This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
I believe that banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies. If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around [the banks] will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered. The issuing power should be taken from the banks and restored to the people, to whom it properly belongs.
Resort is had to ridicule only when reason is against us.
Choice | Confidence | Delusion | Government | Men | Silence | Trust | Government | Parent |
In questions of power, then, let no more be said of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.
Its soul, its climate, its equality, liberty, laws, people, and manners. My god! how little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!
Choice | Confidence | Delusion | Government | Men | Silence | Government | Parent |
Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
But was it not true that there were people, certain individuals, whom one found it impossible to picture dead, precisely because they were so vulgar? That was to say: they seemed so fit for life, so good at it, that they would never die, as if they were unworthy of the consecration of death.
Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
Has the world ever been changed by anything save the thought and its magic vehicle the Word?
Music |
Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
Science never makes an advance until philosophy authorizes it to do so.
Civilization | Music |
Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
Technology and comfort - having those, people speak of culture, but do not have it.
Civilization | Silence |
Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
Naphta loathed the bourgeois state and its love of security. He found occasion to express this loathing one autumn afternoon when, as they were walking along the main street, it suddenly began to rain and, as if on command, there was an umbrella over every head. That was a symbol of cowardice and vulgar effeminacy, the end product of civilization. An incident like the sinking of the Titanic was atavistic, true, but its effect was most refreshing, it was the handwriting on the wall. Afterward, of course, came the hue and cry for more security in shipping. How pitiful, but such weak-willed humanitarianism squared very nicely with the wolfish cruelty and villainy of slaughter on the economic battlefield known as the bourgeois state. War, war ! He was all for it – the universal lust or war seemed quite honorable in comparison.
Music |
Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
This was love at first sight, love everlasting a feeling unknown, unhoped for, unexpected--in so far as it could be a matter of conscious awareness it took entire possession of him, and he understood, with joyous amazement, that this was for life.
Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
A secret and ardent stirring within the frozen chastity of the universal.
Abstract | Achievement | Age | Ambition | Character | Eternal | Existence | Good | Impulse | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Organic | Personality | Question | Regard | Silence | Time | Ambition |
Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
The oldest language, they say, Indo-European, Indo-European, which is Sanskrit. But it is almost certain that this is a great is so rashly like many others, and that there has been a re-older mother tongue, which decided the roots of the Aryan both as well as the Semitic and chamitischen dialects in itself. She probably has been spoken on Atlantis, whose silhouette is the final distance indistinct haze still visible Vorbirgskulisse the past, but which itself is hardly the original home of the people speaking well.
Suppose that my “poverty” be a hunger for spiritual riches: suppose that by pretending to empty myself, pretending to be silent, I am really trying to cajole God into enriching me with some experience - what then? Then everything becomes a distraction. All created things interfere with my quest for some special experience. I must shut them out, or they will tear me apart. What is worst — I, myself am distraction. But, unhappiest of all — if my prayer is centered in myself, if it seeks only an enrichment of my own self, my prayer will be my greatest potential distraction. Full of my own curiosity, I have eaten of the tree of Knowledge and torn myself away from myself and God. I am left rich and alone and nothing can assuage my hunger: everything I touch turns into distraction.