Great Throughts Treasury

"The final political result of the revolution may prove to be that, in spite of the formal independence of Social-Democracy, in spite of its complete organizational individuality as a separate party, it will in fact not be independent, it will not be able to put the imprint of its proletarian independence on the course of events, will prove so weak that, on the whole and in the last analysis, its dissolving in the bourgeois democracy will nonetheless be a historical fact." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"We shall not achieve socialism without a struggle. But we are ready to fight, we have started it and we shall finish it with the aid of the apparatus called the Soviets." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"We would be deceiving both ourselves and the people if we concealed from the masses the necessity of a desperate, bloody war of extermination, as the immediate task of the coming revolutionary action." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"When nine-tenths of Africa had been seized (by 1900), when the whole world had been divided up, there was inevitably ushered in the era of monopoly possession of colonies and, consequently, of particularly intense struggle for the division and the re-division of the world." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

"But being a religious person, I would like to question the validity of everything for myself. That is the essence of religion, which is humility. Not to accept anything unless you understand the meaning there of, personally in your life. If you accept without understanding, you will be imposing upon the mind. And then you are neither true to the mind, nor true to the meaning. The essence of religion, which is humility, lies in uncovering the meaning of life, uncovering the meaning of every moment, learning the meaning for ourselves." - Vimala Thakar

"Keeping the Body and Brain Sensitive, Alert and Sharp - It is necessary to keep the body sensitive, alert and sharp, to feed it and to clothe it correctly, properly; to give it a chance to go through exercises which will mobilize not only the muscles, but also the nerves and be careful that the body does not become sluggish; to feed it correctly - not over- nor under-feeding it; to allow it to have sleep, necessary for its health - not to over- nor under-sleep; not to expose it to too much brooding, worrying, anxiety, which are impotent ways of wasting energy; not entering into excesses of indulgence and not denying and suppressing in the name of austerity, religion or discipline; because the cerebral organ, the brain is woven into this biological structure. It is very important, because in a sluggish body, in a lazy body, you can't have a sharp, sensitive, alert brain, which would voluntarily go into non-action. Self-education is vitally necessary in order to enable the cerebral organ to function in an orderly, quiet way. When there is order, there is a quietness; an orderly person hardly gets excited. It is disorder that leads to excitement, enthusiasm, depression which is the other side of excitement, passivity which is the obverse of enthusiasm. When one has arrived at that orderliness in daily living, in whatever one does, then only one can talk about the brain voluntarily, relinquishing the outgoing and the ingoing movement, relinquishing voluntarily the hold upon the known and the unknown, the visible and the invisible, so that the infinite could be." - Vimala Thakar

"The essence of religion is the personal discovery of the meaning of life, the meaning of truth. Religion is related to the unconditional, total freedom that truth confers on us. It is a revolution of the whole way of living. Religion moves us from the superficial layers of existence and encourages us to go deeper to the roots of life. It is an inward journey to the depths of our being." - Vimala Thakar

"There is much unexplored potential in each human being. We are not just flesh and bone or an amalgamation of conditionings. If this were so, our future on this planet would not be very bright. But there is infinitely more to life, and each passionate being who dares to explore beyond the fragmentary and superficial into the mystery of totality helps all humanity perceive what it is to be fully human. Revolution, total revolution, implies experimenting with the impossible. And when an individual takes a step in the direction of the new, the impossible, the whole human race travels through that individual." - Vimala Thakar

"We have accepted the watertight compartments of society, the fragmentation of living as factual and necessary. We live in relationship to these fragments and accept the internalized divisions—the various roles we play, the contradictory value systems, the opposing motives and priorities—as reality. We are at odds with ourselves internally; we believe that the inner is fundamentally different from the outer, that what is me is quite separate from the not-me, that divisions among people and nations are necessary, and yet we wonder why there are tensions, conflicts, wars in the world. The conflicts begin with minds that believe in fragmentation and are ignorant of wholeness." - Vimala Thakar

"We will discover that there are systems and structures that inevitably lead to aggression, exploitation, and war. We have accepted aggression as a way of living. We create and entrench ourselves in structures which culminate in wars. Retaining the structures and avoiding wars is not possible. You and I as individuals have to realize how we are responsible, how we cooperate with the systems and thereby participate in the violence and wars. And then we must begin to inquire whether we can discontinue cooperating with the systems, whether we can stop participating in wars, and explore alternative ways of living for ourselves." - Vimala Thakar

"There are two ways of thinking about painting, how not to do it and how to do it; how to do it -- with much drawing and little color; how not to do it -- with much color and little drawing." - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

"What can we say if once the hidden forces of sympathy and love have been roused in us?" - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

"I looked at the moss-covered stones; some of them seemed to have the features of a man, but they could not answer me. Then I had a dream, and in my dream one of these small stones appeared to me and told me that the maker of all was Wakan Tanka, and that in order to honor him I must honor his works in nature. The stone said that by my search I had shown myself worthy of supernatural help. It said that if I were curing a sick person I might ask its assistance and that all the forces of nature would help me work a cure." - Vine Deloria, fully Vine Victor Deloria, Jr.

"Rearing a family is probably the most difficult job in the world. It resembles two business firms merging their respective resources to make a single product. All the potential headaches of that operation are present when an adult male and an adult female join to steer a child from infancy to adulthood." - Virginia Satir

"As long as she thinks of a man, nobody objects to a woman thinking." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"At this Helen laughed outright. "Nonsense," she said. "You're not a Christian. You've never thought what you are.—And there are lots of other questions," she continued, "though perhaps we can't ask them yet." Although they had talked so freely they were all uncomfortably conscious that they really knew nothing about each other. "The important questions," Hewet pondered, "the really interesting ones. I doubt that one ever does ask them." Rachel, who was slow to accept the fact that only a very few things can be said even by people who know each other well, insisted on knowing what he meant. "Whether we've ever been in love?" she enquired. "Is that the kind of question you mean?"" - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"To depend upon a profession is a less odious form of slavery than to depend upon a father." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"We have been to Rodmell, and as usual I come home depressed – for no reason. Merely moods. Have other people as many as I have? That I shall never now. And sometimes I suppose that even if I came to the end of my incessant search into waht people are and feel I should know nothing still." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf

"It never troubles the wolf how many the sheep may be." - Virgil, also Vergil, fully Publius Vergilius Maro NULL

"Living in the now is freedom from all problems connected with time. You ought to remember that sentence, you ought to memorize it, and ought to take it out, you ought to practice it, you ought to apply it. And most of all, you ought to rejoice in it because you have just heard how not to be wretched, miserable you anymore but to be a brand new, and forever brand new man or woman." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"Mental sickness has set up a system by which it never loses. No matter what you do and no matter what the results are, you will win an ego-victory. That means that when you send your desires out into the world: 1. You will get what you want, or 2. You won’t get what you want. Of you get what you want, the pseudo-nature says, I have at last been given what I so richly deserve, and the sickness feels affirmed. If you don’t get what you want, you feel sorry for yourself. You still feel affirmed because you get a feeling, and that’s all that neurosis wants is a feeling." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"If no one loved, the sun would go out" - Victor Hugo

"It is an unpleasant thing to go to bed without supper; it is a still less pleasant thing not to sup and not to know where one is to sleep." - Victor Hugo

"Oh, the love of a mother, love no one forgets; miraculous bread which God distributes and multiplies; board always spread by the paternal hearth, whereat each has his portion, and all have it entire!" - Victor Hugo

"That a cat may change into a lion, prefects of police do not believe possible; this can happen, nonetheless." - Victor Hugo

"That day was sunshine from start to finish. All nature seemed to be on a vacation. The flower beds and lawns of Saint-Cloud were balmy with perfume; the breeze from the Seine vaguely stirred the leaves; the boughs were gesticulating in the wind; the bees were pillaging the jasmine; a whole bohemian crew of butterflies had settled in the yarrow, clover, and wild oats. The stately park of the King of France was invaded by a swarm of vagabonds, the birds." - Victor Hugo

"The brutalities of progress are called revolutions. When they are over we realize this: that the human race has been roughly handled, but that it has advanced." - Victor Hugo

"By declaring that man is responsible and must actualize the potential meaning of his life, I wish to stress that the true meaning of life is to be discovered in the world rather than within man or his own psyche, as though it were a closed system. I have termed this constitutive characteristic the self-transcendence of human existence. It denotes the fact that being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself--be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself--by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love--the more human he is and the more he actualizes himself. What is called self-actualization is not an attainable aim at all, for the simple reason that the more one would strive for it, the more he would miss it. In other words, self-actualization is possible only as a side-effect of self-transcendence." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"I said that someone looks down on each of us in difficult hours — a friend, a wife, somebody alive or dead, or a God — and he would not expect us to disappoint him. He would hope to find us suffering proudly — not miserably — knowing how to die." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl

"In his hearth and home, in his palace, upon his soft and comfortable bed, day and night, the flower-girls scatter flower petals; but without the Lord's Name, the body is miserable. Horses, elephants, lances, marching bands, armies, standard bearers, royal attendants and ostentatious displays - without the Lord of the Universe, these undertakings are all useless." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"The Creator Himself has created the universe; He Himself shall destroy it." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"The upper part of the womb do I place below, there shall come to thee neither offspring nor birth. I render thee sterile and devoid of offspring; a stone do I make into a cover for thee." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"This ocean too is vast and full of mystery; it has its unplumbed depths. It tosses man about from birth to death and again from death to birth." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"Those who serve the True Guru are very beautiful; they cast off the filth of selfishness and conceit." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"Worship is more for effect, a play acted with the pit in view; there is no sincerity." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"A wonderful privilege it was to be thus admitted into the soul of a man of genius, to be allowed to share the ecstasies and the agonies of his inmost life." - Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

"The remedy for the Great Depression is to give the workers access to the means of production, and let them produce for themselves, not for others… the American way." - Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

"Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.... Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying.... Open your eyes; listen, listen. That is what the novelists say. But they don't tell you what you will see and hear. All they can tell you is what they have seen and heard, in their time in this world, a third of it spent in sleep and dreaming, another third of it spent in telling lies." - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

"Yes. There's really only one question that can be answered, Genry, and we already know the answer....The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next." - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

"All writers - all people - have their stores of private and family legends which lie like a collection of half-forgotten, often violent toys on the floor of memory." - V. S. Pritchett, fully Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett

"Most comic writers like to think they could play it straight if only their public would let them. Waugh is able to be grave without difficulty for he has always been comic for serious reasons. He has his own, almost romantic sense of propriety." - V. S. Pritchett, fully Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett

"All human suffering concerns each human being." - Václav Havel

"Our civilization has essentially globalized only the surfaces of our lives. But our inner self continues to have a life of its own. And the fewer answers the era of rational knowledge provides to the basic questions of human Being, the more deeply it would seem that people, behind its back as it were, cling to the ancient certainties of their tribe. Because of this, individual cultures, increasingly lumped together by contemporary civilization, are realizing with new urgency their own inner autonomy and the inner differences of others." - Václav Havel

"The relationship to the world that the modern science fostered and shaped now appears to have exhausted its potential. It is increasingly clear that, strangely, the relationship is missing something. It fails to connect with the most intrinsic nature of reality and with natural human experience. It is now more of a source of disintegration and doubt than a source of integration and meaning. It produces what amounts to a state of schizophrenia: Man as an observer is becoming completely alienated from himself as a being." - Václav Havel

"Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, nothing will change for the better in the sphere of our Being as humans, and the catastrophe toward which this world is headed, whether it be ecological, social, demographic or a general breakdown of civilization, will be unavoidable. If we are no longer threatened by world war or by the danger that the absurd mountains of accumulated nuclear weapons might blow up the world, this does not mean that we have definitively won. We are in fact far from definite victory." - Václav Havel

"Enthusiasm has great strength. There is no greater strength than enthusiasm. There is nothing which is not attainable in this world for the enthusiastic." - Valmiki NULL

"The active support more men forward boredom that work." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL

"Although the Buddhadharma has not perished, the Sangha itself has. Morality and virtue should be cultivated, but are not. The honest and sincere ones invite ridicule, While the false and scheming ones enjoy praise. In the world of the five turbidities, pure people are rare. Living beings never awaken from the three kinds of intoxication.I have some earnest words of exhortation for the young generation of the Sangha: The revival of our religion depends on you Bhikshus." - Hsuan Hua, aka An Tzu and Tu Lun

"Nature and revelation are alike God's books; each may have mysteries, but in each there are plain practical lessons for everyday duty." - Tryon Edwards

"Only if you give the Palestinians something to lose is there a hope that they will agree to moderate their demands... I believe that as soon as Ahmed has a seat in the bus, he will limit his demands." - Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman