This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Larry Eisenberg, formally Lawrence Eisenberg
For peace of mind, resign as general manager of the universe.
Peace |
Leon Trotsky, born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein
There are no absolute rules of conduct, either in peace or war. Everything depends on circumstances.
Leon Shenendoah, elected Tadodaho, aka Chief Leon Shenendoah
We must live in harmony with the Natural World and recognize that excessive exploitation can only lead to our own destruction. We cannot trade the welfare of our future generations for profit now. We must abide by the Natural Law or be victims of its ultimate reality. We must stand together, the four sacred colors of humans, as the one family we are, in the interest of peace. We must abolish nuclear and conventional weapons of war. When warriors are leaders, then you will have war. We must raise leaders of peace. We must unite the religions of the world as the spiritual force strong enough to prevail in peace. It is no longer good enough to cry, "Peace." We must act peace, live peace, and march in peace in alliance with the people of the world.
Enough | Family | Force | Future | Good | Harmony | Law | Peace | People | Sacred | Weapons | Will | World |
Henry St John, Lord Bolingbroke, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke
No religion ever appeared in the world whose natural tendency was so much directed to promote the peace and happiness of mankind. It makes right reason a law in every possible definition of the word. And therefore, even supposing it to have been purely a human invention, it had been the most amiable and the most useful invention that was ever imposed on mankind for their good.
Invention | Law | Mankind | Peace | Reason | Religion | Right | World | Happiness |
Lester Pearson, fully Lester Bowles "Mike" Pearson
The choice, however, is as clear now for nations as it was once for the individual: peace or extinction.
Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little, Muslim name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz
You can't separate peace from freedom because no one can be at peace unless he has his freedom.
Mao Tse-tung, alternatively Zedong, Ze dong, aka Chairman Mao
People all over the world are now discussing whether a third world war will break out. On this question, too, we must be mentally prepared and do some analysis. We stand firmly for peace and against war. However, if the imperialists insist on unleashing another war, we should not be afraid of it. Our attitude on this question is the same as our attitude towards any disturbance: first, we are against it; second, we are not afraid of it. The First World War was followed by the birth of the Soviet Union with a population of 200 million. The Second World War was followed by the emergence of the socialist camp with a combined population of 900 million. If the imperialists insist on launching a third world war, it is certain that several hundred million more will turn to socialism, and then there will not be much room left on earth for the imperialists; it is also likely that the whole structure of imperialism will utterly collapse.
Birth | Earth | Imperialism | Peace | Question | War | Will | World | Afraid |
Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
For nowhere can a mind find a retreat more full of peace or more free from care than his own soul.
In the whole round of human affairs little is so fatal to peace as misunderstanding.
One of the basic causes for all the trouble in the world today is that people talk too much and think too little. They act too impulsively without thinking. I am not advocating in the slightest that we become mutes with our voices stilled because of fear of criticism of what we might say. That is moral cowardice. And moral cowardice that keeps us from speaking our minds is as dangerous to this country as irresponsible talk. The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character. The importance of individual thinking to the preservation of our democracy and our freedom cannot be overemphasized. The broader sense of the concept of your role in the defense of democracy is that of the citizen doing his most for the preservation of democracy and peace by independent thinking, making that thinking articulate by translating it into action at the ballot boxes, in the forums, and in everyday life, and being constructive and positive in that thinking and articulation. The most precious thing that democracy gives to us is freedom. You and I cannot escape the fact that the ultimate responsibility for freedom is personal. Our freedoms today are not so much in danger because people are consciously trying to take them away from us as they are in danger because we forget to use them. Freedom unexercised may be freedom forfeited. The preservation of freedom is in the hands of the people themselves — not of the government.
Action | Cowardice | Criticism | Danger | Defense | Democracy | Fear | Freedom | Individual | Peace | People | Responsibility | Right | Sense | Thinking | World | Danger | Trouble | Think |
Marguerite Yourcenar, pseudonym for Marguerite Cleenewerck de Crayencour
The future of the world no longer disturbs me; I do not try still to calculate, with anguish, how long or how short a time the Roman peace will endure; I leave that to the Gods. Not that I have acquired more confidence in their justice, which is not our justice, or more faith in human wisdom; the contrary is true. Life is atrocious, we know. But precisely because I expect little of the human condition, man's periods of felicity, his partial progress, his efforts to begin over again and to continue, all seem to me like so many prodigies which nearly compensate for monstrous mass of ills and defeats, of indifference and error. Catastrophe and ruin will come; disorder will triumph, but order will too, from time to time. Peace will again establish itself between two periods and there regain the meaning which we have tried to give them. Not all our books will perish, nor our statues, if broken, lie unrepaired; other domes and pediments will rise from our domes and pediments; some few men will think and work and feel as we have done, and I venture to count upon such continuators, placed irregularly throughout the centuries, and upon this kind of intermittent immortality.
Books | Confidence | Faith | Future | Indifference | Life | Life | Little | Meaning | Men | Order | Peace | Time | Will | Work | World | Think |
Martin Tupper, fully Martin Farquhar Tupper
A babe in the house is a well-spring of pleasure, a messenger of peace and love, a resting place for innocence on earth, a link between angels and men.
Mary Pipher, aka Mary Elizabeth Pipher or Mary Bray Pipher
Religions are metaphorical systems that give us bigger containers in which to hold our lives. A spiritual life allows us to move beyond the ego into something more universal. Religious experience carries us outside of clock time into eternal time. We open ourselves into something more complete and beautiful. This bigger vista is perhaps the most magnificent aspect of a religious experience. There is a sense in which Karl Marx was correct when he said that religion is the opiate of the people. However, he was wrong to scoff at this. Religion can give us skills for climbing up on onto a ledge above our suffering and looking down at it with a kind and open mind. This helps us calm down and connect to all of the world's sufferers. Since the beginning of human time, we have yearned for peace in the face of death, loss, anger and fear. In fact, it is often trauma that turns us toward the sacred, and it is the sacred that saves us.
Anger | Beginning | Ego | Eternal | Experience | Life | Life | Peace | Religion | Sacred | Sense | Suffering | Time | Wrong |
Ere you lie down to sleep in the night, sit still awhile, and nurse again to life your gentler self. Forget the restless, noisy spirit of the day, and encourage to speech the soft voices within you that timidly whisper of the peace of the quiet night; and occasionally look out at the quiet stars. The night will soothe you like a tender mother, folding you against her soft bosom, and hiding you from the harm of the world. Though denied and rejected by men in the light of day, the night will not reject you and in the still of her soft shadows you are free. After the day's struggle there is no freedom like unfettered thoughts, no sound like the music of silence. And though behind you lies a road of dust and heat and discouragement, and before you the challenge and uncertainty of untried paths, in this brief hour you are master of all highways, and the universe nestles in your soul.
Challenge | Freedom | Harm | Life | Life | Light | Men | Music | Peace | Quiet | Sound | Speech | Spirit | Struggle | Uncertainty | Universe | Will |
May Sarton, pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton
The moral dilemma is to make peace with the unacceptable.
Peace |
Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson
When great trees fall, rocks on distant hills shudder, lions hunker down in tall grasses, and even elephants lumber after safety. When great trees fall in forests, small things recoil into silence, their senses eroded beyond fear. When great souls die, the air around us becomes light, rare, sterile. We breathe, briefly. Our eyes, briefly, see with a hurtful clarity. Our memory, suddenly sharpened, examines, gnaws on kind words unsaid, promised walks never taken. Great souls die and our reality, bound to them, takes leave of us. Our souls, dependent upon their nurture, now shrink, wizened. Our minds, formed and informed by their radiance, fall away. We are not so much maddened as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of dark, cold caves. And when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always irregularly. Spaces fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration. Our senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us. They existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed.
Max Planck, fully Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck
Religion represents a bond (Bindung) of man to god. It consists in reverent aw of supernatural might (Macht), to which human life is subordinated [?] and which has in its power (Gewalt) our wellfare and misery (Wohl und Wehe). To remain in permanent contact with this might and keep it all the time inclined to oneself, is the unending effort and the highest goal of believing man. Because only [?] in such a way can one feel himself safe before expected and unexpected dangers, which threaten one in his life, and can take part in the highest happiness – inner psychical peace – which can be attained only [?] by means of strong bond to god and unconditional trust to his omnipotence and willingness to help. As far as here the religion originates in the consciousness of individual man.
Consciousness | Effort | God | Individual | Life | Life | Man | Means | Omnipotence | Peace | Power | Religion | Safe | Time | Trust | God | Happiness |
[Gratitude] turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos into order, confusion into clarity...it makes sense of our past, brings peace for today, and creates a vision for tomorrow.