This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Doris Lessing, fully Doris May Lessing, born Doris May Tayler
But there is no doubt that to attempt a novel of ideas is to give oneself a handicap: the parochialism of our culture is intense. For instance, decade after decade bright young men and women emerge from their universities able to say proudly: 'Of course I know nothing about German literature.' It is the mode. The Victorians knew everything about German literature, but were able with a clear conscience not to know much about the French.
Conscience | Culture | Doubt | Ideas | Literature | Men | Nothing |
If oppression and wrong should gain the ascendancy, and injustice stalk abroad in the land, and all else fail him; nevertheless his humblest roof, and all things that are sheltered beneath it, would find, somehow, someway, a final refuge and protection in the Supreme Court of the United States.
Injustice | Injustice | Oppression | Wrong |
Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen
Intimacies between women often go backwards, beginning in revelations and ending in small talk without the loss of esteem.
We don`t really know who woman is. She remains in that precise place within man where darkness begins. Talking about women means talking about the darkest part of ourselves, the undeveloped part, the true mystery within. In the beginning, I believe man was complete and androgynous-both male and female, or neither, like angels. Then came the division, and Eve was taken from him. So the problem for man is to reunite himself with the other half of his being, to find the woman who is right for him-right be she is simply a projection, a mirror of himself. A man can`t become whole or free until he has set woman free-his woman. It`s his responsibility, not hers. He can`t be complete, truly alive until he makes her his sexual companion, and not a slave of libidinous acts or a saint with a halo.
Darkness | Man | Means | Mystery | Right | Talking | Woman |
Men and women who turn their lives over to God will discover that He can make a lot more out of their lives than they can. He can deepen their joys, expand their vision, quicken their minds, strengthen their muscles, lift their spirits, multiply their blessings, increase their opportunities, comfort their souls, and pour out peace.
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
By incestuous symbiosis is meant the tendency to stay tied to the mother and to her equivalents — blood, family, tribe — to fly from the unbearable weight of responsibility, of freedom, of awareness, and to be protected and loved in a state of certainty dependence that the individual pays for with the ceasing of his own human development.
Dependence | Individual | Mother |
Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
Deprived of meaningful work, men and women lose their reason for existence; they go stark, raving mad.
It is more noble by silence to avoid an injury than by argument to overcome it.
Frances Wright, known as Fanny Wright
Do we exert our own liberties without injury to others - we exert them justly; do we exert them at the expense of others - unjustly. And, in thus doing, we step from the sure platform of liberty upon the uncertain threshold of tyranny.
Liberty |
Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR
Continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fiber. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit.
A slender acquaintance with the world must convince every man, that actions, not words, are the true criterion of the attachment of his friends, and that the most liberal professions of good will are very far from being the surest marks of it. I should be happy that my own experience had afforded fewer examples of the little dependence to be placed upon them.
Acquaintance | Dependence | Experience | Good | Happy | Little | Will | World |
The theory of dependence will take the wrong path and lead to deception if the analysis is not put within the framework of the worldwide class struggle
Dependence | Will | Wrong |
Richard Niebuhr, fully Helmut Richard Niebuhr
Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.
Capacity | Democracy | Inclination | Injustice | Injustice | Justice |
Already all of us must have heard about the people who call themselves the Fundamentalists. Their apparent intention is to drive out of the evangelical churches men and women of liberal opinions. I speak of them the more freely because there are no two denominations more affected by them than the Baptist and the Presbyterian. We should not identify the Fundamentalists with the conservatives. All Fundamentalists are conservatives, but not all conservatives are Fundamentalists. The best conservatives can often give lessons to the liberals in true liberality of spirit, but the Fundamentalist program is essentially illiberal and intolerant.
The denunciation of injustice implies the rejection of the use of Christianity to legitimize the established order.
Our dependence outweighs our independence, for we are independent only in our desire, while we are dependent on our health, on nature, on society, on everything in us and outside us.