This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The quality of impeccability entails realizing how precious life is, even though it is transient, and how each of our actions and words does count, affecting all beings around us in a profound way. There is nothing inconsequential in this universe, and we need to personally respect this fact and act in accordance with it.
Life | Life | Need | Nothing | Respect | Universe | Words | Respect |
We should remember that the social utility of free speech is in giving us the informational base from which we can then make social choices. To refrain from making social choices is to say that beyond the issue of free speech we have no substantive values which we will express in action. If we do not discriminate in the actions we support or oppose, we cannot rectify the terrible injustices of the present world.
Action | Free speech | Giving | Present | Speech | Will | World |
Slogans are both exciting and comforting, but some of mankind's most terrible misdeeds have been committed under the spell of certain magic words and phrases.
Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign asters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and law. Systems which attempt to question it deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light.
Darkness | Effort | Law | Light | Man | Mankind | Nature | Object | Pain | Pleasure | Question | Reality | Reason | Right | Sense | System | Will | Words | Wrong | Govern |
Some of mankind’s most errible misdeeds have been committed under the spell of certain magic words or phrases.
Prayer is the soul’s sincere desire uttered and expressed, the motion of a hidden fire that trembles in the breast. Prayer is the burden of a sigh, the falling of a tear, the upward glancing of an eye, when none but God are near. Prayer is the simplest form of speech that infant lips can try, prayer, the sublimest strains that reach the Majesty on high.
The moment a man can really do his work, he becomes speechless about it; all words are idle to him; all theories. Does a bird need to theorize about building its nest, or boast of it when built? All good work is essentially done that way; without hesitation; without difficulty; without boasting.
Boasting | Difficulty | Good | Man | Need | Theories | Words | Work |
The "morphogenic" relationship of eternity to time is not to be thought of as sequential. Moreover, eternity being by definition outside or beyond temporality, transcendent of all categories, whether of virtue or of reason (being and nonbeing, unity and multiplicity, love and justice, forgiveness and wrath), the term and concept "God" is itself but a metaphor of the unknowing mind, connotative, not only beyond itself, but beyond thought... metaphors are equivalent as alternative signs of the high mystical experience of an absorption of mortal appearance in immortal being; for which another historical figure of speech is the "End of the World."
Appearance | Eternity | Experience | Forgiveness | God | Justice | Love | Mind | Mortal | Mystical | Reason | Relationship | Speech | Thought | Time | Unity | Virtue | Virtue | World | Forgiveness | Thought |
The whole period of youth is one essentially of formation, edification, instruction, I use the words with their weight in them; in taking of stores, establishment in vital habits, hopes and faiths. There is not an hour of it but is trembling with destinies, not a moment of which, once past, the appointed work can ever be done again, or the neglected blow struck on the cold iron.
Something has clearly gone awry when students at prestigious institutions of higher learning cannot bring themselves to denounce Auschwitz and Treblinka. Too many Americans now shrink from appearing "judgmental" or "moralistic" - the very words themselves are now used only as pejoratives. The prevailing attitude is: "Who's to say what's right or wrong?"
Suppose you were compelled to give up - to forget all the words you know except seven - what seven words would you keep?... The most important words to keep are: You and I... without these two there would need to be no others... You, I, Give, God, Love, Beauty, Earth.
The joy which is caused by truth and noble thoughts shows itself in the words by which they are expressed.
Louis D. Brandeis, fully Louis Dembitz Brandeis
No danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present, unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.
Danger | Discussion | Education | Evil | Falsehood | Opportunity | Present | Silence | Speech | Time | Danger |