This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
That great and wise American, Thomas Jefferson, warned us of the danger of conferring unwarranted power upon our government administrators in these sobering words: “Our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no further, our confidence may go. . . . In questions of power, then, let not more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.”
Government | People | Philosophy | Policy | Government |
With independence won, another body of men assembled; and under the inspiration of heaven, they too drafted a document, probably the greatest instrument ever struck off at a given time by the mind of man: the Constitution of the United States.
Islamic law is clearly against terrorism, against any kind of deliberate killing of civilians or similar 'collateral damage.'
There are individuals who are working very hard to promote fear and antagonism towards Islam and Muslims in this country. It's fueled, in part, by the first African-American president that we have. Obama's father was a Muslim and people have used this to arouse hostility against him.
The right for the right's sake is the motto which everyone should take for his own life. With that as a standard of value we can descend into our hearts, appraise ourselves, and determine in how far we already are moral beings, in how far not yet.
Future | Indispensable | Individual | Service | Time | 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 |
Theologians often say that faith must come first, and that morality must be deduced from faith. We say that morality must come first, and faith, to those whose nature fits them to entertain it, will come out of the experience of a deepened moral life as its richest, choicest fruit. Precisely because moral culture is the aim, we cannot be content merely to lift the mass of mankind above the grosser forms of evil. We must try to advance the cause of humanity by developing in ourselves, as well as in others, a higher type of manhood and womanhood than the past has known. To aid in the evolution of a new conscience, to inject living streams of moral force into the dry veins of materialistic communities is our aim. We seek to come into touch with the ultimate power in things, the ultimate peace in things, which yet, in any literal sense, we know well that we cannot know. We seek to become morally certain — that is, certain for moral purposes — of what is beyond the reach of demonstration. But our moral optimism must include the darkest facts that pessimism can point to, include them and transcend them.
Children | Future | Happy | Light | Past | Time | Truth | Will | Work | World |
There is a city to be built, the plan of which we carry in our heads, in our hearts. Countless generations have already toiled at the building of it. The effort to aid in completing it, with us, takes the place of prayer. In this sense we say, "Laborare est orare."
Daring | Life | Life | Man | Men | Present | Righteousness | Search | Theories | Thinkers | Thought | Time | Truth | Unity | Will | Woman | World | Youth | Youth | Learn | Thought |
We propose to entirely exclude prayer and every form of ritual. Thus shall we avoid even the appearance of interfering with those to whom prayer and ritual, as a mode of expressing religious sentiment, are dear. And on the other hand we shall be just to those who have ceased to regard them as satisfactory and dispensed with them in their own persons.
One mustn't ask apple trees for oranges, France for sun, women for love, life for happiness.
Confidence | People |
The conversation flagged. Madame Bovary frequently relapsed into silence, while Leon himself seemed ill at ease. He was seated on a low chair near the fire, and kept turning over the ivory needle-case in his fingers. She plied her needle, pressing down the hem of the cloth from time to time with her nail. She did not speak, and he too held his peace, just as entranced by her silence as he would have been by her words.
People |
One must always hope when one is desperate, and doubt when one hopes.
People | Punishment |
So from now on the days were going to continue one after the other like this, always the same, innumerable, bringing nothing!... It was God's will. The future was a pitch-black tunnel, ending in a locked door. She gave up her music: why should she play? Who was there to listen?... She left her drawing books and her embroidery in a closet. What was the use of anything? What was the use?
There are some men whose only mission among others is to act as intermediaries; one crosses them like bridges and keeps going.
Time |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
First stanza: Millions now living will never die. Second stanza: No more war.
Individual | People |