This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Karl Jaspers, fully Karl Theodor Jaspers
But each one of us is guilty insofar as he remained inactive. The guilt of passivity is different. Impotence excuses; no moral law demands a spectacular death. Plato already deemed it a matter of course to go into hiding in desperate times of calamity, and to survive. But passivity knows itself morally guilty of every failure, every neglect to act whenever possible, to shield the imperiled, to relieve wrong, to countervail. Impotent submission always left a margin of activity which, though not without risk, could still be cautiously effective. Its anxious omission weighs upon the individual as moral guilt. Blindness for the misfortune of others, lack of imagination of the heart, inner differences toward the witnessed evil--that is moral guilt.
Guilt | Imagination | Individual | Law | Misfortune | Moral law | Neglect | Submission | Misfortune | Guilty |
Kofi Annan, fully Kofi Atta Annan
Today, no walls can separate humanitarian or human rights crises in one part of the world from national security crises in another. What begins with the failure to uphold the dignity of one life all too often ends with a calamity for entire nations.
Calamity | Dignity | Ends | Failure | Life | Life | Rights | Security | World | Calamity | Failure |
Kofi Annan, fully Kofi Atta Annan
On this International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, let us recognize that extreme poverty anywhere is a threat to human security everywhere. Let us recall that poverty is a denial of human rights. For the first time in history, in this age of unprecedented wealth and technical prowess, we have the power to save humanity from this shameful scourge. Let us summon the will to do it.
Age | Day | Extreme | Humanity | Poverty | Power | Security | Time | Wealth | Will |
Lester Thurow, fully Lester Carl Thurow, aka L.C. Thurow
No country without a revolution or a military defeat and subsequent occupation has ever experienced such a sharp a shift in the distribution of earnings as America has in the last generation. At no other time have median wages of American men fallen for more than two decades. Never before have a majority of American workers suffered real wage reductions while the per capita domestic product was advancing.
Defeat | Majority | Men | Occupation | Revolution | Time |
Lester Thurow, fully Lester Carl Thurow, aka L.C. Thurow
Probably no country has ever had as large a shift in the distribution of wealth [as what we've seen in the U.S. in the last 30 years] without having gone through a revolution or losing a major war.
Revolution | Wealth |
Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
The great revolution is stillness.
Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
One man does not assert the truth which he knows, because he feels himself bound to the people with whom he is engaged; another, because the truth might deprive him of the profitable position by which he maintains his family; a third, because he desires to attain reputation and authority, and then use them in the service of mankind; a fourth, because he does not wish to destroy old sacred traditions; a fifth, because he has no desire to offend people; a sixth, because the expression of the truth would arouse persecution, and disturb the excellent social activity to which he has devoted himself. One serves as emperor, king, minister, government functionary, or soldier, and assures himself and others that the deviation from truth indispensable to his condition is redeemed by the good he does. Another, who fulfills the duties of a spiritual pastor, does not in the depths of his soul believe all he teaches, but permits the deviation from truth in view of the good he does. A third instructs men by means of literature, and notwithstanding the silence he must observe with regard to the whole truth, in order not to stir up the government and society against himself, has no doubt as to the good he does. A fourth struggles resolutely with the existing order as revolutionist or anarchist, and is quite assured that the aims he pursues are so beneficial that the neglect of the truth, or even of the falsehood, by silence, indispensable to the success of his activity, does not destroy the utility of his work. In order that the conditions of a life contrary to the consciousness of humanity should change and be replaced by one which is in accord with it, the outworn public opinion must be superseded by a new and living one. And in order that the old outworn opinion should yield its place to the new living one, all who are conscious of the new requirements of existence should openly express them. And yet all those who are conscious of these new requirements, one in the name of one thing, and one in the name of another, not only pass them over in silence, but both by word and deed attest their exact opposites.
Aims | Change | Consciousness | Desire | Destroy | Deviation | Doubt | Existence | Good | Government | Humanity | Indispensable | Life | Life | Man | Means | Men | Neglect | Opinion | Order | People | Position | Public | Regard | Reputation | Sacred | Service | Silence | Society | Soul | Success | Truth | Society | Government | Old |
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, fully Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just
What produces the general good is always terrible or seems bizarre when begun too soon ... The Revolution must stop when it has perfected public happiness and liberty through the laws.
Good | Liberty | Public | Revolution | Happiness |
Louis Antoine de Saint-Just, fully Louis Antoine Léon de Saint-Just
When a people, having become free, establish wise laws, their revolution is complete.
Revolution | Wise |
The purpose of adolescence is to revise the past, not to obliterate it. . . . Adolescence entails the deployment of family passions to the passions and ideals that bind individuals to new family units, to their communities, to the species, to nature, to the cosmos. Therefore, given half a chance, the revolution at issue in adolescence becomes a revolution of transformation, not of annihilation.
Adolescence | Family | Ideals | Purpose | Purpose | Revolution |
Ludwig von Mises, fully Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises
Economically considered, war and revolution are always bad business.
Revolution | War |
Mao Tse-tung, alternatively Zedong, Ze dong, aka Chairman Mao
The socialist system will eventually replace the capitalist system; this is an objective law independent of man's will. However much the reactionaries try to hold back the wheel of history, eventually revolution will take place and will inevitably triumph.
Law | Revolution | System | Will |
Malcolm X, born Malcolm Little, Muslim name El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz
Revolution is always based on land. Revolution is never based on begging somebody for an integrated cup of coffee.
Mao Tse-tung, alternatively Zedong, Ze dong, aka Chairman Mao
Taken as a whole, the Chinese revolutionary movement led by the Communist Party embraces the two stages, i.e., the democratic and the socialist revolutions, which are two essentially different revolutionary processes, and the second process can be carried through only after the first has been completed. The democratic revolution is the necessary preparation for the socialist revolution, and the socialist revolution is the inevitable sequel to the democratic revolution. The ultimate aim for which all communists strive is to bring about a socialist and communist society.
Inevitable | Revolution |
The greatest revolution in our generation is that of human beings, who by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives
Change | Revolution |
Marguerite Yourcenar, pseudonym for Marguerite Cleenewerck de Crayencour
Our great mistake is to try to exact from each person virtues which he does not possess, and to neglect the cultivation of those which he has.
Cultivation | Mistake | Neglect |
Marshall McLuhan, fully Herbert Marshall McLuhan
Theirs is the customary human reaction when confronted with innovation: to flounder about attempting to adapt old responses to new situations or to simply condemn or ignore the harbingers of change--a practice refined by the Chinese emperors, who used to execute messengers bringing bad news. The new technological environments generate the most pain among those least prepared to alter their old value structures. The literati find the new electronic environment far more threatening than do those less committed to literacy as a way of life. When an individual or social group feels that its whole identity is jeopardized by social or psychic change, its natural reaction is to lash out in defensive fury. But for all their lamentations, the revolution has already taken place.
Individual | Pain | Practice | Revolution | Old | Value |
Maximilien Robespierre, fully Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre
It has been said that terror is the principle of despotic government. Does your government therefore resemble despotism? Yes, as the sword that gleams in the hands of the heroes of liberty resembles that with which the henchmen of tyranny are armed ... The government of the revolution is liberty's despotism against tyranny. Is force made only to protect crime.
Force | Government | Liberty | Revolution | Terror | Tyranny | Government |
Maximilien Robespierre, fully Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre
Our revolution has made me feel the full force of the axiom that history is fiction and I am convinced that chance and intrigue have produced more heroes than genius and virtue.