This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Robert Heilbroner, fully Robert Louis Heilbroner
The civilization malaise, in a word, reflects the inability of a civilization directed to material improvement - higher incomes, better diets, miracles of medicine, triumphs of applied physics and chemistry - to satisfy the human spirit.
Better | Civilization | Improvement | Miracles | Spirit | Wisdom |
Do not trust to what lazy men call the spur of the occasion.
Art is a staple of mankind - never a by-product of elitism. So urgent, so utterly linked with the pulse of feeling that it becomes the singular sing of life when every other aspect of civilization fails... Like hunger and sex, it is a disposition of the human cell - a marvelous fiction of the brain which recreates itself as something as mysterious as mind. Art is consistent with every aspect of every day in the life of every people.
Art | Civilization | Day | Hunger | Life | Life | Mankind | Mind | People | Wisdom | Art |
Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla
No time exists other than now... So now is all you have and all you ever will have... Why not begin doing the best you can right where you are?... Trust the process of growth. Trust God. Pay attention to the details of your life, doing your very best with each challenge that presents itself... The past is the raw material of the present, but the past is not a blueprint for the present... Begin where you are. Do what you can. Even a small effort to change, to grow, to improve, will bring astonishing results... You can choose to build on what you were, but you are not what you were. You can focus on what you will be, but you are not what you will be. What you are is what you are right now - the inheritor of all of God’s gifts.
Attention | Challenge | Change | Effort | Focus | God | Growth | Life | Life | Past | Present | Right | Time | Trust | Will | Wisdom |
Lyndon Johnson, fully Lyndon Baines Johnson, aka LBJ
A compassionate government keeps faith with the trust of the people and cherishes the future of their children.
Children | Faith | Future | Government | People | Trust | Wisdom | Government |
D. H. Lawrence, fully David Herbert "D.H." Lawrence
Never trust the artist. Trust the tale. The proper function of a critic is to save the tale from the artist who created it.
Every sect is a moral check on its neighbor. Competition is as wholesome in religion as in commerce.
Commerce | Competition | Religion | Wisdom |
The quality of civilization depends on a balance of body, mind and spirit in its people, measured on a scale less human than divine... To survive, we must keep this balance. To progress, we must improve it. Science is upsetting it with an overemphasis of mind and a neglect of spirit and body.
Balance | Body | Civilization | Mind | Neglect | People | Progress | Science | Spirit | Wisdom |
The great question is: can war be outlawed? If so, it would mark the greatest advance in civilization since the Sermon on the Mount.
Civilization | Question | War | Wisdom |
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, aka "Pat"
Liberty and Equality are the twin ideals of American democracy. But they are not the same thing... Many person who would gladly die for liberty are appalled by equality. Many who are devoted to equality are puzzled and even troubled by liberty. Much of the political history of the American nation can be seen as a competition between these two ideals.
Competition | Democracy | Equality | History | Ideals | Liberty | Wisdom |
Antoine de Rivarol, also known as Comte de Rivarol
Extremes produce reaction. Beware that our boasted civilization does not lapse into barbarism.
Barbarism | Civilization | Wisdom |
In our civilization men are afraid they will not be men enough, and women are afraid they might be considered only women.
Insatiable ambition, the thirst of raising their respective fortunes, not so much from real want as from the desire to surpass others, inspired all men with a vile propensity to injure one another, and with a secret jealousy, which is the more dangerous, as it puts on the mask of benevolence, to carry its point with greater security. In a word, there arose rivalry and competition on the one hand, and conflicting interests on the other, together with a secret desire on both of profiting at the expense of others. All these evils were the first effects of property, and the inseparable attendants of growing inequality.
Ambition | Benevolence | Competition | Desire | Inequality | Jealousy | Men | Property | Rivalry | Security | Wisdom |