This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Every political society is composed of other smaller societies of different kinds, each of which has its interests and its rules of conduct: but those societies which everybody perceives, because they have an external and authorized form, are not the only ones that actually exist in the State... Unhappily personal interest is always found in inverse ratio to duty, and increases in proportion as the association grows narrower, and the engagement less sacred; which irrefragably proves that the most general will always the most just also, and that the voice of the people is in fact the voice of God.
Association | Conduct | Duty | God | People | Sacred | Society | Will | Wisdom | Association | Society | Engagement |
Were there a people of gods, their government would be democratic. So perfect a government is not for men.
Government | Men | People | Wisdom | Government |
Modern peoples, believing themselves to be free, have representatives, while ancient peoples had none. In any case, the moment a people allows itself to be represented, it is no longer free: it no longer exists.
The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had someone pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: "Do not listen to this imposter. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one!
Earth | Enough | Human race | Man | People | Race | Society | Wisdom |
Norm Shealy, fully Dr. C. Norman Shealy
The greatest deficit in academic medicine is that it has generally failed to approach the problem of preventing disease or health promotion.... we are too busy taking care of people with disease to be bothered with preventing it.
More people laugh at us that with us, however it may appear at the moment.
Law being purely the declaration of the general will, it is clear that, in the exercise of the legislative power, the people cannot be represented; but in that of the executive power, which is only the force that is applied to giver the law effect, it both can and should be represented.
More people praise the Bible than read it, more read it than understand it, and more understand it than follow it.
Everybody is a bit right; nobody is completely right or completely wrong. The prevalence of this point of view among all decent people nearly always has the same dreadful result for, according to their doctrine, every time a contemporary is quite right, he must be crucified. They can never forgive him because he denies their dogma; worst still, he reveals that they hold another dogma which they conceal.
Doctrine | Dogma | People | Right | Time | Wisdom | Wrong | Forgive |
The devil does not tempt people whom he finds suitably employed.
Charles P. Steinmetz, fully Charles Proteus Steinmetz, born Karl August Rudolf Steinmetz
Spiritual power is a force which history clearly teaches has been the greatest force in the development of men... Some day people will learn that material things do not bring happiness, and are of little use in making people creative and powerful. Then the scientists of the world will turn their laboratories over to the study of spiritual forces which have hardly been scratched.
Day | Force | History | Little | Men | People | Power | Study | Will | Wisdom | World | Learn |
Benjamin Spock, fully Benjamin McLane Spock
The more people have studied different methods of bringing up children and the more they have come to the conclusion that what good mothers and fathers instinctively feel like doing for their babies is the best after all.
I. F. Stone, fully Isidor Feinstein Stone, born Isidor Feinstein
Funerals are always occasions for pious lying. A deep vein of superstition and a sudden touch of kindness always lead people to give the departed credit for more virtues than he possessed.
Credit | Kindness | Lying | People | Pious | Superstition | Wisdom |