This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The time and study, the genius, knowledge, and application requisite to qualify an eminent teacher of the sciences, are at least equal to what is necessary for the greatest practitioners in law and physic. But the usual reward of the eminent teacher bears no proportion to that of the lawyer or physician... The inequality is upon the whole, perhaps, rather advantageous than hurtful to the public. It may somewhat degrade the profession of a public teacher; but the cheapness of literary education is surely an advantage which greatly overbalances this trifling inconveniency.
Education | Genius | Inequality | Knowledge | Law | Public | Reward | Study | Time | Teacher |
It is a just observation that the people commonly intend the public good. This often applies to their very errors. But their good sense would despise the adulator who should pretend that they always reason right about the means of promoting it. They known from experience that they sometimes err; and the wonder is that they so seldom err as they do, beset, as they continually are, by the wiles of parasites and sycophants, by the snares of the ambitious, the avaricious, the desperate, by the artifices of men who possess their confidence more then they deserve it, and of those who seek to possess rather than to deserve it.
Confidence | Despise | Experience | Good | Means | Men | Observation | People | Public | Reason | Right | Sense | Wonder |
The task of democracy is to relive mass misery and yet preserve the freedom of the individual.
Democracy | Freedom | Individual |
Politics is the conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precaution for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust... The most effectual one is such a limitation of the term of appointments as will maintain a proper responsibility to the people.
Good | Men | People | Public | Responsibility | Society | Trust | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Wisdom |
Allan Bloom, fully Allan David Bloom
For the Founders, minorities are in general bad things, mostly identical to factions, selfish groups which have no concern as such for the common good... The Founders wished to achieve a national majority concerning the fundamental rights and then prevent that majority from using that power to over turn those fundamental rights. In 20th Century social science, however, the common good disappeared and along with it the negative view of minorities. The very idea of majority... is done away with in order to protect the minorities
The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust.
Good | Men | Public | Society | Trust | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom |
Alice Walker, fully Alice Malsenior Walker
What is always needed in the appreciation of art, or life, is the larger perspective. Connections made, or at least attempted, where none existed before, the straining to encompass in one’s glance at the varied world the common thread, the unifying theme through immense diversity, a fearlessness of growth, of search, of looking, that enlarges the private and public world. And yet, in our particular society, it is the narrowed and narrowing view of life that often wins.
Appreciation | Art | Diversity | Growth | Life | Life | Public | Search | Society | World | Appreciation |
Once you permit those who are convinced of their own superior rightness to censor and silence and suppress those who hold contrary opinions, just at that moment the citadel has been surrendered. For the American citadel is a man. Not man in general. Not man in the abstract. Not the majority of men. But man. That man. His worth. His uniqueness.
Abstract | Censor | Majority | Man | Men | Silence | Worth |
Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr., born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger
The first rule of democracy is to distrust all leaders who begin to believe their own publicity.