This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The preservation of liberty is a contest, but it is not a spectator sport. We cannot remain on the sidelines while professionals play the game for us.
Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson
An innate knowledge, or rather an acquired ignorance, suggests to it straightaway the step to be taken, the decisive act, the unanswerable word. Yet effort remains indispensable, endurance and perseverance likewise. But they come of themselves, they develop of their own accord, in a soul acting and acted upon, whose liberty coincides with the divine activity.
Effort | Endurance | Ignorance | Indispensable | Knowledge | Liberty | Perseverance | Soul |
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.
I believe that, for the rest of the world, contemporary America is an almost symbolic concentration of all the best and the worst of our civilization. On the one hand, there are its profound commitment to enhancing civil liberty and to maintaining the strength of its democratic institutions, and the fantastic developments in science and technology which have contributed so much to our well-being; on the other, there is the blind worship of perpetual economic growth and consumption, regardless of their destructive impact on the environment, or how subject they are to the dictates of materialism and consumerism, or how they, through the omnipresence of television and advertising, promote uniformity, and banality instead of a respect for human uniqueness.
Advertising | Civilization | Commitment | Growth | Liberty | Materialism | Omnipresence | Respect | Rest | Science | Strength | Technology | Television | Uniformity | World | Worship | Respect |
On liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.
Bertrand de Jouvenel, fully Bertrand de Jouvenel des Ursins
Ever increase of state authority must involve an immediate diminution of the liberty of each citizen.
Persuasion that property and freedom are inseparably connected, and that economic leveling is not economic progress. Separate property from private possession, and liberty is erased.
Freedom | Liberty | Persuasion | Progress | Property |
Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
There is no other way of guarding one’s self against flattery than by letting men understand that they will not offend you by speaking the truth; but when everyone can tell you the truth, you lose their respect. A prudent prince must therefore take a third course, by choosing for his council wise men, and giving these alone full liberty to speak the truth to him, but only of those things that he asks and of nothing else; but he must ask them about everything and hear their opinion, and afterwards deliberate by himself in his own way.
Flattery | Giving | Liberty | Men | Nothing | Opinion | Respect | Self | Truth | Will | Wise | Understand |
Fourscore and seven years ago our father brought forth upon this continent a new nation conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.