This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The effort necessary to remain uncorrupted in an environment where fear is an integral part of everyday existence is not immediately apparent to those fortunate enough to live in states governed by the rule of law. Just laws do not merely prevent corruption by meting out impartial punishment to offenders. They also help to create a society in which people can fulfill the basic requirements necessary for the preservation of human dignity without recourse to corrupt practices. Where there are no such laws, the burden of upholding the principles of justice and common decency falls on the ordinary people. It is the cumulative effect on their sustained effort and steady endurance which will change a nation where reason and conscience are warped by fear into one where legal rules exist to promote man's desire for harmony and justice while restraining the less desirable destructive traits in his nature.
Change | Conscience | Corruption | Desire | Dignity | Effort | Endurance | Enough | Existence | Fear | Harmony | Justice | People | Principles | Punishment | Reason | Rule | Society | Will | Society |
All people deserve to be treated with dignity and have their human rights respected, no matter who they are or whom they love.
Eleanor Roosevelt, fully Anna Eleanor Roosevelt
Where, after all, do universal human rights begin? In small places, close to home - so close and so small that they cannot be seen on any maps of the world. Yet they are the world of the individual person; the neighborhood he lives in; the school or college he attends; the factory, the farm or office where he works. Such are the places where every man, woman, and child seeks equal justice, equal opportunity, equal dignity without discrimination. Unless these rights have meaning there, they have little meaning anywhere. Without concerned citizen action to uphold them close to home, we shall look in vain for progress in the larger world.
Action | Dignity | Individual | Little | Meaning | Office | Progress | Rights | World | Child |
The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life. To make this a living force and bring it to clear consciousness is perhaps the foremost task of education. The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action.
Authority | Balance | Beauty | Consciousness | Dignity | Doubt | Existence | Force | Important | Judgment | Morality | Myth | Sound | Beauty |
Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr
A scientific humanism frequently offends the dignity of man, which it ostensibly extols, by regarding human beings as subject to manipulation and as mere instruments of some socially approved ends.
Dignity |
Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr
The value and dignity of the individual is threatened whenever it is assumed that individual desires, hopes and ideals can be fitted with friction harmony into the collective purposes of man. The individual is not discrete. He cannot find his fulfillment outside of the community; but he also cannot find fulfillment completely within society. In so far as he finds fulfillment within society he must abate his individual ambitions. He must 'die to self' if he would truly live. In so far as he finds fulfillment beyond every historical community he lives his life in painful tension with even the best community, sometimes achieving standards of conduct which defy the standards of the community with a resolute we must obey God rather than man.
Conduct | Dignity | Fulfillment | God | Harmony | Ideals | Individual | Life | Life | Society | Society | God | Value |
Red Skelton, fully Richard Bernard "Red" Skelton
If I may I would like to recite the Pledge of Allegiance and give you a definition for each word. I: me, an individual, a committee of one. Pledge: dedicate all of my worldly goods to give without self-pity. Allegiance: my love and my devotion. To the Flag: our standard, Old Glory, a symbol of freedom. Wherever she waves, there is respect because your loyalty has given her a dignity that shouts freedom is everybody
Dignity | Freedom | Love | Loyalty | Loyalty | Respect | Respect | Old |
Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon
Scrubbing floors and emptying bedpans has as much dignity as the Presidency.
Dignity |
Robert Aitken, fully Robert Baker Aitken
With dignity and freedom we can collaborate, labor together, on small farms and in cooperatives of all kinds
Robert W. Fuller, fully Robert Works Fuller
Dignity assures belonging. It's more than respect or courtesy. To live in dignity affirms, nurtures, and protects. Dignity is the social counterpart of interpersonal love.
Essentially Americanism, which in democracy, is a moraland spiritual adventure, concerned primarily with a sound and workable philosophy of life, summed up in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man, respect for human personality, and recognition of the dignity and value of the individual. In his brilliant statement on The Coming Victory of Democracy, Thomas Mann tells us he believes in democracy because he believes in freedom, and he believes in freedom because he believes in human nature and the dignity of man, who is more than a depersonalized unit in the state. Man is a spiritual being whom it is the duty of the state to serve. He is more than a slave to be kept in order and submission by the crack of a master's whip. "The essential man," says he, "is not the creature who hurls down bombs on children, but the mind that devised the flying machine, the seeker and builder, not the destroyer."
Brotherhood | Democracy | Dignity | Duty | Freedom | God | Human nature | Man | Mind | Nature | Order | Philosophy | Respect | Sound | Submission | Respect | God | Value |
Second Vatican Ecumenical Council, aka Vatican II
Venerable Brothers, Mother Church rejoices that by the singular gift of Divine Providence, the long awaited day has finally dawned. Here at St Peter’s tomb, under the auspices of the Virgin Mother of God... the Second Vatican Ecumenical Council is solemnly opened... ‘The greatest concern of the ecumenical Council is that the sacred deposit of Christian doctrine should be guarded and taught more effectively. That doctrine embraces the whole of man, body and soul. And since man is a pilgrim on this earth, it commands him to move steadily towards heaven... it is necessary that the Church should never depart from the sacred treasure of the truth inherited from the fathers. But at the same time, she must ever look to the present, to the new conditions and new forms of life in the modern world, which have opened new avenues to the Catholic apostolate... ‘The substance of the ancient doctrine of the Deposit of Faith is one thing, but the way in which it is presented is another.
Dignity | Earth | Guidance | Heaven | Moderation | Need | Obedience | Prayer | Serenity | Spirit | Will | Wisdom | World | Zeal | Moderation | Guidance |
Sen T’Sen, aka Seng T'San, Jianzhi Sengcan, Kanchi Sosan, Third Chinese Patriarch of Zen
The Perfect Way knows no difficulties, Except that it refuses to make preferences. Only when freed from hate and love Does it reveal itself fully and without disguise. A tenth of an inch's difference, And heaven and earth are set apart. If you wish to see it before your own eyes, Have no fixed thoughts either for or against it. To set up what you like against what you dislike - This is the disease of the mind. When the deep meaning of the Way is not understood, Peace of mind is disturbed to no purpose... Pursue not the outer entanglements, Dwell not in the inner void; Be serene in the oneness of things, And dualism vanishes of itself. When you strive to gain quiescence by stopping motion, The quiescence so gained is ever in motion. So long as you tarry in such dualism, How can you realize oneness? And when oneness is not thoroughly grasped, Loss is sustained in two ways: The denying of external reality is the assertion of it, And the assertion of Emptiness (the Absolute) is the denying of it... Transformations going on in the empty world that confronts us Appear to be real because of Ignorance. Do not strive to seek after the True, Only cease to cherish opinions. The two exist because of the One; But hot not even to this One. When a mind is not disturbed, The ten thousand things offer no offense... If an eye never falls asleep, All dreams will cease of themselves; If the Mind retains its absoluteness, The ten thousand things are of one substance. When the deep mystery of Suchness is fathomed, All of a sudden we forget the external entanglements; When the ten thousand things are viewed in their oneness, We return to the origin and remain where we have always been... One in all, All in One - If only this is realized, No more worry about not being perfect! When Mind and each believing mind are not divided, And undivided are each believing mind and Mind, This is where words fail, For it is not of the past, present or future.
Church | Commitment | Dignity | Duty | Experience | Grace | Individual | Life | Life | Openness | Understand |
Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan
It is time to realize we are too great a nation for small dreams. We're not -- as some would have us believe -- doomed to an inevitable fate.
Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan
No, I'm just a man committed to great ideas.
Children | Civilization | Dignity | Dreams | History | Law | Materialism | People | Price | Success | Will | Learn | Think |
Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan
The more government takes in taxes, the less incentive people have to work. What coal miner or assembly-line worker jumps at the offer of overtime when he knows Uncle Sam is going to take 60 percent or more of his extra pay?
Better | Cause | Dignity | Earth | Freedom | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | War | Will | Work | World |
Russell Baker. fully Russell Wayne Baker
Americans like fat books and thin women.