This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
In essence, the conflict that exists today is no more than an old-style struggle for power, once again presented to mankind in semi religious trappings. The difference is that, this time, the development of atomic power has imbued the struggle with a ghostly character; for both parties know and admit that, should the quarrel deteriorate into actual war, mankind is doomed. Despite this knowledge, statesmen in responsible positions on both sides continue to employ the well-known technique of seeking to intimidate and demoralize the opponent by marshaling superior military strength. They do so even though such a policy entails the risk of war and doom. Not one statesman in a position of responsibility has dared to pursue the only course that holds out any promise of peace, the course of supranational security, since for a statesman to follow such a course would be tantamount to political suicide. Political passions, once they have been fanned into flame, exact their victims… [These were his last words]
Mankind | Policy | Position | Power | Promise | Responsibility | Risk | Struggle | War |
The further the spiritual evolution of mankind advances, the more certain it seems to me that the path to genuine religiosity does not lie through the fear of life, and the fear of death, and blind faith, but through striving after rational knowledge.
We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.
R. D. Laing, fully Ronald David Laing
The brotherhood of man is evoked by particular men according to their circumstances. But it seldom extends to all men. In the name of our freedom and our brotherhood we are prepared to blow up the other half of mankind and to be blown up in our turn.
Brotherhood | Freedom | Man | Mankind | Men |
The conflict that exists today is no more than an old-style struggle for power, once again presented to mankind in semireligious trappings. The difference is that, this time, the development of atomic power has imbued the struggle with a ghostly character; for both parties know and admit that, should the quarrel deteriorate into actual war, mankind is doomed.
The unleashed power of the atom has changed everything except our thinking. Thus, we are drifting toward catastrophe beyond conception. We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive.
Rachel Carson, fully Rachel Louise Carson
I think we're challenged, as mankind has never been challenged before, to prove our maturity and our mastery, not of nature but ourselves.
Rainer Maria Rilke, full name René Karl Wilhelm Johann Josef Maria Rilke
That is at bottom the only courage that is demanded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most singular and the most inexplicable that we may encounter. That mankind has in this sense been cowardly has done life endless harm; the experiences that are called visions, the whole so-called spirit-world, death, all those things that are so closely akin to us, have by daily parrying been so crowded out of life that the senses with which we could have grasped them are atrophied. To say nothing of God.
Pandurang Shastri Athavale, fully Pandurang Vaijnath Shastri Athavale
Progress of mankind is progress of mind and intellect.
Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman
From a long view of the history of mankind
Richard Jefferies, fully John Richard Jefferies
Ever since the world began it has been the belief of mankind that desolate places are the special haunt of supernatural beings... In the olden times in our own fair England, and not so long ago either, there was not a wild and unfrequented place which had not got its special spirit.
The Eastern monarch who proclaimed a reward to him who should discover a new pleasure, would have deserved well of mankind had he stipulated that it should be blameless.
As I know more of mankind I expect less of them, and am ready now to call a man a good man upon easier terms than I was formerly. .
This was a distilled essence of life; this was the way people behaved when they took off the masks which all adults seemed to me to wear; this was noble. A veil had been rent between the greatness of mankind and myself, and I knew that I would never be the same again. Nor was I. Since that night I have made some progress in my attempt to understand mankind, but I have never made another such giant leap.
Greatness | Mankind | People | Progress | Understand |
He is a benefactor of mankind who contracts the great rules of life into short sentences, that may be easily impressed on the memory, and so recur habitually to the mind.