This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Fidel Castro, fully Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz
Whoever hesitates while waiting for ideas to triumph among the masses before initiating revolutionary action will never be a revolutionary. Humanity will, of course, change. Human society will, of course, continue to develop – in spite of men and the errors of men. But that is not a revolutionary attitude.
Action | Change | Humanity | Ideas | Men | Society | Waiting | Will | Society |
Robert Bridges, fully Robert Seymour Bridges
Music being the universal expression of the mysterious and supernatural, the best that man has ever attained to, is capable of uniting in common devotion minds that are only separated by creeds, and it comforts our hope with a brighter promise of unity than any logic offers.
Action makes propaganda’s effect irreversible. He who acts in obedience to propaganda can never go back. He is not obliged to believe in that propaganda because of his past action. He is obliged to receive from it his justification and authority, without which his action will seem to him absurd or unjust, which would be intolerable.
Absurd | Action | Authority | Justification | Obedience | Past | Receive | Will | Propaganda |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
Every action of the enemy is judged by one standard – every action of oneself by another.
Charles de Gaulle, fully Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle
Every man of action has a strong dose of egotism, pride, hardness, and cunning. But all those things will be forgiven him, indeed, they will be regarded as high qualities, if he can make of them the means to achieve great ends.
Action | Cunning | Ends | Man | Means | Pride | Qualities | Will |
J. W. Fulbright, fully James William Fulbright
We must dare to think 'unthinkable' thoughts. We must learn to explore all the options and possibilities that confront us in a complex and rapidly changing world. We must learn to welcome and not to fear the voices of dissent. We must dare to think about the 'unthinkable things' because when things become unthinkable, thinking stops and action becomes mindless.
Action | Dissent | Fear | Thinking | World | Learn | Think |
One’s true happiness depends more upon one’s own judgment of one’s self, or a consciousness of rectitude in action and intention, and the approbation of those few, who judge impartially, than upon the applause of the unthinking, undiscerning multitude, who are apt to cry Hosanna today, and tomorrow, Crucify him.
Action | Applause | Consciousness | Intention | Judgment | Self | Tomorrow | Happiness |
In visions of wisdom, in devotion to the good, in submission to beauty, and when overwhelmed by the holy, we awake to behold existence in this relationship. In reverence, suffering, and humility we discover our existence and find the bridge that leads from existence to God. And this is religion.
Beauty | Devotion | Existence | God | Good | Humility | Relationship | Religion | Reverence | Submission | Suffering | Wisdom |
All of one’s life can be a “reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice” to deity, a sacrifice whose value depends on the quality of life, and this depends on the depth of the devotion to all good things, to all life’s possibilities, neither as mine nor as not mine but as belonging to God’s creatures and thus to God.
B. H. Liddell Hart, fully Captain B. H. Liddell
For collective action it suffices if the mass can be managed; collective growth is only possible through the freedom and enlargement of individual minds.
Action | Freedom | Growth | Individual |
A Jew is asked to take a leap of action rather than a leap of thought: to surpass his needs, to do more than he understands in order to understand more than he does… Through the ecstasy of deeds he learns to be certain of the presence of God.
Action | Deeds | Ecstasy | God | Order | Thought | Deeds | Understand |
David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
Nothing in nature needs to do anything; all merely appears to be becoming that which it is. There is no doer of actions; the actions are the doer. One sees potentiality actualizing. In duality, there is a `this’ (me) that is imagined to be the `cause’ of `that’ (action). In Reality, the action and self are one and the same. There is no thinker separate from the thoughts. It is the thoughts themselves that are the only thinker of the moment; they are not different or separate.
Action | Cause | Duality | Nature | Nothing | Reality | Self |