This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
Defense | Justice | Liberty | Moderation | Virtue | Virtue | Moderation |
Love confronts hate in the one way hate cannot comprehend, with something beyond itself - with compassion. Hate cannot go beyond itself. It draws its strength from the self's defense of self. Love lives to go beyond itself, drawing strength from that very act. Love can thus comprehend hate, integrating it into something larger. Slowly, hate is defeated as a grain of salt dissolves into the sweetness of a pond.
I will spend time with those I love. My spouse, my children, my family. A man can own the world but be poor for the lack of love. A man can own nothing and yet be wealthy in relationships. Today I will spend at least five minutes with the significant people in my world. Five quality minutes of talking or hugging or thanking or listening. Five undiluted minutes with my mate, children, and friends.
Children | Family | Listening | Love | Man | Nothing | People | Talking | Time | Will | World |
Human beings seek a prior meaning in everything as a defense against doubts about the importance of anything, including man's existence ... To affirm that there is a supreme meaning of life is to give the intellect an opportunity to escape the disquieting conclusion that nothing people do can possibly have more than slight importance.
Defense | Existence | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Nothing | Opportunity | People | Intellect |
Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.
Defense | Government | Property | Reality | Security |
How much happier would the religious history of the world been if the different religions and sects had seen their role as contributors to a common stream of seeking for the Ultimate, which always escapes the conceptual net, yet perennially inspires the search. Actually many in the modern world are becoming tolerant toward religion in the wrong way. Their tolerance is not a product of understanding but is bred of indifference. They see the conventional forms in which religion is practiced as empty shells although they excite in their defense belligerent intolerance.
Defense | History | Indifference | Intolerance | Religion | Search | Understanding | World | Wrong |
The widespread modern rejection of ritual in religion is depriving people of powerful aids for spiritual development and for defense against evil... Action cannot lead beyond action, and therefore no ritual can produce Liberation... But there are many who do not specifically seek Liberation but simply greater purity, greater devotion, general spiritual betterment, or who seek Liberation as the still unseen goal of a winding path; and it is for such as these that the appropriate ritual would be a powerful armament for progress and defense.
Action | Defense | Devotion | Evil | People | Progress | Purity | Religion |
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 |
Always look at those whom you are talking to, never at those you are talking of.
Talking |
When in the company of sensible men, we ought to be doubly cautious of talking too much, lest we lose two good things - their good opinion and our own improvement; for what we have to say we know, but what to say we know not.
Good | Improvement | Men | Opinion | Talking |
The reason why lovers are never weary of one another is this - they are always talking of themselves.
Truth telling is not compatible with the defense of the realm.
I will not serve that in which I no longer believe, whether it calls itself my home, my fatherland, or my church: and I will try to express myself in some mode of life or art as freely as I can and as wholly as I can, using for my defense the only arms I allow myself to use -- silence, exile, and cunning.
Our chief defect is that we are more given to talking about things than to doing them.
Talking |