This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Cesare, Marquis of Beccaria-Bonesana
The ambitious man grasps at opinion as necessary to his designs; the vain man sure for it as a testimony to his merit; the honest man demands it as his due; and most men consider it as necessary to their existence.
There is no man in any rank who is always at liberty to act as he would incline. In some quarter or other he is limited by circumstances.
Circumstances | Liberty | Man | Rank | Wisdom |
The tree of liberty grows only when watered by the blood of tyrants.
War, like other situations of danger and of change, calls for the exertion of admirable intellectual qualities and great virtues, and it is only by dwelling on these, and keeping out of sight the sufferings and sorrows, and all the crimes and evils that follow in its train, that it has its glory in the eyes of man.
Change | Danger | Glory | Man | Qualities | War | Wisdom | Danger |
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
Style supposes the reunion and the exercise of all the intellectual faculties. The style is the man.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
Personal liberty is the paramount essential to human dignity and human happiness.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
Political freedom is, or ought to be, the best guaranty for the safety and continuance of spiritual, mental, and civil freedom. It is the combination of numbers to secure the liberty to each one.
Brander Matthews, fully James Brander Matthews
The worst effect of party is its tendency to generate narrow, false, and illiberal prejudices, by teaching the adherents of one party to regard those that belong to an opposing party as unworthy of confidence.
Confidence | Regard | Wisdom |
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
Vanity, indeed, is the very antidote to conceit; for while the former makes us all nerve to the opinions of others, the latter is perfectly satisfied with its opinion of itself.
I call that mind free which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which calls no man master, which does not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, and receives new truth as an angel for Heaven.
If in the last few years you hadn't discarded a major opinion or acquired a new one, check your pulse. You may be dead.
Edmond Cahn, fully Edmond Nathaniel Cahn
Freedom is not free. Shaping and preserving society necessarily involves personal commitment, costly risk and constant effort; the cultivation of civil liberty can be no more passive than the cultivation of a farm. A man can inherit the land on which he lives, he can even inherit the first crop of produce after he takes over from those who came before him. But then if he stops, everything stops, and begins to crumble. Nothing grows, nothing ripe and rewarding comes to him, unless he plows, plants and tends the soil and unless he keeps it fertile year after year with the chemistry of effort and forethought.
Commitment | Cultivation | Effort | Forethought | Freedom | Land | Liberty | Man | Nothing | Risk | Society | Wisdom | Society |
All that man does outwardly is but the expression and completion of his inward thought. To work effectually, he must think clearly; to act nobly, he must think nobly. Intellectual force is a principal element of the soul's life, and should be proposed by every man as the principal end of his being.
Force | Life | Life | Man | Soul | Thought | Wisdom | Work | Think |
Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa
I am of opinion that there are no proverbial sayings which are not true, because they are all sentences drawn from experience itself, who is the mother of all sciences.
Experience | Mother | Opinion | Wisdom |
The world is governed much more by opinion than by laws. It is not the judgment of courts, but the moral judgment of individuals and masses of men, which is the chief wall of defense around property and life. With the progress of society, this power of opinion is taking the place of arms.
Defense | Judgment | Life | Life | Men | Opinion | Power | Progress | Property | Society | Wisdom | World |
Calvin Coolidge, fully John Calvin Coolidge, Jr.
We do not need more intellectual power; we need more spiritual power. We do not need more of the things that are seen, we need more of the things that are unseen.