This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The mind has its arrangement; it proceeds from principles to demonstrations. The heart has a different mode of proceeding.
Heart | Mind | Principles |
It is certain that the soul is either mortal or immortal. The decision of this question must make a total difference in the principles of morals. Yet philosophers have arranged their moral system entirely independent of this. What an extraordinary blindness!
As the grand discordant harmony of the celestial bodies may be explained by the simple principles of gravity and impulse, so also in that more wonderful and complicated microcosm the heart of man, all the phenomena of morals are perhaps resolvable into one single principle, the pursuit of apparent good; for although customs universally vary, yet man in all climates and countries is essentially the same.
Good | Harmony | Heart | Impulse | Man | Phenomena | Principles |
War kills men, and men deplore the loss; but war also crushes bad principles and tyrants, and so saves societies.
Men | Principles | War |
Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
Music illustrates the primordial forces of nature, while li reflects the products of creation. Heaven represents the principle of eternal motion, while Earth represents the principle of remaining still, and these two principles of motion and rest permeate life between Heaven and Earth.
Earth | Eternal | Heaven | Life | Life | Music | Nature | Principles | Rest |
Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
A man can enlarge his principles; his principles do not enlarge a man.
Man | Principles |
Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
He who merely knows right principles is not equal to him who loves them.
Principles | Right |
Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower
A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
People | Principles |
The great difference between the real statesman and the pretender is, that the one sees into the future, while the other regards only the present; the one lives by the day, and acts on expediency; the other acts on enduring principles and for immortality.
Day | Future | Immortality | Present | Principles |
Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR
The fate of America cannot depend on any one man. The greatness of American is grounded in principles and not on any single personality.
Fate | Greatness | Man | Personality | Principles | Fate |
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved. As a rule the majority are wrong, the minority is usually right.
Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
What experience and history teach is this - that peoples and governments never have learned anything from history, or acted on principles deduced from it.
Experience | History | Principles | Teach |
To lay aside all prejudice is to lay aside all principles. He who is destitute of principles is governed, theoretically and practically, by whims.
Prejudice | Principles |
Henry Miller, aka Henry Valentine Miller
We kill because we are afraid of our own shadow, afraid that if we used a little common sense we'd have to admit that our glorious principles were wrong.
Common Sense | Kill | Little | Principles | Sense | Wrong | Afraid |
It is impossible to enslave, mentally or socially, a Bible-reading people. The principles of the Bible are the groundwork of human freedom.
Many men do not allow their principles to take root, but pull them up every now and then, as children do the flowers they have planted, to see if they are growing.
Children | Men | Principles |
Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger
While we should never give up our principles, we must also realize that we cannot maintain our principles unless we survive.
To establish the principles of the Declaration of Independence, we are going to need to go outside the law, to stop obeying the laws that demand killing or that allocate wealth the way it has been done, or that put people in jail for petty technical offense and keep other people out of jail for enormous crimes.
The principal of ethics being a categorical imperative does not admit of proof, but it admits of a justification from principles of pure practical reason.
Ethics | Justification | Principles | Reason |