Great Throughts Treasury

"We must assume that the members of a public will not anticipate a problem much before its crisis has become obvious, nor stay with the problem long after its crisis has past. They will not know the antecedent events, will not have seen the issue as it developed, will not have thought out or willed a program, and will not be able to predict the consequences of acting on that program. We must assume as a theoretically fixed premise of popular government that normally men as members of a public will not be well informed, continuously interested, nonpartisan, creative, or executive. We must assume that a public is inexpert in its curiosity, intermittent, and that it discerns only gross distinctions, is slow to be aroused, and quickly diverted; that, since it acts by aligning itself, it personalizes whatever it considers, and is interested only when events have been melodramatized as a conflict." - Walter Lippmann

"Words have always been the bane of religion as well as its vehicle. Religious emotion has enormous motive force, but it is the easiest thing in the world for it to sizzle away in high professions and wordy prayers. In that case, it is a substitute and counterfeit, and a damage to the Reign of God among men." - Walter Rauschenbusch

"A sound-dominated verbal economy is consonant with aggregative (harmonizing) tendencies rather than with analytic, dissecting tendencies. It is consonant also with the conservative holism, with situational thinking rather than abstract thinking, with a certain humanistic organization of knowledge around the actions of human and anthromorphic beings, interiorized persons, rather than around impersonal things." - Walter J. Ong, fully Walter Jackson Ong

"Deeply typographic folk forget to think of words as primarily oral, as events, and hence as necessarily powered: for them, words are rather to be assimilated to things, "out there". Such "things" are not actions, but are in a radical sense dead." - Walter J. Ong, fully Walter Jackson Ong

"What makes a good follower? The single most important characteristic may well be a willingness to tell the truth. In a world of growing complexity leaders are increasingly dependent on their subordinates for good information, whether the leaders want to hear it or not. Followers who tell the truth and leaders who listen to it are an unbeatable combination." - Warren Bennis, fully Warren Gamaliel Bennis

"A little while, and the load shall drop at the pilgrim's feet, where the steep and thorny road doth merge in the golden street." - Washington Gladden

"The highest form of ignorance is when you reject something you don't know anything about." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

"The reason we hang onto self-defeating behaviors is because it's easier not to take responsibility." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer

"This may account for the extraordinary popularity of such works as the Tao Te Ching, and in a lesser degree for that of the Diamond and Heart Sutras and Padma Sambhava's Knowing the Mind. For despite the accretion of superfluous verbiage in which the essential doctrine of some of the latter has become embedded, their direct pointing at the truth, instead of explaining it, goes straight to the heart of the matter and allows the mind itself to develop its own vision. An elaborately developed thesis must always defeat its own end where this subject matter is concerned, for only indication could produce this understanding, which requires an intuitional faculty, and it could never be acquired wholesale from without." - Wei Wu Wei, pen name for Terence James Stannus Gray

"We ourselves are not an illusory part of Reality; rather are we Reality itself illusorily conceived." - Wei Wu Wei, pen name for Terence James Stannus Gray

"A farmer, as one of his farmer correspondents once wrote to Liberty Hyde Bailey, is a dispenser of the 'Mysteries of God.' The husband, unlike the manager or the would-be objective scientist, belongs inherently to the complexity and the mystery that is to be husbanded, and so the husbanding mind is both careful and humble." - Wendell Berry

"I believe that the community - in the fullest sense: a place and all its creatures - is the smallest unit of health and that to speak of the health of an isolated individual is a contradiction in terms." - Wendell Berry

"In Port William, more than anyplace else I had been, this religion that scorned the beauty and goodness of this world was a puzzle to me. To begin with, I don’t think anybody believed it. I still don’t think so. Those world-condemning sermons were preached to people who, on Sunday mornings, would be wearing their prettiest clothes. Even the old widows in their dark dresses would be pleasing to look at. By dressing up on the one day when most of them had leisure to do it, they had signified their wish to present themselves to one another and to Heaven looking their best. The people who heard those sermons loved good crops, good gardens, good livestock and work animals and dogs; they loved flowers and the shade of trees, and laughter and music; some of them could make you a fair speech on the pleasures of a good drink of water or a patch of wild raspberries. While the wickedness of the flesh was preached from the pulpit, the young husbands and wives and the courting couples sat thigh to thigh, full of yearning and joy, and the old people thought of the beauty of the children. And when church was over they would go home to Heavenly dinners of fried chicken, it might be, and creamed new potatoes and hot biscuits and butter and cherry pie and sweet milk and buttermilk. And the preacher and his family would always be invited to eat with somebody and they would always go, and the preacher, having just foresworn on behalf of everybody the joys of the flesh, would eat with unconsecrated relish." - Wendell Berry

"It is to be broken. It is to be torn open. It is not to be reached and come to rest in ever. I turn against you, I break from you, I turn to you. We hurt, and are hurt, and have each other for healing. It is healing. It is never whole." - Wendell Berry

"Peaceableness toward enemies is an idea that will, of course, continue to be denounced as impractical. It has been too little tried by individuals, much less by nations. It will not readily or easily serve those who are greedy for power. It cannot be effectively used for bad ends. It could not be used as the basis of an empire. It does not afford opportunities for profit. It involves danger to practitioners. It requires sacrifice. And yet it seems to me that it is practical, for it offers the only escape from the logic of retribution. It is the only way by which we can cease to look to war for peace. ... Peaceableness is not passive. It is the ability to act to resolve conflict without violence. If it is not a practical and practicable method, it is nothing. As a practicable method, it reduces helplessness in the face of conflict. In the face of conflict, the peaceable person may find several solutions, the violent person only one." - Wendell Berry

"Science at the bidding of the corporations is knowledge reduced to merchandise; it is a whoredom of the mind, and so is the art that calls this progress. So is the cowardice that calls it inevitable." - Wendell Berry

"The world had become pretty generally Ceceliafied." - Wendell Berry

"While the wickedness of the flesh was preached from the pulpit, the young husbands and wives and the courting couples sat thigh to thigh, full of yearning and joy, and the old people thought of the beauty of the children. And when church was over they would go home to Heavenly dinners of fried chicken, it might be, and creamed new potatoes and creamed new peas and hot biscuits and butter and cherry pie and sweet milk and buttermilk. And the preacher and his family would always be invited to eat with somebody and they would always go, and the preacher, having just foresworn on behalf of everybody the joys of the flesh, would eat with unconsecrated relish." - Wendell Berry

"The Heart Center is a transpersonal dimension or level. The Initiation forces are conducted in the dimension of Sacred Space, not in time and space, so we enter another dimension to access those forces. Through the daily attunement to the Heart Center there is a long-term transformation of the ego which then begins not only to orient to the Transcendent, to be responsive to the Transcendent, but there is also a birth into the dedicated ego, which is a transcendent kind of development which is neither the vast Deity itself, nor is it the ego-self – it is someplace in between, and has access to all the richness of compassion and healing." - W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy

"The most important initiations occur in dreams. The most important interactions with other's are not verbal but energetic. When somebody expresses too much love for somebody else: there are denied destructive impulses. To engage the unconscious you need to sacrifice reactivity to discover the energies that are really present. We’re conditioned not to wound, but conscious death and resurrection are necessary to evolve – death of innocence must occur in order to evolve." - W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy

"The principle that where there is fear, there will be wrong figures." - W. Edwards Deming, fully William Edwards Deming

"The belief, the try, a camera and some film - the fragile weapons of my good intentions. With these I fought war." - W. Eugene Smith, fully William Eugene Smith

"There is no pain on this earth like seeing the same woman look at another man the way she once looked at you." - Walker Percy

"Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe. It is not enough that a thing be possible for it to be believed." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"Four thousand volumes of metaphysics will not teach us what the soul is." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL

"A spontaneous cessation of mental activity releases an absolutely new and dynamic energy. Silence increases the sensitivity of the total being. It refreshes the nervous system in an astounding way. As you come out totally replenished when you have had profound and innocent sleep, So do you come out totally renewed when you have had ceased to function through the ego in the hour of silence." - Vimala Thakar

"All our emotions and thoughts are conditioned reflexes, reactions." - Vimala Thakar

"Most of us are not aware of our motivations for living or our priorities for action. We drift with the tides of societal fashions, floating in and out of social concerns at the whim of societal dictates and on the basis of images created by the media or superficial, personal desires to be helpful, useful persons. We are used to living at the surface, afraid of the depths, and therefore our actions and concerns about humanity are shallow, fragile vessels easily damaged. Ultimately most of us are concerned chiefly with our small lives, our collection of sensual pleasures, our personal salvation, and our anxiety about sickness and death, rather than the misery created by collective indifference and callousness." - Vimala Thakar

"Orderliness - One doesn't have to begin to learn how to be silent, but one has to begin with learning to function in an orderly, clear, unconfused way. Every cerebral movement has to be clear, precise and accurate. Accuracy, precision, is the breath of orderliness. So I learn to be precise and accurate. And in learning to be precise and accurate I learn to be totally present with everything that I do." - Vimala Thakar

"Whether you try to influence the mind through ideas and concepts, or through discipline and vows, or through drugs, you are trying to stimulate artificially a state of silence. Perhaps if we are friendly with the mind, if we watch the mind, if we understand the mind, if we let it wander, let it roam about wherever it wants, let it exhaust its momentum by wandering, without scolding, without praising, without" - Vimala Thakar

"But what is your final goal, you may ask. That goal will become clearer, will emerge slowly but surely, much as the rough draught turns into a sketch, and the sketch into a painting through the serious work done on it, through the elaboration of the original vague idea and through the consolidation of the first fleeting and passing thought." - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

"I can't change the fact that my paintings don't sell. But the time will come when people will recognize that they are worth more than the value of the paints used in the picture." - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh

"The white man has not lost his soul. But he is so small-minded that he has confused his soul with God." - Vine Deloria, fully Vine Victor Deloria, Jr.

"A confused mind calls itself a clear mind, and that explains the entire human horror story." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"A man’s day is purposeless when he spends it in unconscious nourishment of neurosis." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"Happiness is yours in the here and now. The painful states of anxiety and loneliness are abolished permanently. Financial affairs are not financial problems. You are at ease with yourself. You are not at the mercy of unfulfilled cravings. Confusion is replaced with clarity. There is a relieving answer to every tormenting question. You possess a True Self. Something can be done about every unhappy condition. While living in the world you can be inwardly detached from its sorrows to live with personal peace and sanity." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"Here’s a secret method for replacing fog with sunshine. When you feel scared, don’t pretend you’re brave. Truth gives you permission to be just as scared as you really are. Just be aware of your anxiety without worrying over it. This self-help not only banishes fear but delivers great relief. It is like a tired actor who removes his uncomfortable costume after a hard night onstage. Since he no longer needs to impress the audience he can just relax and enjoy being himself" - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"Instead of being aggressive toward a difficulty, be quiet before it, and notice the new feeling." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"Man’s major social illusion is that he can build a society which is higher than his own psychological level." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"Right knowledge comes only from God. You will never get anything right from another human being." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"Staying home (spiritually) is where a true spiritual hero is. Don’t go into thought." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"'There is something wrong inside of me.' Stop right there. Stop right there until the responsibility is so fixed there is no way you can get out of it. You've trapped yourself and that is a marvelous thing to do because when you do that you have taken a certain amount of the right responsibility for facing a problem where it exists, inside yourself." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"What a dawning appears to the man or woman who earnestly inquires, 'Who is living my life for me?' Am I really thinking for myself or am I unknowingly projecting acquired ideas which may be all wrong?" - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"When we associate with others we really associate with ourselves. We like or dislike in others whatever we like or dislike in ourselves." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard

"For the body to perform to the optimum level it is necessary that all the doors work perfectly." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"Upon the firm, broad earth, the all-begetting mother of the plants, that is supported by (divine) law, upon her, propitious and kind, may we ever pass-our lives." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda

"I wrote with tears and anguish, pouring into the pages all that pain which life had meant to me. Externally the story had to do with a family of stockyard workers, but internally it was the story of my own family. Did I wish to know how the poor suffered in winter time in Chicago? I only had to recall the previous winter in the cabin, when we had only cotton blankets, and had rags on top of us. It was the same with hunger, with illness, with fear. Our little boy was down with pneumonia that winter, and nearly died, and the grief of that went into the book." - Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

"If we are the greatest nation the sun ever shone upon, it would seem to be mainly because we have been able to goad our wage-earners to this pitch of frenzy." - Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.

"The wise needn't ask, the fool asks in vain." - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin

"We're in the world, not against it. It doesn't work to try to stand" - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin