different man, from a different race, (his,) a new kind of heroism, philosophy ... with bellicose weapons and armor." - Stefan Zweig

"Writing poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric." - Theodor W. Adorno, born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund

"Justice is the idea of God; the ideal of men; the rule of conduct writ in the nature of mankind." - Theodore Parker

"The great man has more of human nature than other men organized in him." - Theodore Parker

"With the help of dedicated Americans from our party, every party, and no party at all, I intend to mount that stairway to preach peace for our nation and world." - Ted Sorensen, fully Theodore Chalkin "Ted" Sorensen

"And now, first and foremost, you can never afford to forget for a moment what is the object of our forest policy. That object is not to preserve forests because they beautiful, though that is good in itself; nor because they are refuges for the wild creatures of the wilderness, though that, too, is good in itself; but the primary object of our forest policy, as of the land policy of the United States, is the making of prosperous homes. It is part of the traditional policy of home making in our country. Every other consideration comes as secondary. You yourselves have got to keep this practical object before your minds: to remember that a forest which contributes nothing to the wealth, progress, or safety of the country is of no interest to the Government, and should be of little interest to the forester. Your attention must be directed to the preservation of forests, not as an end in itself, but as the means of preserving and increasing the prosperity of the nation." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"Facing the immense complexity of modern social and industrial conditions, there is need to use freely and unhesitatingly the collective power of all of us; and yet no exercise of collective power will ever avail if the average individual does not keep his or her sense of personal duty, initiative, and responsibility. There is need to develop all the virtues that have the state for their sphere of action; but these virtues are as dust in a windy street unless back of them lie the strong and tender virtues of a family life based on the love of the one man for the one woman and on their joyous and fearless acceptance of their common obligation to the children that are theirs. There must be the keenest sense of duty, and with it must go the joy of living; there must be shame at the thought of shirking the hard work of the world, and at the same time delight in the many-sided beauty of life." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"I don't pity any man who does hard work worth doing. I admire him. I pity the creature who does not work, at whichever end of the social scale he may regard himself as being." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"No man can be a good citizen unless he has a wage more than sufficient to cover the bare cost of living, and hours of labor short enough so after his day’s work is done he will have time and energy to bear his share in the management of the community, to help in carrying the general load." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt

"The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight; that he shall not be a mere passenger, but shall do his share in the work that each generation of us finds ready to hand; and, furthermore, that in doing his work he shall show, not only the capacity for sturdy self-help, but also self-respecting regard for the rights of others." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt