This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Privacy is absolutely essential to maintaining a free society. The idea that is at the foundation of the notion of privacy is that the citizen is not the tool or the instrument of government - but the reverse... If you have no privacy, it will tend to follow that you have no political freedom, no religious freedom, no freedom of families to make their own decisions [regarding having children]. All these freedoms tend to reinforce on another.
Children | Freedom | Government | Society | Will | Wisdom | Government |
The opportunity of making happy is more scarce than we imagine; the punishment of missing it is, never to meet with it again; and the use owe make of it leaves us an eternal sentiment of satisfaction or repentance.
Eternal | Happy | Opportunity | Punishment | Repentance | Sentiment | Wisdom |
Lydia Sigourney, fully Lydia Huntley Sigourney, née Lydia Howard Huntley
One of the principal ingredients in the happiness of childhood is freedom from suspicion - why may it not be combined with a more extensive intercourse with mankind? A disposition to dwell on the bright side of character is like gold to its possessor; but to imagine more evil than meets the eye, betrays affinity for it.
Character | Childhood | Evil | Freedom | Gold | Mankind | Suspicion | Wisdom | Happiness |
Shantananda Saraswathi, fully Swami Shantananda Saraswathi, born Chandrashekar
Liberation is freedom from confusion.
Lawrence Sterne, alternatively Laurence Sterne
“It is not safe to be alone,” nor can all which the cold-hearted, pedant stuns our ears with upon the subject ever give one answer of satisfaction to the mind; in the midst of the loudest vauntings of philosophy, nature will have her yearnings for society and friendship. A good heart wants something to be kind to; and the best parts of our blood, and the purest of our spirits suffer most under the destitution.
Good | Heart | Mind | Nature | Philosophy | Safe | Society | Wants | Will | Wisdom | Yearnings | Society |
Abraham J. Twerski, fully Abraham Joshua Twerski
What is freedom if not the possibility of change?
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
The world is full of wickedness and misery precisely because it is based on freedom – yet that freedom constitutes the whole dignity of man and of his world. Doubtless at the price of its repudiation evil and suffering could be abolished, and the world forced to be “good” and “happy”; but man would have lost his likeness to God, which primarily resides in his freedom.
Dignity | Evil | Freedom | God | Good | Happy | Man | Price | Suffering | Wickedness | World |
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
In Godmanhood human freedom unites with the divine freedom, the human image with the divine image. By inward experience and inward living of freedom the light of that Truth is attained.
Experience | Freedom | Light | Truth |
Book of Li, aka Book of Rites or Record of Rites or Classic Rites NULL
The way to final freedom is within thy SELF.
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
Not from anything in the world would I be free from God; I wish to be free in God and for God. It is needful that my passion for a freedom without bounds should involve a conflict with the world, but not with God.
I knew that the complete mystic “way” includes both intellectual belief and practical activity; the latter consists in getting rid of the obstacles in the self and in stripping off its base characteristics and vicious morals, so that the heart may attain to freedom from what is not God and to constant recollection of Him.
Grace Helen Yerbury, fully Grace Helen Davies Yerbury
If man's religion is of any importance, it is not just a garment of expression of unity with and security in the professed beliefs of a special group. It is rather an attitude of respect for himself, his God, his fellowman, which underwrites all his activity, which is allowed freedom of expression within the limitations of that respect.
Freedom | God | Man | Religion | Respect | Security | Unity | Wisdom | Respect |
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
Spirit is man’s whole creative act. Spirit is freedom, and freedom has its roots in the depths of pre-existential being.