This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Discrimination among citizens on account of their religious convictions is wholly intolerable. Even the bare mention of a citizen's religion in official documents should unquestionably be eliminated.
Age | Civilization | Little | Means | Power | Proletariat | Revolution | Will |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
To belittle the socialist ideology in any way, to turn aside from it in the slightest degree means to strengthen bourgeois ideology. There is much talk of spontaneity. But the spontaneousdevelopment of the working-class movement leads to its subordination to bourgeois ideology; for the spontaneous working-class movement is trade-unionism, and trade unionism means the ideological enslavement of the workers by the bourgeoisie. Hence, our task, the task of Social-Democracy, is to combat spontaneity, to divert the working-class movement from this spontaneous, trade-unionist striving to come under the wing of the bourgeoisie, and to bring it under the wing of revolutionary Social Democracy.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
We must pursue the removal of church property by any means necessary in order to secure for ourselves a fund of several hundred million gold rubles (do not forget the immense wealth of some monasteries and lauras). Without this fund any government work in general, any economic build-up in particular, and any upholding of soviet principles in Genoa especially is completely unthinkable. In order to get our hands on this fund of several hundred million gold rubles (and perhaps even several hundred billion), we must do whatever is necessary. But to do this successfully is possible only now. All considerations indicate that later on we will fail to do this, for no other time, besides that of desperate famine, will give us such a mood among the general mass of peasants that would ensure us the sympathy of this group, or, at least, would ensure us the neutralization of this group in the sense that victory in the struggle for the removal of church property unquestionably and completely will be on our side. One clever writer on statecraft correctly said that if it is necessary for the realization of a well-known political goal to perform a series of brutal actions then it is necessary to do them in the most energetic manner and in the shortest time, because masses of people will not tolerate the protracted use of brutality. … Now victory over the reactionary clergy is assured us completely. In addition, it will be more difficult for the major part of our foreign adversaries among the Russian emigres abroad, i.e., the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Milyukovites, to fight against us if we, precisely at this time, precisely in connection with the famine, suppress the reactionary clergy with utmost haste and ruthlessness. Therefore, I come to the indisputable conclusion that we must precisely now smash the Black Hundreds clergy most decisively and ruthlessly and put down all resistance with such brutality that they will not forget it for several decades.… The greater the number of representatives of the reactionary clergy and the reactionary bourgeoisie that we succeed in shooting on this occasion, the better because this "audience" must precisely now be taught a lesson in such a way that they will not dare to think about any resistance whatsoever for several decades.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
All at once we were madly, clumsily, shamelessly, agonizingly in love with each other; hopelessly, I should add, because that frenzy of mutual possession might have been assuaged only by our actually imbibing and assimilating every particle of eachother's soul and flesh; but there we were, unable even to mate as slum children would have so easily found an opportunity to do so.
Childhood | Duty | Heart | Life | Life | Lust | Melancholy | Mortal | Nothing | Sense | Old |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
She is a great gobbler of books, but reads only trash, memorizing nothing and leaving out the longer descriptions.
Earth | Enough | Impression | Life | Life | Nothing | Right | Sense |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
He who is not just is severe, he who is not wise is sad.
Spirit |
When awareness of the totality, of wholeness, dawns upon the heart, and there is awareness of the relationship of every being to every other, then there is no longer any possibility of taking an exclusive approach to a fragment and getting stuck there. As soon as there is awareness of wholeness, every moment becomes sacred, every movement is sacred. The sense of oneness is no longer an intellectual connection. We will in all our actions be whole, total, natural, without effort. Every action or nonaction will have the perfume of wholeness.
Aggression | Will |
We become aware of all that is happening within us, of the different emotions arising within us, for example if we begin to get angry we are aware of it and so the grip of anger loosens its hold over us.
Beauty | Darkness | Intelligence | Life | Life | Nothing | Peace | People | Rest | Suffering | Universe | Wonder | World | Beauty |
Act On Your Understanding - Never argue with one's own understanding. The whisper of intelligence is always there, whatever you do. If you create a time lag between the whisper of intelligence and understanding in you and your action, then you are preventing the cerebral organ from growing into a new dimension. When you argue with intelligence, when you postpone acting according to understanding then there is confusion, the brain gets confused. The voice of understanding, the voice of intelligence has an insecurity about it. How do you know that it is the right thing? So we tend to ignore it. Instead we accept authority. We conform. But the brain cannot be orderly, competent, accurate and precise if you do not listen to it, if you have no respect. We are so busy with the outside world, and its compulsions, that the world that is inside us does not command that respect and reverence, that care and concern from us. So one has to be a disciple of one's own understanding, look upon that understanding as the master. Sometimes one may commit a mistake, it might be the whim of the ego and we might mistake the whim, the wish of the ego for the voice of silence and intelligence, but that we have to discover. Unless you commit mistakes, how do you learn to discriminate between the false and the true? In learning there is bound to be a little insecurity, a possibility of committing mistakes. Why should one be terribly afraid of committing mistakes? So instead of accepting the authority of habits and conditionings, while one is moving one watches, and when there is a suggestion, a whisper from within, from one's own intelligence, one does not neglect, ignore, or insult that. To eliminate the time lag between understanding and action is the way to grow into spontaneity.
Traditionally, there have been two separate approaches. One approach takes us toward the social, the economic, the political problems, and says, “Look here, unless the economic and political problems are solved, there will be no happiness and no peace, there will be no end to suffering. It is the responsibility of every individual to engage in solving these problems according to some ideology. Turning toward the inner life, the imbalances and impurities of the inner life, that is not so important, that can be taken care of later on, for it is a self-centered, egoistic activity. But the responsibility is toward the society, toward the human race, so keep aside all those problems of meditation and silence, inner sophistication, transformation for inner revolution—keep all that aside. First turn toward this.” And the other approach says, “The political and economic problems cannot be solved unless the individual is transformed totally. Be concerned with your psychological mutation, the inner, radical revolution. The political, the economic, the social problems can wait.”
Beginning | Existence | Future | Global | Past | Relationship | Science | Technology |
Whether you try to influence the mind through ideas and concepts, or through discipline and vows, or through drugs, you are trying to stimulate artificially a state of silence. Perhaps if we are friendly with the mind, if we watch the mind, if we understand the mind, if we let it wander, let it roam about wherever it wants, let it exhaust its momentum by wandering, without scolding, without praising, without
Awareness | Defense | Force | Global | Heart | Responsibility | Theories | Truth | Understanding | Will | Witness | World | Awareness |
There is much unexplored potential in each human being. We are not just flesh and bone or an amalgamation of conditionings. If this were so, our future on this planet would not be very bright. But there is infinitely more to life, and each passionate being who dares to explore beyond the fragmentary and superficial into the mystery of totality helps all humanity perceive what it is to be fully human. Revolution, total revolution, implies experimenting with the impossible. And when an individual takes a step in the direction of the new, the impossible, the whole human race travels through that individual.
Acceptance | Action | Consciousness | Cynicism | History | Indifference | Integration | Majority | People | Service | Society | Spirituality | Work | Society |
Nothing in life is trivial. Life is whole wherever and whenever we touch it, and one moment or event is not less sacred than another.
Anxiety | Anxiety | Humanity | Indifference | Afraid |
In a time when the survival of the human race is in question, to continue with the status quo is to cooperate with insanity, to contribute to chaos. When darkness engulfs the spirit of the people, it is urgent for concerned people to awaken, to rise to revolution.
Consciousness | Failure | Need | Will | Failure |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
I observed with disillusioned clarity the despicable nonentity of the street; its porches; its window curtains; the drab clothes, the cupidity and complacency of shopping women; and old men taking the air in comforters; the caution of people crossing; the universal determination to go on living, when really, fools and gulls that you are, I said, any slate may fly from a roof, any car may swerve, for there is neither rhyme nor reason when a drunk man staggers about with a club in his hand - that is all.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
He was a failure, he repeated. Well, look then, feel then. Flashing her needles, glancing round about her, out of the window, into the room, at James himself, she assured him, beyond a shadow of a doubt, by her laugh, her poise, her competence (as a nurse carrying a light across a dark room assures a fractious child), that it was real; the house was full; the garden blowing. If he put implicit faith in her, nothing should hurt him; however deep he buried himself or climed high, not for a second should he find himself without her. So boasting of her capacity to surround and protect, there was scarcely a shell of herself left for her to know herself by; all was so lavished and spent; and James, as he stood stiff between her knees, felt her rise in a rosy-flowered fruit tree laid with leaves and dancing boughs into which the beak of brass, the arid scimitar of his father, the egotistical man, plunged and smote, demanding sympathy.
Comfort | Consolation | Fate | Happy | Ignorance | Man | Trifles | World | Fate |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Who would not spout the family teapot in order to talk with Keats for an hour about poetry, or with Jane Austen about the art of fiction?
Heart |
Zoroaster, aka Zarathustra or Zarathushtra Spitama NULL
Violence must be put down! against cruelty make a stand, ye who would make sure of the reward of Good Thought through Right, to whose company the holy man belongs. His dwelling place shall be in thy House, O Ahura.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Who knows who we are, how we feel? Who knows, even when intimate perception if that was the knowledge? Is not that miss things once trying to express? I do not say more with silence? At least at that moment seemed an extraordinary fruitfulness. Scooped a dimple in the sand and then cover it as a sign that there buried perfection of that moment. It was like a bit of silver in the sink and illuminate your darkness past.
Heart |
Could I write an autobiographical novel, I wonder? Can one make a book out of the very essence of one's self? Perhaps so, if one was left with one's gift stripped bare of all that made it worth having, and nothing else was left...
Achievement | Mankind |