This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires but according to our powers.
Duty |
Peter Abelard, Latin: Petrus Abaelardus or Abailard; French: Pierre Abélard
Those even who persecuted Christ or His followers, whom they considered it their duty to persecute, are said to have sinned in action; but they would have committed a graver fault if, contrary to their conscience, they had spared them.
Action | Conscience | Duty | Fault | Fault |
What is threatened today is moral liberty, conscience, respect for the soul, the very nobility of man. To defend the soul, its interests, its rights, its dignity, is the most pressing duty for whoever sees the danger.
Conscience | Danger | Dignity | Duty | Liberty | Man | Nobility | Respect | Rights | Soul | Respect |
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
God has laid upon man the duty of being free, of safeguarding freedom of spirit, no matter how difficult that may be, or how much sacrifice and suffering it may require.
Duty | Freedom | God | Man | Sacrifice | Spirit | Suffering |
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
Man’s greatest duty is to love God: that is the first commandment. The second is to love his neighbor. And it is possible for two creatures to love one another only because God exists and is their common Father – it is the divine image and likeness that is loveable in our fellow-men.
Let no one forget his own duty for the sake of another’s, however great; let a man after he has discovered his own duty, be always attentive to his duty.
What is important and of greatest significance is that an ideal of final truth is always before use and that the search for truth is acknowledged by all men as a duty not imposed from outside but born from within. The search for final truth rests with each individual personality and rendering the partial interpretations of our experience fundamentally consistent with one another. It is this fact that justifies the use of the word `God’ to designate the all embracing personality in whose existence ultimate reality exists.
Duty | Existence | Experience | God | Important | Individual | Men | Personality | Reality | Search | Truth |
Frederick Copleston, fully Frederick Charles Copleston
If our conscience tells us that we ought to perform a particular act, it is our moral duty to perform it.
Conscience | Duty |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.
Cooperation | Duty | Evil | Good |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
In my humble opinion, non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.
Cooperation | Duty | Evil | Good | Opinion |
Spiritual progress must be slow as long as we are worried, frightened, resentful, sick, or discouraged – and those things can be overcome only through prayer. It is a duty and a joy to help others, wisely, and to leave the world a better place than we found it – and we can do that only through prayer. The more we pray for ourselves the more power will our prayers have for any other purpose whatsoever; so we see that praying for ourselves is the reverse of selfishness – it is truly glorifying God.
Better | Duty | God | Joy | Power | Prayer | Progress | Purpose | Purpose | Selfishness | Will | World |
F. A. Hayek, fully Friedrich August Hayek or von Hayek
Responsibility, not to a superior, but to one’s conscience, the awareness of a duty not exacted by compulsion, the necessity to decide which of the things one values are to be sacrificed to others, and to beat the consequences of one’s own decision, are the very essence of any morals which deserve the name.
Awareness | Conscience | Consequences | Decision | Duty | Necessity | Responsibility | Awareness |
P. A. R. Janet and G. Sèailles
The law of duty demands moral perfection or holiness. But this is impossible in our present life, therefore it can only be attained by an indefinite progress, and this progress is only possible under the hypothesis of an existence and a personality that re indefinitely prolonged.
Duty | Existence | Hypothesis | Law | Life | Life | Perfection | Personality | Present | Progress |