This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
A just war is in the long run far better for a nation’s soul than the most prosperous peace obtained by acquiescence toward wrong or injustice. Moreover, though it is criminal for a nation not to prepare for war, so that it may escape the dreadful consequences of being defeated in war, it must always be remembered that even to be defeated in war is far better than never to have fought at all.
Better | Consequences | Injustice | Injustice | Peace | Soul | War | Wrong |
T. S. Eliot, fully Thomas Sterns Eliot
No poet, no artist, of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His significance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. I mean this as a principle of aesthetic, not merely historical, criticism. The necessity that he shall conform, that he shall cohere, is not one-sided; what happens when a new work of art is created is something that happens simultaneously to all the works of art which preceded it. The existing monuments form an ideal order among themselves, which is modified by the introduction of the new (the really new) work of art among them.
Aesthetic | Appreciation | Art | Contrast | Criticism | Meaning | Necessity | Order | Work | Appreciation | Art | Value |
Everywhere there is one principle of justice, which is the interest of the stronger.
Justice |
Those who are at war with others are not at peace with themselves.
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
It must be a peace without victory... Victory would mean peace forced upon the loser, a victor’s terms imposed upon the vanquished. It would be accepted in humiliation, under duress, at an intolerable sacrifice, and would leave a sting, a resentment, a bitter memory upon which terms of peace would rest, not permanently, but only as upon quicksand. Only a peace between equals can last. Only a peace the very principle of which is equality and common participation in a common benefit. The right state of mind, the right feeling between nations, is as necessary for a lasting peace as is the just.
Equality | Memory | Mind | Nations | Peace | Resentment | Rest | Right | Sacrifice |
W. Somerset Maugham, fully William Somerset Maugham
The most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
The realization that everyone perceives things differently, whether greatly or slightly, is a very important principle for dealing effectively with others. The greater your understanding of someone else’s perception of reality, the greater your ability to communicate effectively with him.
Ability | Important | Perception | Reality | Understanding |
Auguste Comte, formally Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte
The first principle of Positive morality is the preponderance of social sympathy.
Thoughts and actions are good, when they make us, morally and spiritually, more capable of realizing the God who is ours, imminently in every soul and transcendently as that universal principle in which we live and move and have our being. They are bad when they tend to reinforce the barriers which stand between God and our souls, or the souls of other beings.
Benjamin Cardozo, fully Benjamin Nathan Cardozo
The law... must have a principle of growth.
W. Somerset Maugham, fully William Somerset Maugham
You can't learn too soon that the most useful thing about a principle is that it can always be sacrificed to expediency.
Learn |
Without compassion, we will never know anyone or anything, not even our own story. Too much judgment, too many ideas and attitudes will stand in the way of the fundamental principle that we are similar to, connected with, and part of everything else.
Compassion | Ideas | Judgment | Story | Will |
The primal principle of democracy is the worth and dignity of the individual