This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Death stamps the characters and conditions of men for eternity. As death finds them in this world, so will they be in the next." - Nathaniel Emmons
"Freedom does not consist in the dream of independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives or systematically making them work towards definite ends. This holds good in relation both to the laws of external nature and to those which govern the bodily and mental existence of men themselves - two classes of laws which we can separate from each other at most only in thought but not in reality. Freedom of the will therefore means nothing but the capacity to make decisions with knowledge of the subject." - Friedrich Engels
"A tongue without reins, definance, unwisdom - their end is disaster. But the life of quiet gfood, the wisdom that accepts - these abaide unshaken, preserving, sustaining the houses of men." - Euripedes NULL
"Everything that depends on necessity is its slave in wise men's eyes." - Euripedes NULL
"Inside the souls of wealthy men bleak famine lives while minds of stature struggle trapped in starving bodies. How then can man distinguish man, what test can he use? The test of wealth? That measure means poverty of mind; of poverty? The pauper owns one thing, the sickness of his condition, a compelling teacher of evil; by nerve in war? Yet who, when a spear is cast across his face, will stand to witness his companion’s courage? We can only toss our judgments random on the wind." - Euripedes NULL
"Many are the natures of men, various their manners of living, yet a straight path is always the right one; and lessons deeply taught lead man to paths of righteousness; reverence, I say, is wisdom and by its grace transfigures - so that we seek virtue with a right judgment. From all of this springs honor bringing ageless glory into Man’s life. Oh, a mighty quest is the hunting out of virtue." - Euripedes NULL
"Passion overcometh sober thought; and this is cause of direst ills to men." - Euripedes NULL
"The wisest men follow their own direction." - Euripedes NULL
"Wise men take occasion by the hand." - Euripedes NULL
"Man can never escape the ideal or absolute; he can merely exchange one absolute for another. He can ignore anything beyond his needs only by making an ideal out of the fulfillment of his needs themselves. In short, man cannot be an animal; he can only be a philosopher or anthropologist who asserts that men are animals and ought to live like them. It is not necessary to point out that this is just to set up another absolute." - Emil Fackenheim, fully Emil Ludwig Fackenheim
"Women never really command until they have given their promise to obey; and they are never in more danger of being made slaves than when the men are at their feet." - George Farquhar
"Fear, if it be not immoderate, puts a guard about us that does watch and defend us; but credulity keeps us naked, and lays us open to all the sly assaults of ill-intending men: it was a virtue when man was in his innocence; but since his fall, it abuses those that own it." - Owen Feltham
"We pick our own sorrows out of the joys of other men, and from their sorrows likewise we derive our joys." - Owen Feltham
"Our system of thought and opinion, is often the only history of our heart. Men do not so much will according to their reason, as reason according to their will." - Immanual Hermann Fichte
"All worthwhile men have good thoughts, good ideas and good intentions - but precious few of them ever translate those into action." - John Hancock Field
"A tender-hearted and compassionate disposition, which inclines men to pity and feel the misfortunes of others, and which is, even for its own sake, incapable of involving any man in ruin and misery, is of all tempers of mind the most amiable; and though it seldom receives much honor, is worthy of the highest." - Henry Fielding
"In affairs of this world men are saved, not by faith, but by the want of it." - Henry Fielding
"It is a secret, well known to all great men, that by conferring an obligation they; do not always procure a friend, but are certain of creating many enemies." - Henry Fielding
"Perhaps the summary of good-breeding may be reduced to this rule. “Behave unto all men as you would they should behave to you.” This will most certainly oblige us to treat all mankind with the utmost civility and respect, there being nothing that we desire more than to be treated so by them." - Henry Fielding
"There is a sort of knowledge beyond the power of learning to bestow, and this is to be had in conversation; so necessary is this to the understanding the characters of men, that none are more ignorant of them than those learned pedants whose lives have been entirely consumed in colleges and among books; for however exquisitely human nature may have been described by writers the true practical system can be learned only in the world." - Henry Fielding
"You will find men who want to be carried on the shoulders of others, who think that the world owes them a living. They don't seem to see that we must all lift together and pull together." - Henry Ford
"The search for truth is, as it always has been, the noblest expression of the human spirit. Man's insatiable desire for knowledge about himself, about his environment and the forces by which he is surrounded, gives life its meaning and purpose, and clothes it with final dignity... And yet we know, deep in our hearts, that knowledge is not enough... Unless we can anchor our knowledge to moral purposes, the ultimate result will be dust and ashes - dust and ashes that will bury the hopes and monuments of men beyond recovery." - Harry Emerson Fosdick
"Happy were men if they but understood there is no safety but in doing good." - John Fountain
"The first virtue of all really great men is that they are sincere. They eradicate hypocrisy from their hearts. They bravely unveil their weaknesses, their doubts, their defects. They are courageous. They boldly ride a-tilt against prejudices. They love their fellow-men profoundly. They are generous. They allow their hearts to expand. They have compassion for all forms of suffering. Pity is the very foundation-stone of Genius." - Anatole France, pen name of Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault
"Ultimately there can be no freedom for self unless it is vouchsafed for others; there can be no security where there is fear, and democratic society presupposes confidence and candor in the relations of men with one another and eager collaboration for the larger ends of life instead of the pursuit of petty, selfish or vainglorious aims." - Felix Frankfurter
"The Revolution must take place in men before it can be manifest in things." - French Student Revolt Graffiti NULL
"A small minority are enabled... to find happiness along the path of love; but far-reaching mental transformations of the erotic function are necessary before this is possible. These people make themselves independent of their object’s acquiescence by transferring the main value from the fact of being loved to their own act of loving; they protect themselves against loss of it by attaching their love not to individual objects but to all men equally, and they avoid the uncertainties and disappointments of genital love by turning away from its sexual aim and modifying the instinct which they induce in themselves by this process - an unchangeable, undeviating, tender attitude - has little superficial likeness to the stormy vicissitudes of genital love, from which it is nevertheless derived." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
"Men do not always take their great thinkers seriously, even when they profess most to admire them." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
"Our best hope for the future is that the intellect - the scientific spirit, reason - should in time establish a dictatorship over the human mind. The very nature of reason is a guarantee that it would not fail to concede to human emotions, and to all that is determined by them, the position to which they are entitled. But the common pressure exercised by such a domination of reason would prove to be the strongest unifying force among men, and would prepare the way for further unifications. Whatever, like the ban laid upon thought by religion, opposes such a development is a danger for the future of mankind." - Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
"The blackout of images of women or men visibly over sixty-five, engaged in any vital or productive adult activity, and their replacement by the ‘problem’ of age, is our society’s very definition of age. Age is perceived only as a decline or deterioration from youth." - Betty Friedan
"There is an inevitable divergence, attributed to the imperfections of the human mind, between the world as it is and the world as men perceive it." - James William Fulbright
"Treat all men with courtesy, amiability and respect." - Elijah ben Shlomo Zalman, known as the Vilna Gaon or Elijah of Vilna or by his Hebrew acronym Gra ("Gaon Rabbenu Eliyahu")
"Whatever may be true of men’s creed, nothing is clearer than the fact that the personality and the sovereignty of God are not a large factor in the practical life and thought of our age." - Charles W. Garman
"There are one hundred men seeking security to one able man who is willing to risk his fortune." - J. Paul Getty, fully Jean Paul Getty
"Few are open to conviction, but the majority of men are open to persuasion." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"I respect the man who knows distinctly what he wishes. The greater part of all the mischief in the world arises from the fact that men do not sufficiently understand their own aims. They have undertaken to build a tower, and spend no more labor on the foundation than would be necessary to erect a hut." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Men are much more apt to agree in what they do than in what they think." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"The world cannot do without great men, but great men are very troublesome to the world." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"There are but two roads that lead to an important goal and to the doing of great things: strength and perseverance. Strength is the lot of but a few privileged men; but austere perseverance, harsh and continuous, may be employed by the smallest of us and rarely fails of its purpose, for its silent power grows irresistibly greater with time." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"There are men who never err, because they never propose anything rational." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"We are accustomed to see men deride what they do not understand, and snarl at the good and beautiful because it lies beyond their sympathies." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"We do not learn to know men through their coming to us. To find out what sort of persons they are, we must go to them." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"What do people mean when they talk about unhappiness? It is not so much unhappiness as impatience that from time to time possesses men, and then they choose to call themselves miserable." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"Words of understanding and sympathy are wonderful instruments for unlocking the hearts and minds of men. They transcend all cultures, turning strangers into brothers, blotting out tolerance and discrimination." - Lucy R. Goodwin
"Wisdome teacheth men to forecast the worst, that they may be provided against the worst." - William Gouge
"All times are great exactly in proportion as men feel, profoundly, their indebtedness to something or other... A feeling of immeasurable obligation puts life into a man and fight into him, and joy into him." - David Grayson, pseudonym of Ray Stannard Baker
"In the world men must be dealt with according to what they are, and not to what they ought to be; and the great art of life is to find out what they are, and act with them accordingly." - Stephen Grellet, born Étienne de Grellet du Mabillier