This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Karl Jaspers, fully Karl Theodor Jaspers
The man who attains true awareness of his freedom gains certainty of God. Freedom and God are inseparable. Why? This I know: in my freedom I am not through myself but am given to myself; for I can miss being myself and I cannot force my being free.
Awareness | Force | Freedom | God | Man | Wisdom | God | Awareness |
There is a freedom greater even than the freedom conferred by citizenship and the possession of full human rights. It is the freedom of the soul - of the soul that "walks at liberty because it has sought God's precepts," that visualizes the best and strenuously aspires after it. The greatest of boons has still to be attained.
Citizenship | Freedom | God | Liberty | Rights | Soul | Wisdom |
John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for your - ask what you can do for your country. My fellow citizens of the world: ask not what American will do for your, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
Equal and exact justice to all men, of whatever state or persuasion, religious or political; peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none; the support of the State governments in all their rights, as the most competent administrations for our domestic concerns, and the surest bulwarks against anti-republican tendencies; the preservation of General Government in its whole constitutional vigor, as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and safety abroad... freedom of religion, freedom of the press; freedom of person under the protection of habeas corpus; and trials by juries impartially selected, these principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation.
Age | Commerce | Freedom of religion | Freedom | Government | Justice | Men | Nations | Peace | Persuasion | Principles | Religion | Revolution | Rights | Trials | Wisdom | Friendship | Government |
Karl Jaspers, fully Karl Theodor Jaspers
The will does not choose between good and evil; it is its choice, rather, that makes it good or evil. The act of choosing either liberates it, as good will, or enchains it as ill will. In neither case is there a choice between two possibilities; my will is its own original freedom or anti-freedom.
John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
The unity of freedom has never relied on uniformity of opinion.
Freedom | Opinion | Uniformity | Unity | Wisdom |
John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
We live in a hemisphere whose own revolution has given birth to the most powerful force of the modern age - the search for the freedom and self-fulfillment of man.
Age | Birth | Force | Freedom | Fulfillment | Man | Revolution | Search | Self | Wisdom |
Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
People hardly ever make use of the freedom they have, for example, freedom of thought; instead they demand freedom of speech as a compensation.
Compensation | Example | Freedom of speech | Freedom of thought | Freedom | People | Speech | Thought | Wisdom |
I would recommend a free commerce both of matter and mind. I would let men enter their own churches with the same freedom as their own houses; and I would do it without a homily or graciousness or favor, for tyranny itself is to me a word less odious than toleration.
Commerce | Freedom | Men | Mind | Toleration | Tyranny | Wisdom | Commerce |
Religion is really experiencing a state in which there is creation. This is not an idea, a process. It can be realized when there is freedom from self. There can be freedom from self only through understanding the self in relationship; but there can be no understanding in isolation.
Freedom | Isolation | Relationship | Religion | Self | Understanding | Wisdom |
Now, I say to you today my friends, even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed; -'We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.' I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the people's injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. The choice today is not between violence and non-violence. It is either non-violence or non-existence...Segregation is the offspring of an illicit intercourse between injustice and immorality.
Brotherhood | Character | Children | Choice | Creed | Day | Existence | Freedom | Injustice | Injustice | Justice | Little | Meaning | Men | Non-existence | Oppression | People | Self | Tomorrow | Will | Wisdom | Truths |
Wisdom comes into being only when there is an understanding of knowledge and the freedom from the known... When there is freedom from the known then relationship changes totally.
Freedom | Knowledge | Relationship | Understanding | Wisdom |
I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councilor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice.
Nikolai Lenin, aka Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, born Vladimir llyich Ulyanov
While the state exists there is no freedom; when there is freedom there will be no state.
This is a world of compensation; and he who would be no slave must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves, and, under a just God, cannot long retain it.
Compensation | Freedom | God | Wisdom | World |
William Maginn, aka Billy Maginn
Poverty at birth has never hampered great minds.
Joanna Macy, fully Joanna Rogers Macy
We know that we are not limited by the accident of our birth or the timing of it, and we recognize the truth that we have always been around. We can reinhabit time and own our story as a species. We were present back there in the fireball and the rains that streamed down on this still molten planet, and in the primordial seas. We remember that in our mother’s womb, where we wear vestigial gills and tail and fins for hands. We remember that. That information is in us and there is a deep, deep kinship in us, beneath the outer layers of our neocortex or what we learned in school. There is a deep wisdom, a bondedness with our creation, and an ingenuity far beyond what we think we have. And when we expand our notions of what we are to include this story, we will have a wonderful time and we will survive.
Accident | Birth | Ingenuity | Mother | Present | Story | Time | Truth | Will | Wisdom | Ingenuity | Think |