This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism - The right to criticize. The right to hold unpopular beliefs. The right to protest. The right of independent thought. The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood merely because he happens to know someone who holds unpopular beliefs. Who of us does not? Otherwise none of us could call our souls our own. Otherwise thought control would have set in. The American people are sick and tired of being afraid to speak their minds lest they be politically smeared as Communists or Fascists by their opponents. Freedom of speech is not what is used to be in America. It has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others. The American people are sick and tired of seeing innocent people smeared and guilty people whitewashed.
Character | Control | Cost | Danger | Freedom of speech | Freedom | People | Principles | Protest | Reputation | Right | Rights | Speech | Thought | Words | Danger | Afraid | Guilty | Thought |
Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL
Longevity is the result of freedom from grief and worry.
We do not make use of our freedom. We have given away the fundamental freedom to visualize and shape our world. We allow actors, advertisers and politicians to dream for us. And a culture that does not dream is not free.
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
Freedom suppressed and again regained bites with keener fangs than freedom never endangered.
Freedom |
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
The most learned men have told us that only the wise man is free. What is freedom but the ability to live as one will? The man who lives as he wills is none other than the one who strives for the right, who does his duty, who plans his life with forethought, and who obeys the laws because he knows it is good for him, and not out of fear. Everything he says, does, or thinks is spontaneous and free. His tasks and conduct begin and end in himself, because nothing has so much influence over him as his own counsel and decision. Even the supreme power of fortune is submissive to him. The wise poet has reminded us that fortune is molded for each man by the manner of his life. Only the wise man does nothing against his will, or with regret and by compulsion. Thought this truth deserves to be discussed at greater length, it is nevertheless proverbial that no one is free except the wise. Evil men are nothing but slaves.
Ability | Conduct | Counsel | Decision | Duty | Evil | Fear | Forethought | Fortune | Freedom | Good | Influence | Life | Life | Man | Men | Nothing | Power | Regret | Right | Thought | Truth | Will | Wills | Wise | Counsel | Thought |
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
A good society makes it possible for each person to develop the skills necessary to experience flow in socially productive activities. At the same time, it guards against anyone’s exploiting the psychic energy of another person for his or her own advantage. There is a constant watch for oppressors and parasites. According to this perspective, freedom does not apply to doing, but to being.
Energy | Experience | Freedom | Good | Society | Time | Society |
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
Each of us has this freedom to control our subjective reality.
Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim
To produce real moral freedom, God’s grace and man’s will must cooperate. As God is the Prime Mover of nature, so also he creates free impulses toward himself and to all good things. Grace renders the will free that it may do everything with God’s help, working with grace as with an instrument which belongs to it. So the will arrives at freedom through love, nay, becomes itself love, for love unites with God.
Freedom | God | Good | Grace | Love | Man | Nature | Will | God |
Noam Chomsky, fully Avram Noam Chomsky
It is worth remembering - particularly since it has been so uniformly suppressed - that the U.S. is the only country that was condemned for international terrorism by the World Court and that rejected a Security Council resolution calling on states to observe international law.
Nelson Mandela, fully Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
I can rest only for a moment, for with freedom comes responsibilities, and I dare not linger, for my long walk is not yet ended.
Noam Chomsky, fully Avram Noam Chomsky
As people with their freedom, the elites recognize that they cannot control the masses by force anymore; they have to control public opinions and attitudes. The more freedom you win, the more ways privileged groups—usually an amalgam of state and private powers—devise to control you.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
While freedom and equality can be legislated, brotherhood cannot. Neighborly love is a spontaneous feeling that can be affected by external information, but cannot be controlled from the outside.
Brotherhood | Equality | Freedom | Love |
Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
Respect for the freedom of others is the highest duty of man. To love this freedom and to serve it – such is the only virtue. That is the basis of all morality; and there can be no other.
Duty | Freedom | Love | Man | Morality | Respect | Virtue | Virtue |
If we take the freedom to put a friend under our microscope, we thereby insulate him from many of his true relations, magnify his peculiarities, inevitably tear him into parts, and, of course, patch him very clumsily together again. What wonder, then, should we be frightened by the aspect of a monster.
Noam Chomsky, fully Avram Noam Chomsky
Government secrecy is not for security reasons, overwhelmingly it's just to prevent the population from knowing what's going on. I mean, a lot of secret internal documents get declassified after thirty years or so, and if you look over the entire long record of them, there's virtually nothing in there that ever had any security-related concern.
Government | Knowing | Nothing | Secrecy | Security |
Nelson Mandela, fully Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
We speak here of the challenge of the dichotomies of war and peace, violence and non-violence, racism and human dignity, oppression and repression and liberty and human rights, poverty and freedom from want.
Challenge | Freedom | Liberty | Oppression | Poverty | Right | Time | War |