This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
Pain in the human world is the birth of personality, its fight for its own nature.
Birth | Nature | Pain | Personality | World |
It is not causality that freedom is to be contrasted with, but constraint.
Constraint | Freedom |
James Baldwin, fully James Arthur Baldwin
Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.
He produces not only our choice, but also the very freedom that is in our chance... In order to understand that God creates our free will in us, we must understand only that He wills us to be free. But He will not only that we should be free in power, but that we should be free in its exercise.
Chance | Choice | Free will | Freedom | God | Order | Power | Will | Wills | God | Understand |
Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter
It is in consciousness that freedom lies.
Consciousness | Freedom |
Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter
With freedom goes responsibility, and from responsibility comes the possibility of life enrichment.
Freedom | Life | Life | Responsibility |
Winston Churchill, fully Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill
Without freedom there is no foundation for our Empire; without Empire there is no safeguard for our freedom.
Freedom |
The temptation of Protestantism has always been to magnify freedom at the expense of unity. The temptation of Roman Catholicism, on the other hand, has been to magnify unity at the expense of freedom.
Freedom | Temptation | Unity | Temptation |
To be free from everything is to be - nothing. Only nothing is quite free, and freedom is abstract nothingness.
Theologians have always recognized that passions may overwhelm the person suddenly and completely to the pint where freedom of choice does not exist and responsibility is not present.
Choice | Freedom | Present | Responsibility |
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 | Day | Freedom | Music | Silence | Soul | Sound | Struggle | Uncertainty | Universe |
Eric D’Arcy, fully Joseph Eric D'Arcy
A person who holds for the moral authority of conscience will also hold for the individual’s freedom to follow his conscience without interference from the State.
Authority | Conscience | Freedom | Individual | Will |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
The outward freedom that we shall attain will only be in exact proportion to the inward freedom to which we may have grown at a given moment. And if this is a correct view of freedom, our chief energy must be concentrated on achieving reform from within.
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality.
Birth | Effort | Important | Life | Life | Man | Personality |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes [err].
When it is said and done, life’s journey isn’t about humanity in general, or even the person next door. It’s about you and me. Our individual lives are the focus, a picture framed by our birth and death. Our personal goals and principles are under scrutiny; our personal success or failure is in the balance.
Balance | Birth | Death | Failure | Focus | Goals | Humanity | Individual | Journey | Life | Life | Principles | Success | Failure |
B. H. Liddell Hart, fully Captain B. H. Liddell
For collective action it suffices if the mass can be managed; collective growth is only possible through the freedom and enlargement of individual minds.
Action | Freedom | Growth | Individual |