This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Dennis Genpo Merzel, aka Genpo Merzel Roshi
To begin with, it is just One Mind, all One; then we generate all the boundaries and definitions. As soon as we define ourselves in relation to another we feel more comfortable, because now we know how to be and to act. To go into a situation completely ignorant of our role is very scary. We really have to trust ourselves then. But how can we trust if we do not know who we are? So we fall back on some definition of ourselves and put our trust in that... We lose our identity when we lose our definition. We do not realize it, but that is a wonderful, extraordinary happening, because for a time we are free of our boundaries. For a moment we are nobody, but that is just too frightening. So in order to grab on to some definition, a false sense of security and comfort, what do we do right away? We get into another relationship. At least in relationship, even if it is not working for us, we know who we are.
Comfort | Mind | Order | Relationship | Right | Security | Sense | Time | Trust |
Men are created different; they lose their social freedom and their individual autonomy in seeking to become like each other.
Freedom | Individual | Men |
Man is here to experience the unity of his own consciousness, to rise from suffering to perfection, and in the triumph of enlightenment to reclaim the earth as a heaven designed from him. Beneath the mask of suffering, the meaning of life is limitless freedom and the conquest of death.
Conquest | Consciousness | Death | Earth | Enlightenment | Experience | Freedom | Heaven | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Perfection | Suffering | Unity |
Tacitus, fully Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus NULL
Fear is not in the habit of speaking truth; when perfect sincerity is expected, perfect freedom must be allowed; nor has any one who is apt to be angry when he hears the truth, any cause to wonder that he does not hear it.
Cause | Fear | Freedom | Habit | Sincerity | Truth | Wonder |
David Ben-Gurion, born David Grün
The test of democracy is freedom of criticism.
The idea that men are created free and equal is both true and misleading: men are created different; they lose their social freedom and their individual autonomy in seeking to become like each other.
Freedom | Individual | Men |
In the purer ages of the commonwealth, the use of arms was reserved for those ranks of citizens who had a country to love, a property to defend, and some share in enacting those laws, which it was their interest, as well as duty, to maintain. But in proportion as the public freedom was lost in extent of conquest, war was gradually improved into an art, and degraded into a trade.
Art | Conquest | Duty | Freedom | Love | Property | Public | War |
Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower
The pact of Munich was a more fell blow to humanity than the atom bomb at Hiroshima. Suffocation of human freedom among a once free people, however quietly and peacefully accomplished, is more far-reaching in its implications and its effects on their future than the destruction of their homes, industrial centers and transportation facilities. Out of rubble heaps, willing hands can rebuild a better city; but out of freedom lost can stem only generations of hate and bitter struggle and brutal oppression.
Better | Freedom | Future | Hate | Humanity | Oppression | People | Struggle |
The only security is courage.
The basic test of freedom is perhaps less in what we are free to do than in what we are free not to do.
Freedom |
The preservation of peace and the improvement of the lot of all people require us to have faith in the rationality of humans. If we have this faith and if we pursue understanding, we have not the promise but at least the possibility of success. We should not be misled by promises. Humanity in all its history has repeatedly escaped disaster by a hair’s breadth. Total security has never been available to anyone. To expect it is unrealistic; to imagine that it can exist is to invite disaster.
Faith | History | Humanity | Improvement | Peace | People | Promise | Rationality | Security | Success | Understanding |
To some, freedom means the opportunity to do what they want to do; to most it means not to do what they do not want to do. It is perhaps true that those who can grow will feel free under any condition.
Freedom | Means | Opportunity | Will |
Every tyrant who has lived has believed in freedom - for himself.
Freedom |
Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR
Freedom of conscience, of education, of speech, of assembly are among the very fundamentals of democracy and all of them would be nullified should freedom of the press ever be successfully challenged.
Conscience | Democracy | Education | Freedom of conscience | Freedom | Speech |
Frank Herbert, formally Franklin Patrick Herbert, Jr.
Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. ...The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR
We are a nation of many nationalities, many races, many religions - bound together by a single unity, the unity of freedom and equality. Whoever seeks to set one race against another seeks to enslave all races. Whoever seeks to set one religion against another seeks to destroy all religion.
Frederick Douglass, born Frederick Augustus Washington Bailey
Those who profess to favor freedom and yet depreciate agitation, are people who want crops without ploughing the ground; they want rain without thunder and lightning; they want the ocean without the roar of its many waters. The struggle may be a moral one, or it may be a physical one, or it may be both. But it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand; it never has and it never will.
Agitation | Freedom | Nothing | People | Power | Struggle | Will |