This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We declare war with the wages system, which demoralizes alike the hirer and the hired, cheats both, and enslaves the workingman.
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You beg for happiness in life, but security is more important to you, even if it costs you your spine or your life. Your life will be good and secure when aliveness will mean more to you than security; love more than money; your freedom more than party line or public opinion; when your thinking will be in harmony with your feelings; when the teachers of your children will be better paid than the politicians; when you will have more respect for the love between man and woman than for a marriage license.
Body | Children | Little | Music | Woman | Learn | Think | Understand |
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
All space, all time, the stars, the terrible perturbations of the suns, Swelling, collapsing, ending, serving their longer, shorter use, fill'd with eidolons only. The noiseless myriads, the infinite oceans where the rivers empty, the separate countless free identities, like eyesight, the true realities, eidolons. Not this the world, nor these the universes, they the universes, purport and end, ever the permanent life of life, eidolons, eidolons...
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Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love if you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean but I shall be good health to you nonetheless and filter and fibre your blood.
Argument | Custom | God | Knowledge | Little | Men | Mind | Music | Peace | Promise | Spirit | God |
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
With the holders holding my hand nearing the call of the bird, comrades mine and I in the midst, and their memory ever to keep, for the dead I loved so well, for the sweetest, wisest soul of all my days and lands—and this for his dear sake, lilac and star and bird twined with the chant of my soul, there in the fragrant pines and the cedars dusk and dim.
Warren Bennis, fully Warren Gamaliel Bennis
Leaders should always expect the very best of those around them. They know that people can change and grow.
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W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
If the most significant characteristic of man is the complex of biological needs he shares with all members of his species, then the best lives for the writer to observe are those in which the role of natural necessity is clearest, namely, the lives of the very poor.
We cling in our public life to a brutal hypocrisy. In our century of almost universal violence of humans against fellow humans, and against our natural and cultural commonwealth, hypocrisy has been inescapable because our opposition to violence has been selective or merely fashionable. Some of us who approve of our monstrous military budget and our peacekeeping wars nonetheless deplore “domestic violence” and think that our society can be pacified by “gun control.” Some of us are against capital punishment but for abortion. Some of us are against abortion but for capital punishment.
W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
John, she said, does it make every one unhappy when they study and learn lots of things. He paused and smiled. I am afraid it does, he said. And, John, are you glad you studied? Yes, came the answer, slowly but positively. She watched the flickering lights upon the sea, and said thoughtfully, I wish I was unhappy,—and—and, putting both arms about his neck, I think I am, a little, John.
Beauty | Heart | Life | Life | Longing | Mistake | Music | Sorrow | Talking | Time | Vision | World | Beauty |
W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy
Seeking world peace is not about peace, it is power and control all under the guise of service to humanity.
Ability | Appreciation | Enough | Experience | Means | Mind | Music | Nature | People | Quiet | Silence | Struggle | Talking | Writing | Appreciation |
W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
But we do not merely protest; we make renewed demand for freedom in that vast kingdom of the human spirit where freedom has ever had the right to dwell: the expressing of thought to unstuffed ears; the dreaming of dreams by untwisted souls.
W. Eugene Smith, fully William Eugene Smith
I am an idealist. I often feel I would like to be an artist in an ivory tower. Yet it is imperative that I speak to people, so I must desert that ivory tower. To do this, I am a journalist—a photojournalist. But I am always torn between the attitude of the journalist, who is a recorder of facts, and the artist, who is often necessarily at odds with the facts. My principle concern is for honesty, above all honesty with myself.
W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer
Most teachers who are honest with themselves are forced to admit that, in the main, the class would make the same progress if the teacher were not there at all, the clever remaining clever and the dull remaining dull.
Controversy | Discovery | Ideas | Important | Music | Problems | Discovery |