This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.
I discover that hardly a week passes that someone does not start a new cult, or revive an old one; if I had a hundred life-times I could not know all the creeds and ceremonies, the services and rituals, the litanies and liturgies, the hymns, anthems and offertories of Bootstrap-lifting.
Control | Freedom | Mind | Opinion | People | Present | Problems | Race |
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
Socrates said, “The misuse of language induces evil in the soul.” He wasn’t talking about grammar. To misuse language is to use it the way politicians and advertisers do, for profit, without taking responsibility for what the words mean. Language used as a means to get power or make money goes wrong: it lies. Language used as an end in itself, to sing a poem or tell a story, goes right, goes towards the truth.
Consciousness | Father | Freedom | Justify | Nothing | Solitude | Child |
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
What is evil? asked the younger man. The round web, with its black center, seemed to watch them both. A web we men weave. Ged answered.
I felt the need to stir things up... To confront others for a change and force them to deal with a situation that I myself had created.
What I am about to say may sound provocative, but I feel more and more strongly that even these ideas are not enough, that we must go farther and deeper.
Authority | Morality | Order | Responsibility | Science | Understanding | Will |
Genuine politics -- even politics worthy of the name -- the only politics I am willing to devote myself to -- is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole.
Association | Freedom of speech | Freedom | Speech | Association |
When the internal crisis of the totalitarian system grows so deep that it becomes clear to everyone, and when more and more people learn to speak their own language and reject the hollow, mendacious language of the powers that be, it means that freedom is remarkably close, if not directly within reach
Let us teach ourselves and others that politics should be an expression of a desire to contribute to the happiness of the community rather than of a need to cheat or rape the community.
Responsibility | World |
He tries to explain why man behaves most improbably, strangely, at variance with his nature, how it is possible for instance that a calm, rather neutral petty bourgeois is all of a sudden capable of commanding a concentration camp, burning to death or gassing thousands of people, and afterwards returning to his clerk's life as if nothing happened
Politics | Responsibility | Will |
This is a confusing and uncertain period, when a thousand wise words can go completely unnoticed, and one thoughtless word can provoke an utterly nonsensical furor.
Prison | Responsibility |
It's not true that you should first think up an idea for a better world and only then put it into practice, but, rather, through the fact of your existence in the world, you create the idea or manifest it — create it, as it were, from the material of the world, articulate it in the language of the world.
Existence | Insight | Responsibility |
There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight.
Ability | Absurd | Awareness | Courage | Good | Gratitude | Irony | Life | Life | Meaning | Responsibility | Sense | Vigilance | Awareness |
It is clearly necessary to invent organizational structures appropriate to the present multicultural age. But such efforts are doomed to failure if they do not grow out of something deeper, out of generally held values.
Freedom |
There are no exact guidelines. There are probably no guidelines at all. The only thing I can recommend at this stage is a sense of humor, an ability to see things in their ridiculous and absurd dimensions, to laugh at others and at ourselves, a sense of irony regarding everything that calls out for parody in this world. In other words, I can only recommend perspective and distance. Awareness of all the most dangerous kinds of vanity, both in others and in ourselves. A good mind. A modest certainty about the meaning of things. Gratitude for the gift of life and the courage to take responsibility for it. Vigilance of spirit.
Ability | Absurd | Courage | Good | Gratitude | Life | Life | Meaning | Responsibility | Sense | Sensibility |
We must not be afraid of dreaming the seemingly impossible if we want the seemingly impossible to become a reality.
Experience | Order | Responsibility | Sense | Understanding | Will | Work | Understand |
Why do I say this? It would be very unreasonable to understand the sad legacy of the last forty years as something alien, which some distant relative bequeathed to us. On the contrary, we have to accept this legacy as a sin we committed against ourselves. If we accept it as such, we will understand that it is up to us all, and up to us alone to do something about it. We cannot blame the previous rulers for everything, not only because it would be untrue, but also because it would blunt the duty that each of us faces today: namely, the obligation to act independently, freely, reasonably and quickly. Let us not be mistaken: the best government in the world, the best parliament and the best president, cannot achieve much on their own. And it would be wrong to expect a general remedy from them alone. Freedom and democracy include participation and therefore responsibility from us all.
Freedom | Language | Means | People | System | Crisis | Learn |
Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness a more humane society will not emerge.
Blame | Democracy | Duty | Freedom | Government | Obligation | Responsibility | Sin | Will | Wrong | Government | Understand |
V. S. Pritchett, fully Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett
To be identified with the public is the divine gift of the best-sellers in popular Romance and, no doubt, in popular realism. E. M. Forster once spoke of the novelist as sending down a bucket into the unconscious; the author of She installed a suction pump. He drained the whole reservoir of the public's secret desires. Critics speak of the reader suspending unbelief; the best-seller knows better; man is a believing animal.
Family | Nothing | Responsibility |