This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Louis D. Brandeis, fully Louis Dembitz Brandeis
We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated in the hands of a few, but we can't have both.
Being morally good, for the majority of Americans, means following the norms and values of their society or culture - whether this be their peer culture, their church, their country, or a combination of these. The theory that morality is relative to societal norms is known in moral philosophy as cultural relativism. Many others claim that morality is relative to the individual and is different for every person depending on what they feel. This theory is known in philosophy as ethical subjectivism.
Church | Culture | Good | Individual | Majority | Means | Morality | Philosophy | Society | Society | Following |
Luther Standing Bear, aka Ota Kte or Mochunozhin
Today the children of our public schools are taught more of the history, heroes, legends, and sagas of the wold world than of the land of their birth, while they are furnished with little material on the people and institutions that are truly American.
Birth | Children | History | Land | Legends | Little | People | Public | World |
Louis D. Brandeis, fully Louis Dembitz Brandeis
What are the American ideals? They are the development of the individual through liberty and the attainment of the common good through democracy and social justice.
Attainment | Democracy | Good | Ideals | Individual | Justice | Liberty |
Morality is made up of customs and habits. Custom makes public morality, and habit individual morality.
Custom | Habit | Individual | Morality | Public |
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
Every generous action loves the public view; yet no theatre for virtue is equal to a consciousness of it.
Action | Consciousness | Public | Virtue | Virtue |
Max Lerner, fully Maxwell "Max" Alan Lerner, aka Mikhail Lerner
Of the many things we have done to democracy in the past, the worst has been the indignity of taking it for granted.
Mortimer J. Adler, fully Mortimer Jerome Adler
What is needed to make democracy work as it is not now working- to bring into existence in reality a sound conception of democracy? The mass liberal education of the mass electorate. Not just schooling, but an education that involves moral training as well as training of the mind.
Democracy | Education | Existence | Mind | Reality | Sound | Training | Work |
Noam Chomsky, fully Avram Noam Chomsky
As people with their freedom, the elites recognize that they cannot control the masses by force anymore; they have to control public opinions and attitudes. The more freedom you win, the more ways privileged groups—usually an amalgam of state and private powers—devise to control you.
The majority of men meet with failure because of their lack of persistence in creating new plans to take the place of those which fail.
Failure | Majority | Men | Persistence | Failure |
Octavio Paz, born Octavio Paz Lozano
Changes are inseparable from democracy. To defend democracy is to defend the possibility of change; in turn, changes alone can strengthen democracy.
Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
A mere law to give all men equal rights is but useless, if the poor man must sacrifice those rights to their debts, and, in the very seats and sanctuaries of equality, the courts of justice, the offices of state, and the public discussions, be more than anywhere at the beck and bidding of the rich.
Equality | Justice | Law | Man | Men | Public | Rights | Sacrifice |
My opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and that this is the power upon which he who would act rationally either in public or private life must have his eye fixed.
Effort | Good | Knowledge | Life | Life | Light | Lord | Opinion | Power | Public | Reason | Right | Truth | World | Parent |
Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
Poverty is dishonorable, not in itself, but when it is a proof of laziness, intemperance, luxury, and carelessness; whereas in a person that is temperate, industrious, just and valiant, and who uses all his virtues for the public good, it shows a great and lofty mind.
Good | Intemperance | Laziness | Luxury | Mind | Poverty | Public |
The penalty good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.
Evil | Good | Indifference | Men | Public |