This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Our enemy is not Islam. Islam is not the enemy of America; Americans are not the enemy of Islam. Our real enemy is extremism and radicalism.
Perception | Practice | Religion | Truth |
Let us learn from the lips of death the lessons of life. Let us live truly while we live, live for what is true and good and lasting. And let the memory of our dead help us to do this. For they are not wholly separated from us, if we remain loyal to them. In spirit they are with us. And we may think of them as silent, invisible, but real presences in our households.
Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
A man of genius has a right to any mode of expression.
Dogma is the convictions of one man imposed authoritatively upon others.
Experience | Religion | Spirit | Afraid |
The terrible events of life are great eye-openers. They force us to learn that which it is wholesome for us to know, but which habitually we try to ignore — namely, that really we have no claim on a long life ; that we are each of us liable to be called off at any moment, and that the main point is not how long we live, but with what meaning we fill the short allotted span — for short it is at best.
Religion |
Theories of what is true have their day. They come and go, leave their deposit in the common stock of knowledge, and are supplanted by other more convincing theories. The thinkers and investigators of the world are pledged to no special theory, but feel themselves free to search for the greater truth beyond the utmost limits of present knowledge. So likewise in the field of moral truth, it is our hope, that men in proportion as they grow more enlightened, will learn to hold their theories and their creeds more loosely, and will none the less, nay, rather all the more be devoted to the supreme end of practical righteousness to which all theories and creeds must be kept subservient. There are two purposes then which we have in view: To secure in the moral and religious life perfect intellectual liberty, and at the same time to secure concert in action. There shall be no shackles upon the mind, no fetters imposed in early youth which the growing man or woman may feel prevented from shaking off, no barrier set up which daring thought may not transcend. And on the other hand there shall be unity of effort, the unity that comes of an end supremely prized and loved, the unity of earnest, morally aspiring persons, engaged in the conflict with moral evil.
Aid | Cause | Culture | Evolution | Experience | Faith | Force | Humanity | Life | Life | Mankind | Morality | Nature | Optimism | Past | Peace | Pessimism | Power | Will |
The symbols of religion are ciphers of which the key is to be found in moral experience. It is in vain we pore over the ciphers unless we possess the key.
Will |
To understand the meaning of a great religious teacher we must find in our own life experiences somewhat akin to his. To selfish, unprincipled persons whose heart is wholly set on worldly ends, what meaning, for instance, can such utterances have as these? "You must become like little children if you would possess the kingdom of heaven;" "You must be willing to lose your life in order to save it;" "If you would be first you must consent to be last." To the worldly-minded such words convey no sense whatever; they are, in fact, rank absurdity.
Authority | Faith | Heart | Longing | Nature | Need | Religion |
The God of Exodus is the God of history and of political liberation more than he is the God of nature.
You cannot make someone love you. All you can do is be someone who can be loved. The rest is up up them.
Grave |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
College football would be much more interesting if the faculty played instead of the students, and even more interesting if the trustees played. There would be a great increase in broken arms, legs, and necks, and simultaneously an appreciable diminution in the loss of humanity.
Could the activity of thinking as such, the habit of examining whatever happens to come to pass or to attract attention, regardless of results and specific content, could this activity he among the conditions that make men abstain from evil-doing?
Nature |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
Pathology would remain a lovely science, even if there were no therapeutics, just as seismology is a lovely science, though no one knows how to stop earthquakes.
It is collective security: it is the very existence of the League of Nations. It is the confidence that each State is to place in international treaties. It is the value of promises made to small States that their integrity and their independence shall be respected and ensured.
Religion |
Clich‚s, stock phrases, adherence to conventional, standardized codes of expression and conduct have the socially recognized function of protecting us against reality.
Power corrupts... when the weak band together in order to ruin the strong, but not before. The will to power... far from being a characteristic of the strong, is, like envy and greed, among the vices of the weak, and possibly even their most dangerous one.