This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The moment we begin to fear the opinions of others and hesitate to tell the truth that is in us, and from motives of policy are silent when we should speak, the divine floods of light and life no longer flow into our souls.
Consciously or not, we are all on a quest for answers, trying to learn the lessons of life. We grapple with fear and guilt. We search for meaning, love, and power. We try to understand fear, loss, and time. We seek to discover who we are and how we can become truly happy… Not all of these lessons are enjoyable to learn, but everyone finds that they enrich the texture of life.
Fear | Guilt | Happy | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Power | Search | Time | Learn | Understand |
Men fear death, as children fear the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by frightful tales, so is the other. Groans, convulsions, weeping friends, and the like show death terrible; yet there is no passion so weak but conquers the fear of it, and therefore death is not such a terrible enemy. Revenge triumphs over death, loves slights its, honor aspires to it, dread of shame prefers it, grief flies to it, and fear anticipates it.
Children | Death | Dread | Enemy | Fear | Grief | Honor | Men | Passion | Revenge | Shame |
Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
Nothing is terrible, except fear itself... revenge is a kind of wild justice; which the more man's nature runs to, the more ought law to week it out... Certainly, in taking revenge a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior; for it is a prince's part to pardon. This is certain, the man that studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.
Enemy | Fear | Justice | Law | Man | Nature | Nothing | Pardon | Revenge |
Certainly the contemplation of death, as the wages of sin, and passage to another world, is holy and religious; but he fear of it, as a tribute due unto Nature, is weak.
Contemplation | Death | Fear | Nature | Sin | World | Contemplation |
The differences between the conservative and the radical seem to spring mainly from their attitude toward the future. Fear of the future causes us to lean against and cling to the present, while faith in the future renders us receptive to change.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR
We look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in their own way everywhere in the world. The third freedom is from want everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear everywhere in the world.
Fear | Freedom from fear | Freedom of speech | Freedom | God | Speech | World | Worship | God |
Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR
The only thing we have to fear is fear itself – nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
There is no divine right of property. Nothing is so completely a man’s own that he may do what he likes with it... Nevertheless, as it is obviously well that each man should labor without fear of being deprived of the use and enjoyment of the product of their labor - as in the nature of things he would not labor at all without some such incentive, it may be said that a man has natural right to own the product of his labor... By this natural right of the individual is still subject to all the limitations imposed by the rights of his fellows.
Enjoyment | Fear | Individual | Labor | Man | Nature | Nothing | Property | Right | Rights |
Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR
In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first freedom is speech and expression – everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way – everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want – which, translated into world-terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants – everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear – which, translated into world-terms, means a worldwide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor – anywhere in the world. That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.
Aggression | Fear | Freedom from fear | Freedom | Future | God | Life | Life | Means | Position | Speech | Time | Vision | Will | World | Worship | God |