This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Salman Rushdie, fully Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie
Literature is where I go to explore the highest and lowest places in human society and in the human spirit, where I hope to find not absolute truth but the truth of the tale, of the imagination of the heart.
Salman Rushdie, fully Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie
It was because it was easier to blame me, ... You know, 'Why is he rocking the boat?' In those days there was a lot of that stuff. He was asking for it. He did it on purpose. He was begging for it. It was just conventional blaming-the-victim stuff. I don't like the term 'victim' when applied to myself. Certainly I felt the guilt burden had shifted from the people doing the violence to the person on the receiving end of the violence.
Chance | Childhood | Experience | Meaning | Past | People | Present | Sense | Loss | Old |
Salman Rushdie, fully Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie
The other thing that prevents people standing up, ... is a kind of cultural defensiveness. The kind of not-washing-your-dirty-linen-in-public argument. That we in the Muslim world are under attack. And, as a result, we put up defenses. And we don't criticize even the worst people in the family. Because if it's your family, and you happen to have an idiot child, you don't tell the world it's an idiot child.
Literature | Order | Struggle | Privilege |
Humility is nothing but truth, and pride is nothing but lying.
You should not be surprised if you sometimes feel impatient hearing confessions, and vain in your sermons and in your studies. You are a man and, consequently, a sinner. . . . There is a difference between the act, the consent, and the temptation, and you are mistaking one for the other. If you are tempted to pride in your sermons, you do not, however, preach for this reason. When you are inclined to impatience in the confessional, even if, by chance, you consent to it in some way, it does not follow that you act on it. As for eating, have no scruple about the desires this stimulates in you, nor think you are going to excess in that regard; I have been informed of the contrary. Speaking of that, I ask you to eat better than you have been doing.
Circumspection | Gentleness | People | Receive | Reserve | Time | World | Friends |
You know that you yourself are not always in the same state. If you are exact today, closely united to God, and a consolation to the whole house, tomorrow you will be out of sorts, indolent, and a source of affliction to others. Then you will need their support, as you have supported them.
Consolation | Service |
But still his tongue ran on, the less Of weight it bore, with greater ease.
Wise |
We deny the assertion made by some of our opponents when they say the American Federation of Labor is against political action. We are against the the American labor movement being made a political party machine.
Contempt | Courage | Government | Improvement | Mercy | Nothing | Order | Purpose | Purpose | Rights | Time | Will | Government | Guilty |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
But here more slow, where all are slaves to gold, Where looks are merchandise, and smiles are sold.
Most people who start out with the idea of organizing women desire to do it wholesale, and my experience is that while a number of them may be organized, the elements of permanency and success are lacking for the same reason that many organizations fail among men . . . namely, the failure . . . to recognize the absolute necessity of making each Union protective in its character. In other words, that the members of the Union should be required to pay higher dues into the Union, to receive a considerable benefit from it and thus enlist the material interests of the members in the Union; not so much for the sake of this material interest but for the sake of keeping them in the Union. When that is once secured progress can be made in any direction to the interests of labor.
Capitalism | Children | Government | Government |
I do not for a moment entertain the belief that by our simple declaration that we shall make friends of the negro laborers. Their previous condition, their former absolute dependence upon their masters (and now their employers) have deprived them of learning that it is necessary for them to rely upon themselves and upon each other, but I am confident that if organized workingmen will take a more liberal view of the situation, or rather a more practical view, that the negro workman will to a very much greater extent make common cause with us in our struggles. . . [The negro] is a living fact and a factor and regardless of all the prejudices that may be entertained he must be counted with and the way to count with him is the question that must be considered.
Care | Discussion | Doubt | Enough | Force | Opportunity | Position | Question | Rights | Will | Wisdom |
I know that there may be several men who have charged the American Federation of Labor . . . to be against what they are pleased to call industrial unionism or the one big union, and I would venture to say that when they . . . consider this proposition outside of our union [Cigar Makers International Union] then they are industrialists; but when there is a proposal to open our doors and go into the highways and byways and organize these men and women against whom literally we are closing our doors, it is opposed.
Censure | Man | Organization | Theories |
We hail with deep satisfaction the arrival of an embassy from our mother country charged with the noble duty of proposing a treaty of perpetual peace between the two great political divisions of the English-speaking people.
Attainment | Better | Hope | Life | Life | Love | Man | People | Wealth | Work |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
Human life is everywhere a state in which much is to be endured and little to be enjoyed.
Cause |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
Let him that desires to see others happy, make haste to give while his gift can be enjoyed, and remember that every moment of delay takes away something from the value of his benefaction.
Devil |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.
Public |