This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe - the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.
Belief | Generosity | God | Life | Life | Man | Mortal | Poverty | Power | Rights | Wisdom | World |
No men living are more worthy to be trusted than those who toil up from poverty - none less inclined to take, or touch, ought which they have not honestly earned.
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
Poverty of goods is easily cured; poverty of mind is irreparable.
To tell the truth, however, family and poverty have done more to support me than I have to support them. They have compelled me to make exertions that I hardly thought myself capable of; and often when on the eve of despairing, they have forced me, like a coward in a corner, to fight like a hero, not for myself, but for my wife and little ones.
Family | Hero | Little | Poverty | Thought | Truth | Wife | Wisdom | Thought |
James Baldwin, fully James Arthur Baldwin
Anyone who has ever struggled with poverty knows how extremely expensive it is to be poor.
Poverty |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
Resolve not to be poor, whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness, it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.
What the world needs is a sense of ultimate embarrassment. Modern man has the power and the wealth to overcome poverty and disease, but he has no wisdom to overcome suspicion. We are guilty of misunderstanding the meaning of existence; we are guilty of distorting our goals and misrepresenting our souls. We are better than our assertions, more intricate, more profound than our theories maintain.
Better | Disease | Existence | Goals | Man | Meaning | Poverty | Power | Sense | Suspicion | Theories | Wealth | Wisdom | World | Guilty |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
Frugality may be termed the daughter of prudence, the sister of temperance, and the parent of liberty. Those that are extravagant will quickly become poor, and poverty will enforce dependence and invite corruption.
Corruption | Daughter | Dependence | Frugality | Liberty | Poverty | Prudence | Prudence | Will | Parent |
We have grown literally afraid to be poor. We despise anyone who elects to be poor in order to simplify and save his inner life. If he does not join the general scramble and pant with the money-making street, we deem him spiritless and lacking in ambition. We have lost the power even of imagining what the ancient idealization of poverty could have meant: the liberation from material attachments, the unbribed soul.
Ambition | Despise | Life | Life | Money | Order | Poverty | Power | Soul | Afraid |
Lust for fame and fortune is like an intoxication. While a man is intoxicated, he doesn’t realize it. It’s only after it is all over that he realizes that everything is like an illusion. If men could realize this all the time, there would be much less trouble on earth, and there would be much happier people too.
Earth | Fame | Fortune | Illusion | Lust | Man | Men | People | Time | Trouble |
Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
The sense of boredom which… appears in analysis is simply an expression of the monotony and poverty of ideas, not of the unconscious… but of the analyst.
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
World poverty is primarily a problem of two million villages, and thus a problem of two [billion] villagers. The solution cannot be found in the cities of the poor countries. Unless life in the hinterland can be made tolerable, the problem of world poverty is insoluble and will inevitably get worse.
What information consumes is rather obvious: it consumes the attention of its recipients. Hence, a wealth of information creates a poverty of attention and a need to allocate that attention efficiently among the overabundance of information sources that might consume it.
Achmad Sukarno, born Kusno Sosrodihardjo
Let us remember that no blessing of God is so sweet as life and liberty. Let us remember that the stature of all mankind is diminished so long as nations or parts of nations are still unfree. Let us remember that the highest purpose of man is the liberation of man from his bonds of fear, his bonds of human degradation, his bonds of poverty – the liberation of man from the physical, spiritual, and intellectual bonds which for too long stunted the development of mankind’s majority.
Fear | God | Liberty | Life | Life | Majority | Man | Mankind | Nations | Poverty | Purpose | Purpose | God |