This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Clarence Darrow, fully Clarence Seward Darrow
With all their faults, trade-unions have done more for humanity than any other organization of men that ever existed. They have done more for decency, for honesty, for education, for the betterment of the race, for the developing of character in man, than any other association of men.
Association | Character | Education | Honesty | Humanity | Man | Men | Organization | Race | Wisdom | Association |
Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman
What kind of society isn't structured on greed? The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm; capitalism is that kind of a system.
Capitalism | Greed | Harm | Organization | Society | System | Will | Wisdom | Society |
He that acts unjustly is the worst rebel to himself; and though now ambition’s trumpet and drum of power may drown the sound, yet conscience with one day speak loudly to him.
Do your duty, and don’t swerve from it. Do that which your conscience tells you to be right, and leave the consequences to God.
Conscience | Consequences | Duty | God | Right | Wisdom |
Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel
Nothing is constant but change! All existence is a perpetual flux of "being and becoming"! That is the broad lesson of the evolution of the world... The belief in the freedom of the will is inconsistent with the truth of evolution. Modern philosophy shows clearly that the will is never really free in man or animal, but determined by the organization of the brain; and that in turn acquires its individual character by the laws of heredity and the influence of environment.
Belief | Change | Character | Evolution | Existence | Freedom | Heredity | Individual | Influence | Lesson | Man | Nothing | Organization | Philosophy | Truth | Will | Wisdom | World |
Every pupil you have carries in his mind or heart or conscience a bit of you. Your influence, your example, your ideas and values keep marching on - how far into the future and into what realms of our spacious universe you will never know.
Conscience | Example | Future | Heart | Ideas | Influence | Mind | Universe | Will | Wisdom |
The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.
Authority | Church | Conscience | Critic | Will | Wisdom | Zeal |
Roger Manwood, fully Sir Roger Manwood
As touching corporations, that they were invisible, immortal and that they had no soul, therefor no supoena lieth against them, because they have no conscience or soul.
Conscience | Soul | Wisdom |
More than any other organization in history, the U.N. symbolizes the collective conscience of mankind.
Conscience | History | Mankind | Organization | Wisdom |
Pablo Neruda, pen name for Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto
All paths lead to the same goal: to convey to others what we are. And we must pass through solitude and difficulty, isolation and silence, in order to reach forth to the enchanted place where we can dance our clumsy dance and sing our sorrowful song - but in this dance or in this song there are fulfilled the most ancient rites of our conscience in the awareness of being human and of believing in a common destiny.
Awareness | Conscience | Destiny | Difficulty | Isolation | Order | Rites | Silence | Solitude | Wisdom | Awareness |
A constitution is not a thing in name only, but in fact. It has not an ideal but a real existence, and wherever it cannot be produced in a visible form, there is none. A constitution is a thing antecedent to a government, and a government is only the creature of a constitution. The constitution of a country is not the act of its government, but of a people constituting a government. It is the body of elements to which you refer, and quote article by article, and contains the principles on which the government shall be established - the form in which it shall be organized - the powers it shall have - the mode of elections - the duration of Congress - and, in fine, everything that relates to the complete organization of a civil government, and the principles on which it shall act, and by which it shall be bound. A constitution is to a government, therefore, what the laws made by that government care to a court of judicature. The court of judicature does not make laws, neither can it alter them; it only acts in conformity to the laws made; and the government is in like manner governed by the constitution.
Body | Care | Conformity | Existence | Government | Organization | People | Principles | Wisdom | Government |
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Undeserved praise causes more pangs of conscience later than undeserved blame, but probably only for this reason, that our powers of judgment are more completely exposed by being overpraised than by being unjustly underestimated.
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
The philosopher has to be the bad conscience of his age.
Age | Conscience | Wisdom |
Demean thyself more warily in thy study than in the street. If thy public actions have a hundred witnesses, thy private have a thousand. The multitude looks but upon thy actions; thy conscience looks into them: the multitude may chance to excuse thee, if not acquire thee; thy conscience will accuse thee, if not condemn thee.
Chance | Conscience | Looks | Public | Study | Will | Wisdom |
Conscience is the voice of the soul, the passions are the voice of the body. Is it astonishing that often these two languages contradict each other, and then to which must we listen? Too often reason deceives us; we have only to listen too much acquired the right of refusing to listen to it; but conscience never deceives us; it is the true guide of man; it is to man what instinct is to the body, which follows it, obeys nature, and never is afraid of going astray.
Body | Conscience | Instinct | Man | Nature | Reason | Right | Soul | Wisdom | Afraid |
Joshua Reynolds, fully Sir Joshua Reynolds
Taste depends upon those finer emotions which make the organization of the soul.
Emotions | Organization | Soul | Taste | Wisdom |