This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We should remember that the social utility of free speech is in giving us the informational base from which we can then make social choices. To refrain from making social choices is to say that beyond the issue of free speech we have no substantive values which we will express in action. If we do not discriminate in the actions we support or oppose, we cannot rectify the terrible injustices of the present world.
Action | Free speech | Giving | Present | Speech | Will | World |
Poetry (which owes its origin almost entirely to genius and is least willing to be led by precepts or example) holds the first rank among all the arts. It expands the mind by giving freedom to the boundless multiplicity of possible forms accordant with the given concept, to whose bounds it is restricted, that one which couples with the presentation of the concept a wealth of thought to which no verbal expression is completely adequate, and by thus rises aesthetically to ideas.
Example | Freedom | Genius | Giving | Ideas | Mind | Poetry | Rank | Thought | Wealth | Thought |
Restraint does not mean weakness. It does not mean giving in.
Think of giving not as a duty but as a privilege.
John W. Gardner, fully John William Gardner
Much education today is monumentally ineffective. All too often we are giving young people cut flowers when we should be teaching them to grow their own plants.
M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
By attempting to avoid the responsibility for our own behavior, we are giving away our power to some other individual or organization. In this way, millions daily attempt to escape from freedom.
Behavior | Freedom | Giving | Individual | Organization | Power | Responsibility |
Generosity is giving more than you can; pride is taking less than you need.
Generosity | Giving | Need | Pride |
Joseph Chilton Pearce, aka Joe
Any judgment we make, no matter of whom, registers in the heart as a disruption of relationship, and the heart dutifully responds on behalf of our defense, shifting neural, hormonal, and electromagnetic systems from relational to defensive. Creator and created are giving rise to each other, we are judged as we have judged.
Defense | Giving | Heart | Judgment | Relationship |
Marilyn vos Savant, born Marilyn Mach
It has been my observation that being beaten up is often a temporary condition; giving up is what makes it permanent.
Giving | Observation |
Marilyn vos Savant, born Marilyn Mach
Being defeated is often a temporary condition. Giving up is what makes it permanent.
Giving |
Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL
Nobody is ever impoverished through the giving of charity.
Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL
There are eight degrees in almsgiving… Supreme above all is to give assistance to a fellow man who has fallen on evil times by presenting him with a gift or loan, or entering into a partnership with him, or procuring him work, thereby helping him to become self-supporting. Next best is giving alms in such a way that the giver and recipient are unknown to each other. This is, indeed, the performance of a commandment from disinterested motives.
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
Without doubt, the highest privilege of wealth is the opportunity it affords for doing good, without giving up one’s fortune.
Doubt | Fortune | Giving | Good | Opportunity | Wealth | Privilege |
Marcel Proust, fully Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust
We are ordinarily so indifferent to people that when we have invested one of them with the possibility of giving us joy, or suffering, it seems as if he must belong to some other universe, he is imbued with poetry.
Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim
It is my humility that gives God his divinity and the proof of it is this. God’s peculiar property is giving. But God cannot give if he has nothing to receive his gifts. Since I make myself receptive to his gifts by my humility so I by my humility do make God giver and since giving is God’s own peculiar property I do by my humility give God his property.
Divinity | Giving | God | Humility | Nothing | Property | Receive | God |
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
The merging of action and awareness is made possible by centering attention on a limited stimulus field. To insure that people will concentrate on their actions, potentially intruding stimuli must be kept out of attention. Some writers [such as Abraham Maslow] have called this process a "narrowing of consciousness" or "a giving up of the past and the future."
Action | Attention | Awareness | Consciousness | Future | Giving | Past | People | Will | Awareness |
Enter every activity without giving mental recognition to the possibility of defeat. Concentrate on your strengths, instead of your weaknesses... on your powers, instead of your problems.