This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Article 18 - Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others, and in public or in private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
Belief | Change | Conscience | Freedom of thought | Freedom | Practice | Public | Religion | Right | Thought | Worship |
Desmond Tutu, fully Desmond Mpilo Tutu
We witness... by being a community of reconciliation, a forgiving community of the forgiven.
In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law ... that would lead to anarchy. An individual who breaks a law that his conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.
Anarchy | Conscience | Individual | Injustice | Injustice | Law | Order | Reality | Respect | Sense | Respect |
Our major impact in transforming society comes from integrating a concern for the community into as many of our day-to-day business decisions and transactions as possible. This means buying from suppliers with a social mission, using ingredients that contribute to a sustainable world, and investing funds and human resources in ways that benefit the community.
Business | Day | Means | Mission | Society | World | Society | Business |
Every state is a community of some kind, and every community is established with a view to some good; for mankind always act in order to obtain that which they think good. But, if all communities aim at some good, the state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good.
States require property, but property, even though living beings are included in it, is no part of a state; for a state is not a community of living beings only, but a community of equals, aiming at the best life possible. Now, whereas happiness is the highest good, being a realization and perfect practice of virtue, which some can attain, while others have little or none of it, the various qualities of men are clearly the reason why there are various kinds of states and many; forms of government; for different men seek after happiness in different ways and by different means, and so make for themselves different modes of life and forms of government.
Good | Government | Life | Life | Little | Means | Men | Practice | Property | Qualities | Reason | Virtue | Virtue | Happiness |
Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr., born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger
If unlimited private indulgence means that there are not enough resources left for national defense or for education or medical care or decent housing or intelligent community planning, then in a sane society private indulgence can no longer be unlimited.
Care | Defense | Education | Enough | Indulgence | Means | Society | Society |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
Social cohesion demands a creed, or a code of behavior, or a prevailing sentiment, or best, some combination of all three; without something of the kind, a community disintegrates, and becomes subject to a tyrant or a foreign conqueror.
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
The fact that the majority of a community dislikes an opinion gives it no right to interfere with those who hold it. And the fact that the majority of a community wishes not to know certain facts gives it no right to imprison those who wish to know them.
Few things are more agreeable to self-love than revenge, and yet no cause so effectually restrains us from revenge as self-love. And this paradox naturally suggests another; that the strength of the community is not infrequently built upon the weakness of those individuals that compose it.
Cause | Love | Paradox | Revenge | Self | Self-love | Strength | Weakness |
There is a community of hatred. Hatred floods your mind with the ideas of the one you hate. Your thought reflects his, and you act in his spirit. If you wish to be like your enemy, to be wholly his, open your mind and hate him.