This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Pope Pius X, aka Saint Pope Pius X and Pope of the Eucharist, born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto NULL
The great movement of apostasy being organized in every country for the establishment of a One-World Church which shall have neither dogmas, nor hierarchy, neither discipline for the mind, nor curb for the passions, and which, under the pretext of freedom and human dignity, would bring back to the world (if such a Church could overcome) the reign of legalized cunning and force, and the oppression of the weak, and of all those who toil and suffer… Indeed, the true friends of the people are neither revolutionaries, nor innovators: they are traditionalists.
Apostasy | Church | Cunning | Discipline | Freedom | Oppression | People | World | Friends |
Some would insist that man is primarily an economic animal interested only in his material well-being. This is too narrow a view of a species which has produced numberless brave men and women who are prepared to undergo relentless persecution to uphold deeply held beliefs and principles. It is my pride and inspiration that such men and women exist in my country today.
Inspiration | Man | Men | Pride |
In the same decade in which writers are discovering the emotional importance of childhood and are unmasking the devastating consequences of the way power is secretly exercised under the disguise of child-rearing, students of psychology are spending four years at the universities learning to regard human beings as machines in order to gain a better understanding of how they function. When we consider how much time and energy is devoted during these best years to wasting the last opportunities of adolescence and to suppressing, by means of the intellectual disciplines, the feelings that emerge with particular force at this age, then it is no wonder that the people who have made this sacrifice victimize their patients and clients in turn, treating them as mere objects of knowledge instead of as autonomous, creative beings. There are some authors of so-called objective, scientific publications in the field of psychology who remind me of the officer in Kafka's Penal Colony in their zeal and their consistent self-destructiveness. In the unsuspecting, trusting attitude of Kafka's convicted prisoner, on the other hand, we can see the students of today who are so eager to believe that the only thing that counts in their four years of study is their academic performance and that human commitment is not required.
Adolescence | Better | Childhood | Commitment | Consequences | Disguise | Energy | Feelings | Force | Knowledge | Learning | Machines | Means | Order | People | Power | Psychology | Regard | Sacrifice | Study | Time | Understanding | Wonder | Zeal |
We have a close, unshakable bond between the United States and Israel, and between the American and Israeli people. We share common values and a commitment to a democratic future for the world, and we are both committed to a two-state solution. But that doesn't mean that we're going to agree.
Commitment | Future |
Tacitus, fully Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus NULL
A desire to resist oppression is implanted in the nature of man.
Desire | Nature | Oppression |
Reshad Feild, born Richard Timothy Feild
Through conscious breath we receive the energies that God offers us every moment of our lives. If we do not take breath consciously, it is not surprising that we do not have the energy to make a commitment. If God made man in His image, then man can be conscious to breathe in from the six directions and from all the different kingdoms. If we breathe in from all directions and accept what God has given us, then we have the energy to make a commitment. Otherwise it is often a quasi-commitment. It is not real. The commitment may not go through.
I had thought joy to be rather synonymous with happiness, but it seems now to be far less vulnerable than happiness. Joy seems to be a part of an unconditional wish to live, not holding back because life may not meet our preferences and expectations. Joy seems to be a function of the willingness to accept the whole, and to show up to meet with whatever is there. It has a kind of invincibility that attachment to any particular outcome would deny us. Rather than the warrior who fights towards a specific outcome and therefore is haunted by the specter of failure and disappointment, it is the lover drunk with the opportunity to love despite the possibility of loss, the player for whom playing has become more important than winning or losing. The willingness to win or lose moves us out of an adversarial relationship to life and into a powerful kind of openness. From such a position, we can make a greater commitment to life. Not only pleasant life, or comfortable life, or our idea of life, but all life. Joy seems more closely related to aliveness than to happiness.
Aliveness | Commitment | Failure | Important | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Opportunity | Relationship | Thought | Failure | Thought | Winning |
Ralph Ellison, fully Ralph Waldo Ellison
It takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow.
Change | Commitment |
Richard Barnet, fully Richard Jackson Barnet
Revolution is a wasteful, destructive, and inhuman engine of political change. It must be allowed to happen if there is nothing better, but the great challenge to human ingenuity is to find alternative paths to economic and political reconstruction, which can bring basic changes without the massive use of violence. The societies of the- Third World can ill afford the economic and human costs of prolonged civil war. But virtually all of the thinking to date about revolutionizing underdeveloped societies through technology rather than through violence has been designed to serve the political interests of the donor country. The avoidance of revolution has been an end in itself, and very little commitment has been made to the achievement of radical political change through nonviolent means in societies needing revolution. A great nation has an inherent problem, and possibly an insoluble one, in devising a strategy for helping another society to remake its political life without injecting its own interests and values and without coming to dominate the weak.
Achievement | Challenge | Change | Commitment | Ingenuity | Life | Life | Little | Means | Nothing | Revolution | Society | Technology | Thinking | World | Society | Ingenuity |
The shortest distance between two points is an intention and this is certainly the case when it comes to becoming more loving to oneself and to others. We must first have the desire and then the intention and commitment to be a source of love
Commitment | Desire | Intention | Love |
One of the most dynamic and significant changes you can make in your life is to make the commitment to drop all negative references to your past, to begin living now.
Commitment | Dynamic | Life | Life |
Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon
From this day forward, let each of us make a solemn commitment in his own heart: to bear his responsibility, to do his part, to live his ideals--so that together, we can see the dawn of a new age of progress for America, and together, as we celebrate our 200th anniversary as a nation, we can do so proud in the fulfillment of our promise to ourselves and to the world.
Age | Commitment | Dawn | Day | Fulfillment | Progress | Promise |
Speakers' nerves affect them in various ways. Some tremble, some become frenzied. I lose all confidence, and suffer from a leaden oppression that makes me wonder why I ever agreed to speak at all; the Tomb and the Conqueror Worm seem preferable to delivering the stupid and piffling speech I have so carefully prepared.
Oppression | Speech | Wonder |
Roland B. Gittelsohn, fully Roland Bertram Gittelsohn
Here lie men who loved America because their ancestors generations ago helped in her founding. And other men who loved her with equal passion because they themselves or their own fathers escaped from oppression to her blessed shores. Here lie officers and men, Negroes and Whites, rich men and poor, together. Here are Protestants, Catholics, and Jews together. Here no man prefers another because of his faith or despises him because of his color. Here there are no quotas of how many from each group are admitted or allowed. Among these men there is no discrimination. No prejudices. No hatred. Theirs is the highest and purest democracy... Whosoever of us lifts his hand in hate against a brother, or who thinks himself superior to those who happen to be in the minority, makes of this ceremony and the bloody sacrifice it commemorates, an empty, hollow mockery. To this then, as our solemn sacred duty, do we the living now dedicate ourselves: To the right of Protestants, Catholics, and Jews, of White men and Negroes alike, to enjoy the democracy for which all of them have here paid the price... We here solemnly swear this shall not be in vain. Out of this and from the suffering and sorrow of those who mourn this, will come, we promise, the birth of a new freedom for the sons of men everywhere.
Birth | Ceremony | Democracy | Faith | Freedom | Hate | Man | Men | Mourn | Oppression | Passion | Right | Sacred | Sacrifice | Sorrow | Suffering | Will | Blessed |
Robert Southwell, also Saint Robert Southwell
Let our adversaries therefore load us with the infamous titles of traitors, and rebels, as the Ariansdid in the persecution of the Vandals, and as the Ethnicswere wont to call Christians sarmentitios, and semasios, because they were tied to halfpenny stakes, and burnt with shrubs: so let them draw us upon hurdles, hang us, unbowel us alive, mangle us, boil us, and set our quarters upon their gates, to be meat for the birds of the air, as they use to handle rebels: we will answer them as the Christians of former persecutions have done. Hic est habitus victoriae nostrae, hec palmata vestis, tali curru triumphamus, merito itaque victis non placemus. Such is the manner of our victory, such our conquerous garment, in such chariots do we triumph. What marvel therefore if our vanquished enemies mislike us?
Will |
Sen T’Sen, aka Seng T'San, Jianzhi Sengcan, Kanchi Sosan, Third Chinese Patriarch of Zen
The Perfect Way knows no difficulties, Except that it refuses to make preferences. Only when freed from hate and love Does it reveal itself fully and without disguise. A tenth of an inch's difference, And heaven and earth are set apart. If you wish to see it before your own eyes, Have no fixed thoughts either for or against it. To set up what you like against what you dislike - This is the disease of the mind. When the deep meaning of the Way is not understood, Peace of mind is disturbed to no purpose... Pursue not the outer entanglements, Dwell not in the inner void; Be serene in the oneness of things, And dualism vanishes of itself. When you strive to gain quiescence by stopping motion, The quiescence so gained is ever in motion. So long as you tarry in such dualism, How can you realize oneness? And when oneness is not thoroughly grasped, Loss is sustained in two ways: The denying of external reality is the assertion of it, And the assertion of Emptiness (the Absolute) is the denying of it... Transformations going on in the empty world that confronts us Appear to be real because of Ignorance. Do not strive to seek after the True, Only cease to cherish opinions. The two exist because of the One; But hot not even to this One. When a mind is not disturbed, The ten thousand things offer no offense... If an eye never falls asleep, All dreams will cease of themselves; If the Mind retains its absoluteness, The ten thousand things are of one substance. When the deep mystery of Suchness is fathomed, All of a sudden we forget the external entanglements; When the ten thousand things are viewed in their oneness, We return to the origin and remain where we have always been... One in all, All in One - If only this is realized, No more worry about not being perfect! When Mind and each believing mind are not divided, And undivided are each believing mind and Mind, This is where words fail, For it is not of the past, present or future.
Church | Commitment | Dignity | Duty | Experience | Grace | Individual | Life | Life | Openness | Understand |
Dear God, Open the blocked passageways to you, The congealed places. Roll away the heavy stone from the well as your servant Jacob did when he beheld his beloved Rachel Help us open the doors of trust that have been jammed with hurt and rejection. As you open the blossoms in spring, Even as you open the heavens in storm. open us – to feel your great, awesome, wonderful presence.
Ability | Commitment | God | Ideals | Important | Practice | Wisdom | Words | God |
Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan
In the Communist world, we see failure, technological backwardness, declining standards of health, even want of the most basic kind -- too little food. Even today, the Soviet Union still cannot feed itself. . . . East and West do not distrust each other because we are armed; we are armed because we distrust each other. And our differences are not about weapons but about liberty. . . . The most fundamental distinction of all between East and West (sic.) [is that] the totalitarian world produces backwardness because it does such violence to the spirit, thwarting the human impulse to create, to enjoy, to worship. The totalitarian world finds even symbols of love and of worship an affront.
Care | Commitment | Strength |
Sam Shoemaker, fully Samuel "Sam" Moor Shoemaker, III
There are, I should say, four elements in a redemptive community. It is personal, with things happening between people as well as to and in them individually; it is compassionate, always eager to help, observant but non-judgmental toward others, breathing out hope and concern; it is creative, with imagination about each one in the group and its work as a whole, watching for authentic new vision coming from any of them; and it is expectant, always seeking to offer to God open and believing hearts and minds through which He can work out His will, either in the sometimes startling miracles He gives or in steady purpose through long stretches where there is no special opening. It may fairly be said that unless one enmeshes himself in this redemptive fellowship of the church, he lessens his chances of steady growth and effectiveness.
Commitment | Earnestness | God | Habit | Heart | Pleasure | Time | Will | God | Afraid |
Saint John of Kronstadt, fully John Il’ich Serguiev, aka Holy Father John of the Kronstadt NULL
Do not be irritated with those who sin; do not develop a habit of noticing every sin in others, and judging them, as we are so inclined to do. Everyone shall give an answer to God for himself. Correct your own sins; and amend your own heart.
Enemy | Fighting | Oppression | Praise |