This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
In the state of nature... all men are born equal, but they cannot continue in this equality. Society makes them lose it, and they recover it only by protection of the laws.
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
Not in theory, but in truth, the best and most excellent government for each nation is the one under which it has preserved its existence. Its form and essential fitness depend on habit. We are prone to be discontented with the present state of things. But I maintain, nevertheless, that to wish for the government of a few in a democratic state, or another type of government in a monarchy, is foolish and wrong.
Existence | Government | Habit | Present | Truth | Wisdom | Wrong | Government |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
Those who give the first shock to a state are naturally the first to be overwhelmed in its ruin. The fruits of public commotion are seldom enjoyed by the man who was the first to set it a going; he only troubles the water for another’s net.
Man can be defined as a being born to transcend himself. And the meaning of human life resides in man’s seeking to become what he was, is and will be eternally in God... Man is the eye through which God knows Himself in His creation, through which God sees and reflects upon His own Splendor. The supreme goal of life is the attainment of this state of awareness of being the eye of which God is the light.
Attainment | Awareness | God | Life | Life | Light | Man | Meaning | Will | Wisdom | God | Awareness |
Society in every state is a blessing, but government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer or are exposed to the same miseries by a government, which we might expect in a country without government, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer.
Calamity | Evil | Government | Means | Society | Wisdom | Calamity |
One of the most difficult lessons parents have to learn is this one: Children are only loaned for a brief term of infancy and childhood. Soon they become people, strangers in the home, and instead of children to be directed they are grown-ups to be studied, understood and accepted. The acceptance is never quite complete on either side, but affection will bridge the gap if it is permitted to do so.
Acceptance | Childhood | Children | Infancy | Parents | People | Will | Wisdom | Learn |
All the religions known in the world are founded, so far as they relate to man or the unity of man, as being all of one degree. Whether in heaven or in hell, or in whatever state man may be supposed to exist hereafter the good and the bad are the only distinctions.
He who is held in bondage by his senses can never enjoy even a dream of freedom. It is only by complete escape from them that we arrive at a state of freedom from fear.
Fear | Freedom from fear | Freedom | Wisdom |
Bound only by birth and death, life is both the ultimate mystery and the process of solving it. Life is a dance, a leap into the unknown. After you jump and before you land, is God. God is ecstasy: that state of being when everything comes together, nothing is missing, and it’s all vibrating and electric. Life is an excuse for ecstasy.
Birth | Death | Ecstasy | God | Land | Life | Life | Mystery | Nothing | Wisdom | God |
It is clear that property in itself owes allegiance to no particular form of government, and is bound by no dynastic or legal ties. Its politics may be summed up in a single word: exploitation, or even anarchy. It is the most formidable enemy and most treacherous ally of any form of power. In short, in its relation to the State it is governed by only one principle, one sentiment, one concern: self-interest, or egoism... That is why all governments, all utopias, and all Churches distrust property... We can conclude that property is the greatest existing revolutionary force, with an unequaled capacity for setting itself against authority.
Anarchy | Authority | Capacity | Distrust | Enemy | Force | Government | Politics | Power | Property | Self | Self-interest | Sentiment | Wisdom |
Friedrich Schiller, fully Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
As long as man dwells in a state of pure nature (I mean pure and not coarse nature), all his being acts at once like a simple sensuous unity, like a harmonious whole. The senses and reason, the receptive faculty and the spontaneously active faculty, have not been as yet separated in their respective functions; a priori they are not yet in contradiction to each other. Then the feelings of man are not the formless play of chance; nor are his thoughts an empty play of imagination, without any value. His feelings proceed from the law of necessity, his thoughts from reality. But when man enters the state of civilization, and art has fashioned him, this sensuous harmony which was in him disappears, and henceforth he can only manifest himself as a moral unity, that is, as aspiring to unity. The harmony that existed as a fact in the former state, the harmony of feeling and thought, only exists in an ideal state. It is no longer in him, but out of him; it is a conception of thought which he must begin by realizing in himself; it is no longer a fact, a reality of his life.
Art | Chance | Civilization | Contradiction | Feelings | Harmony | Imagination | Law | Life | Life | Man | Nature | Necessity | Play | Reality | Reason | Thought | Unity | Wisdom | Art | Thought |
Since the beginning of civilization we have explained our existence in terms of what we could observe... Maybe we will discover that the only true reality is a state of mind, shaped by the information we can process and contexts in which we see it. Maybe the Supreme Being we call God can best be appreciated as the power of ultimate understanding. Maybe our destination has always been to learn and grow as we approach the light of ultimate understanding. Only the context of our ability to process information changes.
Ability | Beginning | Civilization | Existence | God | Light | Mind | Power | Reality | Understanding | Will | Wisdom | God | Learn |
War... is a relation, not between man and man, but between State and State, and individuals are enemies only accidentally, not as men, nor even as citizens, but as soldiers; not as members of their country, but as its defenders. Finally, each State can have for enemies only other States, and not men.