This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Enthusiasm is a virtue rarely to be met with in seasons of calm and unruffled prosperity.—It flourishes in adversity, kindles in the hour of danger, and awakens to deeds of renown.—The terrors of persecution only serve to quicken the energy of its purposes.—It swells in proud integrity, and, great in the purity of its cause, it can scatter defiance amidst hosts of enemies.
Character | Deeds | Defiance | Energy | Enthusiasm | Prosperity | Purity | Virtue | Virtue | Deeds |
Children are remarkable for their intelligence and ardor, for their curiosity, their intolerance of shams, the clarity and ruthlessness of their vision.
Character | Children | Curiosity | Intelligence | Intolerance | Ruthlessness | Vision |
John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
Tolerance implies no lack of commitment to one's own beliefs. Rather it condemns the oppression or persecution of others.
Character | Commitment | Oppression |
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
A religion, even if it calls itself the religion of love, must be hard and unloving to those who do not belong to it. Fundamentally, indeed, every religion is in this same way a religion of love for all those whom it embraces; while cruelty and intolerance towards those who do not belong to it are natural to every religion.
Cruelty | Intolerance | Love | Religion | Wisdom | Cruelty |
Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos
We are not only made in God’s image, but that we are made to image God - to reflect His freedom, joy, compassion and peace in our lives... When religion becomes reduced to an outward observation of rules and ceremonies and an intolerance toward the beliefs of others, we are mistaking the oyster for the pearl. The oyster is certainly valuable, but it is of infinitely greater value when it promotes the growth of the pearl... We cannot reason our way back to the roots of religion. We cannot trap God in stale dogmas or narrow creeds. Our purpose is to make religion a continuous living experience, to lead us toward a resurrection not of the dead but of the living who are dead to their own truth. Then religion becomes a thread that can both link us to the past and guide us to our future.
Compassion | Experience | Freedom | Future | God | Growth | Intolerance | Joy | Observation | Past | Peace | Purpose | Purpose | Reason | Religion | Truth | Wisdom | God | Value |
Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
No loss by flood and lightning, no destruction of cities and temples by the hostile forces of nature has deprived man of so many noble lives and impulses as those which his intolerance has destroyed.
Intolerance | Man | Nature | Loss |
New York Times Editorial on the Holocaust NULL
It was and it is to do all that can be done to eradicate an evil thing out of our civilization… a thing so incredibly wicked that it would not have been believable of modern man if it had not actually occurred. This evil, this wickedness began with intolerance and hate in a few men’s hearts. It spread until it almost wrecked the world. Now the obligation is to remember, not in hate, not in the spirit of revenge, but so that this spirit cannot ever flourish again so long as man remains on earth. And to this end, let us begin, each of us, by looking into our own hearts.
Civilization | Earth | Evil | Hate | Intolerance | Man | Men | Obligation | Revenge | Spirit | Wickedness | World |
P. D. Premasiri, fully Pahalawattage Don Premasiri
Fanaticism and intolerance often result from the delusion that, "this alone is the truth and everything else is false," causing people to commit atrocities in the name of "truth."
Delusion | Fanaticism | Intolerance | People | Truth |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
If you think your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument rather than by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based upon faith, you will realize that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting or distorting the minds of the young in what is called 'education.'
Argument | Belief | Education | Faith | Force | Reason | Will | Think |
Tacitus, fully Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus NULL
The persecution of genius fosters its influence.
Religious persecution may shield itself under the guides of a mistaken and over-zealous piety.
Piety |
We have two tyrannous physical passions: concupiscence and chastity. We become mad in pursuit of sex: we become equally mad in the persecution of that pursuit. Unless we gratify our desire the race is lost; unless we restrain it we destroy ourselves.
A religion which requires persecution to sustain it is of the devil's propagation.
Man's nature... is not corrupt. The idea of God is innate in man's mind from the beginning; so that by reason alone man has arrived, everywhere, at a recognition of God which is sufficient. Religious intolerance is blasphemy, since in their primal ground and ultimate sense, all religions are one, as is mankind.
Beginning | Blasphemy | God | Intolerance | Man | Mankind | Mind | Nature | Reason | Sense | God |