This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Al-Jāḥiẓ, full name Abū ʿUthman ʿAmr ibn Baḥr al-Kinānī al-Baṣrī NULL
Man indeed hates the one whom he knows, turns against the one whom he sees, opposes the one whom he resembles, and becomes observant of the faults of those with whom he mingles; the greater the love and intimacy, the greater the hatred and estrangement.
`He abused me, he struck me, he overcame me, he robbed me’ – in those who harbour such thoughts hatred will never cease.
Will |
The cult of the hero is the absolutely necessary complement of the massification of society… The individual who is prevented by circumstances from becoming a real person, who can no longer express himself through personal thought or action, who finds his aspirations frustrated, projects onto the hero all he would wish to be. He lives vicariously and experiences the athletic or amorous or military exploits of the god with whom he lives in spiritual symbiosis.
Action | Circumstances | Cult | God | Hero | Individual | Society | Thought | God | Thought |
In the grossly distorted individualism of today, we are incapable of imagining the selflessly disinterested hero. This may not matter; we may think we can do without him. But what is also means is that we are incapable of imagining the selflessly disinterested hero in ourselves who would give himself to a cause.
A hero… is not a hero until he is recognized as one. This means that the actualization of the hero is a two-way projection. First the hero must project by way of his deeds, his style, his character. When the projection registers, an imaginative process begins to remake the hero to fit as fully as possible the symbolic weight of his image. Legend and myth take over the historical personage, and through either an oral or a written tradition he is reborn in his heroic apotheosis.
Character | Deeds | Hero | Means | Myth | Style | Tradition |
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
A great-souled hero must transcend the slavish thinking of those around him.
Have you ever considered how dreadful it would be if our lives had no appointed end but went on forever? Can you imagine that as far as the eye can see into the future we should remain enmeshed in all the desires and troubles of this life and that all the ensuing envy, hatred and malice, our own and other people’s should continue to pile up undiminished? If you have ever considered how intolerable the burden of our life would be without the understood certainty that it has an appointed end, you know that death comes to all, even the most fortunate, not as an enemy but as a deliverance.
Death | Enemy | Envy | Future | Life | Life | Malice | People | Troubles |
Studs Terkel, fully Louis "Studs" Terkel
I believe that only by being in the presence of beauty and the great things in the world around us can man eventually get the goddam hatred of wanting to kill each other out of his system. We begin to understand, that we're only in this world such a short time it’s incredible we should spend these few years hating and killing each other.
Elie Wiesel, fully Eliezer "Elie" Wiesel
Some religious people abolish hatred because they’re religious. Others are fanatical, and they invoke hatred because they are religious. I believe that religion could be a marvelous way of humanizing society. Others believe that religion is here to serve fanatics, to punish, to chastise, to torture, to torment.
Keep hatred from you; let nothing tempt your mind to violence; hold on to love.