This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"I demand the independence of woman, her right to support herself; to live for herself; to love whomever she pleases, or as many as she pleases. I demand freedom for both sexes, freedom of action, freedom in love, and freedom in motherhood." - Emma Goldman
"Puritanism has made life itself impossible. More than art, more than estheticism, life represents beauty in a thousand variations; it is indeed, a gigantic panorama of eternal change. Puritanism, on the other hand, rests on a fixed and immovable conception of life; it is based on the Calvinistic idea that life is a curse, imposed upon man by the wrath of God. In order to redeem himself man must do constant penance, must repudiate every natural and healthy impulse, and turn his back on joy and beauty. Puritanism celebrated its reign of terror in England during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, destroying and crushing every manifestation of art and culture. It was the spirit of Puritanism which robbed Shelley of his children, because he would not bow to the dicta of religion. It was the same narrow spirit which alienated Byron from his native land, because that great genius rebelled against the monotony, dullness, and pettiness of his country. It was Puritanism, too, that forced some of England's freest women into the conventional lie of marriage: Mary Wollstonecraft and, later, George Eliot. And recently Puritanism has demanded another toll--the life of Oscar Wilde. In fact, Puritanism has never ceased to be the most pernicious factor in the domain of John Bull, acting as censor of the artistic expression of his people, and stamping its approval only on the dullness of middle-class respectability." - Emma Goldman
"The Christian religion and morality extols the glory of the Hereafter, and therefore remains indifferent to the horrors of the earth. Indeed, the idea of self-denial and of all that makes for pain and sorrow is its test of human worth, its passport to the entry into heaven." - Emma Goldman
"The great and inspiring aims of the Revolution became so clouded with and obscured by the methods used by the ruling political power that it was hard to distinguish what was temporary means and what final purpose. Psychologically and socially the means necessarily influence and alter the aims. The whole history of man is continuous proof of the maxim that to divest one's methods of ethical concepts means to sink into the depths of utter demoralization. In that lies the real tragedy of the Bolshevik philosophy as applied to the Russian Revolution. May this lesson not be in vain." - Emma Goldman
"To the moralist prostitution does not consist so much in the fact that the woman sells her body, but rather that she sells it out of wedlock." - Emma Goldman
"This, available in respect of the past, but captive to itself exudes seriousness of being where he is committed." - Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas
"God is the only Presence and the only Power. God is fully present here with me, now. God is the only real Presence - all the rest is but shadow. God is perfect Good, and God is the cause only of perfect Good. God never sends sickness, trouble, accident, temptation, nor death itself; nor does He authorize these things. We bring them upon ourselves by our own wrong thinking. God, Good, can cause only good. The same fountain cannot send forth both sweet and bitter water. I am Divine Spirit. I am the child of God. In God I live and move and have my being; so I have not fear. I am surrounded by the Peace of God and all is well. I am not afraid of people; I am not afraid of things; I am not afraid of circumstances; I am not afraid of myself; for God is with me. The Peace of God fills my soul, and I have no fear. I dwell in the Presence of God, and no fear can touch me. I am not afraid of the past; I am not afraid of the present; I am not afraid for the future; for God is with me. The Eternal God is my dwelling place and underneath are the ever-lasting arms. Nothing can ever touch me but the direct action of God Himself, and God is Love. God is Life; I understand that and I express it. God is Truth; I understand that and I express it. God is Divine Love; I understand that and I express it. I send out thoughts of love and peace and healing to the whole universe: to all trees and plants and growing things, to all beasts and birds and fishes, and to every man, woman and child on earth, without any distinction. If anyone has ever injured me or done me any kind of harm, I fully and freely forgive him now, and the thing is done forever. I lose him and let him go. I am free and he is free. That Wisdom leads and guides me; so I shall not make mistakes. Christ in me is a lamp unto my feet. God is Infinite Life, and that Life is my supply; so I shall want for nothing. God created me and He sustains me. Divine Love has foreseen everything, and provided for everything. One Mind, One Power, One Principle. One God, One Law, One Element. Closer is He than breathing, nearer than hands and feet. I am Divine Sprit, the Child of God, and in the presence of God I dwell forever. I thank God for Perfect Harmony." - Emmet Fox
"If your prayers are not being answered, search your consciousness and see if there is not someone whom you have yet to forgive. Find out if there is not some old thing about which you are very resentful. Search and see if you are not really holding a grudge (it may be camouflaged in some self-righteous way) against some individual, or some body of people, a nation, a race, a social class, some religious movement of which you disapprove perhaps, a political party, or what-not. If you are doing so, then you have an act of forgiveness to perform, and when this is done, you will probably make your demonstration. If you cannot forgive at present, you will have to wait for your demonstration until you can, and you will have to postpone finishing your recital of the Lord's Prayer too, or involve yourself in the position that you do not desire the forgiveness of God." - Emmet Fox
"Prayer is always the solution. No matter what kind of difficulty may be facing you, no matter how complicated your problem may seem – prayer can solve it. Of course you will also take whatever practical steps seem to be indicated, and if you do not know what steps to take, prayer will show you. Prayer is constantly bringing about the seemingly impossible, and there is no conceivable problem that has not at some time been solved by prayer." - Emmet Fox
"Refuse to tolerate anything less than harmony. You can have prosperity no matter what your present circumstances may be. You can have health and physical fitness. You can have a happy and joyous life. You can have a good home of your own. You can have congenial friends and comrades. You can have a full, free, joyous life, independent and untrammeled. You can become your own master or your own mistress. But to do this you must definitely seize the rudder of your own destiny and steer boldly and firmly for the port that you intend to make." - Emmet Fox
"The only part of our religion that is real is the part we express in our daily lives. Ideals that we do not act out in practice are mere abstract theories and have no real meaning. Actually, such pretended ideals are a serious detriment, because they drug the soul into a false sense of security. If you want to receive any benefit from your religion you must practice it, and the place to practice it is right here where you are, and the time to do it is now. Divine Love is the only real power. If you can realize this fact even dimly it will begin to heal and harmonize every condition in your life within a few hours. The way to realize this fact is to express it in every word you speak, in every business transaction, in every social activity, and, in fact, in every phase of your life. An early New Thought writer said: "Knead love into the bread you bake; wrap strength and courage in the parcel you tie for the woman with the weary face; hand trust and candor with the coin you pay to the man with the suspicious eyes." This is beautifully said, and it sums up the Practice of the Presence of God." - Emmet Fox
"The Truth turns out to be nothing less than the amazing but undeniable fact that the whole outer world -whether it be the physical body, the common things of life, the winds and the rain, the clouds, the earth itself -is amenable to man's thought, and that he had dominion over it when he knows it." - Emmet Fox
"And many a fire there burns beneath the ground. [On the volcano]" - Empedocles NULL
"A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down." - English Proverbs
"The crowd served as this early warning signal, ... Fifteen minutes later, two truckloads of police showed up and dispersed the youth, ... To the person who reported it, it was like magic." - Erik Hersman
"The master key to life is Unity. All the ills of life are due to inharmony, inharmony is due to a sense of separation and lack of unity. But when we have once more made our unity with All-Good we become bondservants no more to the Law, but rather the Law becomes our servant while we pass into the glorious freedom of the sons of God." - Fenwicke Lindsay Holmes
"My mother phones daily to ask, "Did you just try to reach me?" When I reply no, she adds, "So, if you're not too busy, call me while I'm still alive," . . . and hangs up." - Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
"No animal has more liberty than the cat, but it buries the mess it makes. The cat is the best anarchist." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"Now I have done what I can, he thought. Let him begin to circle and let the fight come." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"Remember everything is right until it's wrong. You'll know when it's wrong." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"You know it makes one feel rather good deciding not to be a bitch. Yes. It's sort of what we have instead of God." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"The real cause of personal existence is not the favor of the Almighty, but the sexual love of one's earthly parents." - Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel
"We may now give the following more precise expression to our chief law of biogeny:— The evolution of the foetus (or ontogenesis) is a condensed and abbreviated recapitulation of the evolution of the stem (orphylogenesis); and this recapitulation is the more complete in proportion as the original development (orpalingenesis) is preserved by a constant heredity; on the other hand, it becomes less complete in proportion as a varying adaptation to new conditions increases the disturbing factors in the development (or cenogenesis)." - Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel
"All the indications are that the present structure of large-scale industrial enterprise, in spite of heavy taxation and an endless proliferation of legislation, is not conducive to the public welfare." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
"Pollution must be brought under control and mankind's population and consumption of resources must be steered towards a permanent and sustainable equilibrium." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
"We have indeed labored to make some of the capital which today helps us to produce – a large fund of scientific, technological, and other knowledge; an elaborate physical infrastructure; innumerable types of sophisticated capital equipment, etc. – but all this is but a small part of the total capital we are using. Far larger is the capital provided by nature and not by man – and we do not even recognize it as such. This larger part is now being used up at an alarming rate, and that is why it is an absurd and suicidal error to believe, and act on the belief, that the problem of production has been solved." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
"You can either read something many times in order to be assured that you got it all, or else you can define your purpose and use techniques which will assure that you have met it and gotten what you need." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
"No sickness would exist on this planet it your contrast hadn't carved out wellness...that you're NOT allowing." - Ester and Jerry Hicks
"Speaking on the near skepticism of the study of the history of philosophy:" - Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson
"And yet, let the nature of these perceptions be what it will, and let them be produced as they will, if we look amongst them for the idea of extension, for instance, of a line, of an angle, and any other figure, we shall find it in that repository very clearly and distinctly." - Étienne Bonnot de Condillac
"It frequently happens that the imagination produces even such effects within us, as might seem to proceed from present reflection. Though we may be greatly taken up with a particular idea, yet the objects which surround us, continue to solicit our senses; the perceptions they occasion, revive others with which they are connected; and these determine certain movements in our bodies." - Étienne Bonnot de Condillac
"Mankind did not multiply words without necessity, especially in the beginning: for they were, at no small trouble to invent and to retain them." - Étienne Bonnot de Condillac
"Verbs originally expressed the state of things, only in an indeterminate manner. Such are the infinitives, to go, to act. The action accompanying them supplied the rest ; that is, the tenscs4 moods, numbers, and persons. In saying tree to fee, they signified by some gesture, whether they spoka of themselves or of a third person, of one or of many, of the past, present, or future, in fine, whether in a positive or in a conditional sense." - Étienne Bonnot de Condillac
"To include the strength of marriage in that of love, c ' is going up 'to ignore the spirit of this institution." - Étienne Pivert de Senancour
"But how much better, in any case, to wonder than not to wonder, to dance with astonishment and go spinning in praise, than not to know enough to dance or praise at all; to be blessed with more imagination than you might know at the given moment what to do with than to be cursed with too little to give you — and other people — any trouble." - Eudora Welty
"Every writer, like everybody else, thinks he's living through the crisis of the ages. To write honestly and with all our powers is the least we can do, and the most." - Eudora Welty
"Southerners love a good tale. They are born reciters, great memory retainers, diary keepers, letter exchangers . . . great talkers." - Eudora Welty
"This, then, is what counts: a lightning reaction which has no further need of conscious observation. In this respect at least the pupil makes himself independent of all conscious purpose." - Eugen Herrigel
"Have no fear about doing so, for we have a “warts-and-all” religion." - Eugene Peterson
"I knew it. I knew it. Born in a hotel room - and God damn it - died in a hotel room." - Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
"Basler finds my Lincoln the 'phoniest historical novel I have ever had the pleasure of reading.'... Also, 'more than half the book could never have happened as told.' Unfortunately, he doesn't say which half. If I knew, we could then cut it free from the phony half and publish the result as Basler's Vidal's Lincoln." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"The four most beautiful words in our common language: I told you so." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"The United States was founded by the brightest people in the country — and we haven't seen them since." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"Your Honor, years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free." - Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
"It was my tongue that swore; my heart is unsworn." - Euripedes NULL