This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Yes, we have in this country, dominated by corporate wealth and military power and two antiquated political parties, what a fearful conservative characterized as “a permanent adversarial culture” challenging the present, demanding a new future. It is a race in which we can all choose to participate, or to just watch. But we should know that our choice will help determine the outcome.
Choice | Culture | Future | Power | Present | Race | Wealth | Will |
Should we welcome the huge growth of the military budget at the expense of health, education, the needs of children, one fifth of whom grow up in poverty? I suggest that a patriotic American who cares for his or her country might act on behalf of a different vision. Instead of being feared for our military prowess, we should want to be respected for our dedication to human rights.
Children | Dedication | Education | Growth | Health | Poverty | Prowess | Rights | Vision |
Instead of sending troops and planes and aircraft carriers, we could send food and medicine. That's what I mean by our becoming a humanitarian superpower instead of a military superpower.
Often in history we see that religion, which was meant to raise us and make us better and nobler, has made people behave like beasts. Instead of bringing enlightenment of them, it has often tried to keep them in the dark; instead of broadening their minds, it has frequently made the narrow-minded and intolerant of others.
Better | Enlightenment | History | People | Religion |
Few learn much from history who do not bring much with them to its study.
We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.
One age cannot be completely understood if all the others are not understood. The song of history can only be sung as a whole.
The progressive principle is antagonistic to the sway of custom. The contest between these two principles, custom and progress, constitutes the chief interest of the history of mankind.
Custom | History | Mankind | Principles | Progress |
The state of the whole universe at any instant we believe to be the consequence of its state at the previous instant; insomuch that one who knew all the agents which exist at the present moment, their collocation in space, and all their properties, in other words, the laws of their agency, could predict the whole subsequent history of the universe, at least unless some new volition of a power capable of controlling the universe should supervene. And if any particular state of the entire universe could ever recur a second time, all subsequent states would return too, and history would, like a circulating decimal of many figures, periodically repeat itself.
History | Power | Present | Space | Time | Universe | Words |
The elementary idea, likewise, of the Promised Land cannot originally have referred to a part of this earth to be conquered by military right, but to a place of spiritual peace in the heart, to be discovered through contemplation.
Never in the history of the world have so many people been so rich; never in the history of the world have so many of those same people felt themselves so poor.
Karl Popper, fully Sir Karl Raimund Popper
The history of science, like the history of all human ideas, is a history of irresponsible dreams, of obstinacy, and of error. But science is one of the very few human activities - perhaps the only one - in which errors are systematically criticized and fairly often, in time, corrected. This is why we can say that, in science, we often learn from our mistakes, and why we can speak clearly and sensibly about making progress there.
Dreams | Error | History | Ideas | Progress | Science | Time | Learn |
Joseph Stalin, fully Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, born Loseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili
It is not heroes that make history, but history that makes heroes.
History |
The foundation of every division of labor that is well developed and brought about by the exchange of commodities is the separation between town and country. It may be said, that the whole economical history of society is summed up in the movement of this antithesis.
Antithesis | History | Labor | Society | Society |
The sound of the drum drives out thought; for that very reason it is the most military of instruments.
Henri Poincaré, fully Jules Henri Poincaré
And yet - strange contradictions for those who believe in time - geologic history shows us that life is only a short episode between two eternities of death, and that, even in this episode, conscious thought has lasted and will last only a moment. Thought is only a gleam in the midst of a long night. But it is this gleam which is everything.
Death | History | Life | Life | Thought | Time | Will | Thought |