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 |
O what a world of unseen visions and heard silences, this insubstantial country of the mind! What ineffable essences, these touchless rememberings and unshowable reveries! And the privacy of it all! A secret theater of speechless monologue and prevenient counsel, an invisible mansion of all moods, musings and mysteries, an infinite resort of disappointments and discoveries. A whole kingdom where each of us reigns reclusively alone, questioning what we will, commanding what we can. A hidden hermitage where we may study out the troubled book of what we have done and yet may do. An introcosm that is more myself than anything I can find in a mirror. This consciousness that is myself of selves, that is everything, and yet nothing at all - what is it?
Consciousness | Counsel | Mind | Nothing | Study | Will | World |
Man’s dwelling place, who could found you on reasoning, or build your walls with logic? You exist, and you exist not. You are, and are not. True, you are made out of diverse materials, but for your discovery an inventive mind was needed. Thus if a man pulled his house to pieces, with the design of understanding it, all he would have before him would be heaps of bricks and stones and tiles. he would not be able to discover therein the silence, the shadows and the privacy they bestowed. Nor would he see what service this mass of bricks, stones and tiles could render him, now that they lacked the heart and soul of the architect, the inventive mind which dominated them. For in mere stone the heart and soul of man have no place. But since reasoning can deal with only such material things as bricks and stones and tiles, and there is no reasoning about the heart and soul that dominate them and thus transform them into silence - inasmuch as the heart and soul have no concern with the rules of logic or the science of numbers - this is where I step in and impose my will. I, the architect; I, who have a heart and soul; I, who wield the power of transforming stone into silence. I step in and mold that clay, which is the raw material, into the likeness of the creative vision that comes to me from God; and not through any faculty of reason. Thus, taken solely by the savor it will have, I build my civilization; as poets build their poems, bending phrases to their will and changing words, without being called upon to justify the phrasing of the changes, but taken solely by the savor these will have, vouched by their hearts.
Civilization | Design | Discovery | God | Heart | Justify | Logic | Man | Mind | Power | Reason | Science | Service | Silence | Soul | Understanding | Vision | Will | Words | Discovery |
The human animal needs a freedom seldom mentioned, freedom from intrusion. He needs a little privacy quite as much as he wants understanding or vitamins or exercise or praise.
Freedom | Little | Praise | Understanding | Wants |
Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth. I look upon the simple and child-like virtues of veracity and honesty as the root of all that is sublime in character.
Clarence Darrow, fully Clarence Seward Darrow
Progress has never been a bargain; you've got to pay for it. You can have a telephone, but you'll have to give up privacy and the charm of distance. You may conquer the air, but the birds will lose their wonder, and the clouds will smell of gasoline.
Marquis de Sade, born Donatien Alphonse François de Sade
So long as the laws remain such as they are today, employ some discretion: loud opinion forces us to do so; but in privacy and silence let us compensate ourselves for that cruel chastity we are obliged to display in public.
Chastity | Discretion | Display | Opinion | Public | Silence |
Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
Sarcasm: the last refuge of modest and chaste-souled people when the privacy of their soul is coarsely and intrusively invaded.
The one thing necessary is always to be found by the soul in the present moment. There is no need to choose between prayer and silence, privacy or conversation, reading or writing, reflection or the abandonment of thought, the frequentation or avoidance of spiritual people, abundance or famine, illness or health, life or death; the one thing necessary is what each moment produces by God’s design.
Abundance | Life | Life | Need | Prayer | Present | Reading | Reflection | Soul |
William O. Douglas, fully Judge William Orville Douglas
The privacy and dignity of our citizens [are] being whittled away by sometimes imperceptible steps. Taken individually, each step may be of little consequence. But when viewed as a whole, there begins to emerge a society quite unlike any we have seen -- a society in which government may intrude into the secret regions of a [person’s] life.
Dignity | Government | Little | Society | Society | Government |
Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon
You have to protect the privacy of the advice you get, or you'll never get the advice you need.
Advice |
Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon
Unless a president can protect the privacy of the advice he gets, he cannot get the advice he needs.
Advice |
There is a privacy I love in this snowy night. Driving around, I will waste more time.
The intelligent man who is proud of his intelligence is like a condemned man who is proud of his large cell.