This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Friendship, like love, is self-forgetful. The only inequality is knows is one that exalts the object, and humbles self.
Character | Inequality | Love | Object | Self |
Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
Men in excess of happiness or misery are equally inclined to severity. Witness conquerors and monks! It is mediocrity alone, and a mixture of prosperous and adverse fortune that inspire us with lenity and pity.
Character | Excess | Fortune | Mediocrity | Men | Pity | Witness | Happiness |
Felix Schelling, fully Felix Emmanuel Schelling
True education makes for inequality; the inequality of individuality the inequality of success; the glorious inequality of talent, of genius, for inequality, not mediocrity, individual superiority, not standardization, is the measure of the progress of the world.
Character | Education | Genius | Individual | Individuality | Inequality | Mediocrity | Progress | Standardization | Success | Superiority | World |
Karl Marx (1818-1883) German Philosopher, Socialist and Friedrich Engels
The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. By modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.
The great inequality in manner of living, the extreme idleness of some, and the excessive labor of others, the easiness of exciting and gratifying our sensual appetites, the too exquisite foods of the wealthy which overheat and fill them with indigestion, and, on the other hand, the unwholesome food of the poor, often, bad as it is, insufficient for their needs, which induces them, when opportunity offers, to eat voraciously and overcharge their stomachs; all these, together with sitting up late, and excesses of every kind, immoderate transports of every passion, fatigue, mental exhaustion, the innumerable pains and anxieties inseparable from every condition of life, by which the mind of man is incessantly tormented; these are too fatal proofs that the greater part of our ills are our own making, and that we might have avoided them nearly all by adhering to that simple, uniform and solitary manner of life which nature prescribed.
Extreme | Idleness | Indigestion | Inequality | Labor | Life | Life | Man | Mind | Nature | Opportunity | Passion | Wisdom |
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
One instance of the innate and ineradicable inequality of men is their tendency to fall into two classes of leaders and followers. The latter constitute the vast majority; they stand in need of an authority which will make decisions for them and to which they for the most part offer an unqualified submission. This suggests that more care should be taken than hitherto to educate an upper stratum of men with independent minds, not open to intimidation and eager in the pursuit of truth, whose business it would be to give direction to the dependent masses.
Authority | Business | Care | Inequality | Intimidation | Majority | Men | Need | Submission | Truth | Will | Business |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
The principle of nonviolence necessitates complete abstention from exploitation in any form.
All souls are equal before God, so far as mere worldly eminence is concerned. Their inequality rests solely upon the degree that they have realized the eternal will by their own choice.
Choice | Eternal | God | Inequality | Will |
The only difference between men of great achievement and those who remain in mediocrity is that the great pay little attention to what has been done and what obstacles or apparent reasons may stand in the way of achievement but devote themselves to contemplating what can or ought to be done. Those who allow their mental and emotional natures to recoil, refusing to let this sense reach out into the undiscovered, destroy their own capabilities and this keeps them always in the prison house of limitation. But it should be noted that prison is only the recoil or reflex of their own nature. Genius is that which goes on through conditions and circumstances and keeps eternally in the process of expansion and extension of achieving power.
Achievement | Attention | Circumstances | Destroy | Genius | Little | Mediocrity | Men | Nature | Power | Prison | Sense |
The machine is one of the most compelling rational of human discoveries. The madness is in those who would use a rational thing to further the irrational ends of exploitation and domination.
The eternal message of the Exodus is not to glory in the defeat of the oppressors or wait until they become the losers and we the victors… The main message is that whichever way you turn in a relationship of exploitation or objectification, you lose.
Defeat | Eternal | Glory | Relationship |
The time and study, the genius, knowledge, and application requisite to qualify an eminent teacher of the sciences, are at least equal to what is necessary for the greatest practitioners in law and physic. But the usual reward of the eminent teacher bears no proportion to that of the lawyer or physician... The inequality is upon the whole, perhaps, rather advantageous than hurtful to the public. It may somewhat degrade the profession of a public teacher; but the cheapness of literary education is surely an advantage which greatly overbalances this trifling inconveniency.
Education | Genius | Inequality | Knowledge | Law | Public | Reward | Study | Time | Teacher |