This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Jules de Goncourt, fully Jules Huot de Goncourt
The only thing worse than a liar is a liar that's also a hypocrite! There are only two great currents in the history of mankind: the baseness which makes conservatives and the envy which makes revolutionaries.
When you study the history of life, and step back to look at this long history with the perspective of several hundred million years, you see a flow and direction in it - from the simple to the complex, from lower forms to higher, and always towards greater intelligence--and you wonder: can this history of events leading to man, with its clear direction, yet be undirected?
Events | History | Intelligence | Life | Life | Man | Study | Wonder |
John Kane, fully John L. Lane Jr.
The public interest is best served by the free exchange of ideas.
Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
Deep down, below the surface of the average man’s conscience, he hears a voice whispering. “There is something not right,” no matter how much his rightness is supported by public opinion or by the moral code.
Conscience | Man | Opinion | Public | Right |
Immense hidden powers seem to lurk in the unconscious depths of even the most common man - indeed, of all people without exception. It is these powers, when put under pressure, that are responsible for all great creative efforts. The men who make history are those who - consciously or unconsciously - turn the switch on the inner switchboards of human character. Pour out all your fears and anxieties, malicious joy and greed and hatred, and you will be astonished at the terrific amount of power which is pent up in your unconscious mind. We can release this power and transform it from negative into positive power, only by bringing into the open, into the light of consciousness, and by accepting ourselves as we are, even though the mountains of debts seem to crush us. This is the principle of honesty. And it is clear that it can be applied only if connected with the principle of faith.
Character | Consciousness | Faith | Greed | History | Honesty | Joy | Light | Man | Men | Mind | People | Power | Will |
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Although the tongue of God is busy speaking through all things, yet in order to speak to the deaf ears of many among us, it is necessary for Him to speak through the lips of man. He has done this all through the history of man, every great teacher of the past having been this guiding Spirit living the life of God in human guise. In other words, their human guise consists of various coats worn by the same person, who appeared to be different in each. Shiva, Buddha, Rama, Krishna, on the other side, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mohammad on the other; and many more, known or unknown to history, always one and the same person.
God | History | Life | Life | Man | Order | Past | Spirit | Words | God | Teacher |
Darwin’s and Huxley’s picture of man’s place in the universe prepared the way for the Holocaust… Darwin the scientist directly inspired Nietzsche’s superman theory and the Nazi corollary that some people were subhuman… People have to learn to stop thinking of other people as machines and learn to think of them as men and women possessed of souls… History doesn’t need another one hundred million deaths to prove that scientific atheism is a form of mental illness.
Atheism | History | Machines | Man | Men | Need | People | Thinking | Universe | Learn | Think |
The art of crisis management, now widely acknowledged to be the essence of statecraft, owes its vogue to the merger of politics and spectacle. Propaganda seeks to create in the public a chronic sense of crisis, which in turn justifies the expansion of executive power and the secrecy surrounding it.
Art | Politics | Power | Public | Secrecy | Sense | Art | Crisis | Propaganda |
It is loyalty to great ends, even though forced to combine the small and opposing motives of selfish men to accomplish them; it is the anchored cling to solid principles of duty and action, which knows how to swing with the tide, but is never carried away by it – that we demand in public men, and not sameness of policy, or a conscientious persistency in what is impracticable.
Action | Duty | Ends | Loyalty | Loyalty | Men | Motives | Policy | Principles | Public |
The plainest historical evidence for the effectiveness of religion as a positive social form lies in the history of the Jews.
James A. Michener, fully James Albert Michener
Self-respect cannot be purchased. It is never for sale. It cannot be fabricated out of public relations. It comes to us when we are alone, in quiet moments, in quiet places, when we suddenly realize that knowing the good, we have gone for the great.
[McClaughry’s Law of Public Policy] Politicians who vote huge expenditures to alleviate problems get reelected; those who propose structural changes to prevent problems get early retirement.
Law | Policy | Problems | Public | Retirement |
[The Bible] is a history of wickedness that has served to corrupt and brutalize mankind; and, for my part, I sincerely detest it as I detest everything that is cruel.
Bible | History | Mankind | Wickedness |
Eleanor Roosevelt, fully Anna Eleanor Roosevelt
All big changes in human history have been arrived at slowly and through many compromises.
History |