This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The human condition suffers from the fact that our sins and our guilt are cumulative; we may assuage, we forgive, but have no way to forget.
The greatest contribution of human value one person can make to others is by example.
To love truth for truth's sake is the principal part of human perfection in this world, and the seed-plot of all other virtues.
Character | Love | Perfection | Truth | World |
Constancy is the complement of all the other human virtues.
Intelligence is kindness. Kindness is intelligence. The fundamental, which the two terms suggest in different ways... is the same quality on which all human civilization is built.
Character | Civilization | Intelligence | Kindness |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
Neither sex, without some fertilization of the complementary characters of the other, is capable of the highest reaches of human endeavor.
Since man is endowed with intelligence and determines his own ends, it is up to him to put himself in tune with the ends necessarily demanded by his nature. This means that there is, by very virtue of human nature, an order or a disposition which human reason can discover and according to which the human will must act in order to attune itself to the necessary ends of the human being. The unwritten law, or natural law, is nothing more than that.
Character | Ends | Human nature | Intelligence | Law | Man | Means | Nature | Nothing | Order | Reason | Virtue | Virtue | Will |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
Lying is an ugly vice... Since mutual understanding is brought about solely by way of words, he who breaks his word betrays human society. It is the only instrument by means of which our wills and thoughts communicate, it is the interpreter of our soul. If it fails us, we have no more hold on each other, no more knowledge of each other. If it deceives us, it breaks up all our relations and dissolves all the bonds of our society.
Character | Knowledge | Lying | Means | Society | Soul | Ugly | Understanding | Wills | Words |
All experience shows that even smaller technological changes than those now in the cards profoundly transform political and social relationships. Experience also shows that those transformations are not a priori predictable and that most contemporary “first guesses” concerning them are wrong. For all these reasons, one should take neither present difficulties nor presently proposed reforms too seriously... To ask in advance for a complete recipe would be unreasonable. We can specify only the human qualities required: patience, flexibility, intelligence.
Character | Experience | Flexibility | Intelligence | Patience | Present | Qualities | Wrong |
Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
Through a fatality inseparable from human nature, moderation in great men is very rare: and as it is always much easier to push on force in the direction in which it moves than to stop its movement, so in the superior class of the people, it is less difficult, perhaps, to find men extremely virtuous, than extremely prudent.
Character | Force | Human nature | Men | Moderation | Nature | People | Moderation |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
In human history a moral victory is always a disaster, for it debauches and degrades both the victor and the vanquished.
No discipline is immune to excess or lack of wisdom. All programs for human betterment can be undermined by ignorance, imcompetence, or moral perversity.
Character | Discipline | Excess | Ignorance | Wisdom |
Exceptional abilities develop most fully in cultures that prize them... no aspect of human nature is immune to social influence.
Character | Human nature | Influence | Nature |
Ashley Montagu, fully Montague Francis Ashley Montagu, born Israel Ehrenberg
Human beings are not born with human nature - they develop it.
Character | Human nature | Nature |