This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Nothing the Great Mystery placed in the land of the Indian pleased the white man, and nothing escaped his transforming hand. Wherever forests have not been mowed down, wherever the animal is recessed in their quiet protection, wherever the earth is not bereft of four-footed life - that to him is an “unbroken wilderness.” But, because for the Lakota there was no wilderness, because nature was not dangerous but hospitable, not forbidding but friendly, Lakota philosophy was healthy - free from fear and dogmatism. And here I find the great distinction between the faith of the Indian and the white man. Indian faith sought the harmony of man with his surrounding; the other sought the dominance of surrounding. In sharing, in loving all and everything, one people naturally found a due portion of the thing they sought, while, in fearing, the other found need of conquest. For one man the world was full of beauty; for the other it was a place of sin and ugliness to be endured until he went to another world, there to become a creature of wings, half-man and half-bird. Forever one man directed his Mystery to change the world He had made; forever this man pleaded with Him to chastise the wicked ones; and forever he implored his God to send His light to earth. Small wonder this man could not understand the other. But the old Lakota was wise. He knew that man’s heart, away from nature, become hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans, too. So he kept his children close to nature’s softening influence.
Beauty | Change | Children | Conquest | Distinction | Earth | Faith | Fear | God | Harmony | Heart | Influence | Land | Life | Life | Light | Man | Mystery | Nature | Need | Nothing | People | Philosophy | Quiet | Respect | Sin | Wise | Wonder | World | Respect | God | Old | Understand |
David Eli Lilienthal, "Mr. TVA"
The essential ingredient of democracy is not doctrine but intelligence, not authority but reason, not cynicism but faith in men, faith in God. Our strength lies in the fearless pursuit of truth by the minds of men who are free.
Authority | Cynicism | Democracy | Doctrine | Faith | God | Intelligence | Men | Reason | Strength | Truth |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
While irrational faith is the acceptance of something as true only because an authority or the majority says so, rational faith is rooted in an independent conviction based upon one's own productive observing and thinking in spite of the majority's opinion.
Acceptance | Authority | Faith | Majority | Thinking |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
Authority is not a quality one person "has," in the sense that he has property or physical qualities. Authority refers to an interpersonal relation in which one person looks upon another as somebody superior to him.
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
If human beings are ever to become free and to cease feeding industry by pathological consumption, a radical change in the economic system is necessary: we must put an end to the present situation where a healthy economy is possible only at the price of unhealthy human beings.
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
All naturalism in morality, that is all healthy morality, is dominated by an instinct of life - some commandment of life is fulfilled through a certain canon of ‘shall’ and ‘shall not’, some hindrance and hostile element on life’s road is thereby removed. Anti-natural morality, that is virtually every morality that has hitherto been taught, reverenced and preached, turns on the contrary precisely against the instincts of life - it is a now secret, now loud and impudent condemnation of these instincts. By saying ‘God sees into the heart’ it denies the deepest and the highest desires of life and takes God for the enemy of life.
Fidel Castro, fully Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz
With what moral authority can they speak of human rights — the rulers of a nation in which the millionaire and beggar coexist; the Indian is exterminated; the black man is discriminated against; the woman is prostituted; and the great masses of Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, and Latin Americans are scorned, exploited, and humiliated? How can they do this — the bosses of an empire where the mafia, gambling, and child prostitution are imposed; where the CIA organizes plans of global subversion and espionage, and the Pentagon creates neutron bombs capable of preserving material assets and wiping out human beings; an empire that supports reaction and counter-revolution all over the world; that protects and promotes the exploitation by monopolies of the wealth and the human resources of whole continents, unequal exchange, a protectionist policy, an incredible waste of natural resources, and a system of hunger for the world?
Authority | Global | Hunger | Man | Rights | System | Waste | Wealth | Woman | Child |
The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusions may remain inviolate.
Authority | Distinction | Opinion | Order | Understanding |
Science, history and politics are not suited for discussion except by experts. Others are simply in the position of requiring more information; and, till they have acquired all available information, cannot do anything but accept on authority the opinions of those better qualified.
Authority | Better | Discussion | History | Politics | Position |
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
One must learn to love oneself... with a wholesome and healthy love, so that one can bear to be with oneself and need not roam.
They must find it hard to take Truth for authority who have so long mistaken Authority for Truth.
Competence without authority is just as impotent as authority without competence.
Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
It need not discourage us if we are full of doubts. Healthy questions keep faith dynamic. In fact, unless we start with doubts we cannot have a deep-rooted faith. One who believes lightly and unthinkingly has not much of a belief. He who has a faith which is not to be shaken has won it through blood and tears - has worked his way from doubt to truth as one who reaches a clearing through a thicket of brambles and thorns.
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
The soldier is applauded who refuses to serve in an unjust war by those who do not refuse to sustain the unjust government which makes the war; is applauded by those whose own act and authority he disregards and sets at naught; as if the state were penitent to that degree that it hired one to scourge it while it sinned, but not to that degree that it left off sinning for a moment.
Authority | Government | War | Government |
Vegetarians, dropping meat, tend to fill up with too much starch. This leaves them no more healthy than meat-eaters, with constipation, indigestion, colds, catarrhs, coughs and chest complaints to plague them. Eating sparingly of breads, cakes, crackers, cookies, macaroni, spaghetti, anything largely starch, is a far step on the road to good health.
Good |
Free discussion requires an atmosphere unembarrassed by any suggestion of authority or even respect.
Authority | Discussion |
Ignazio Silone , original name Secondo Transqulli
Liberty is the possibility of doubting, the possibility of making a mistake, the possibility of searching and experimenting, the possibility of saying No to any authority - literary, artistic, philosophic, religious, social and even political.
The moderation and toleration of the priests of any sect are in an inverse ratio to its authority and power.
Authority | Moderation | Toleration | Moderation |
To pursue more than what you need becomes exploitation. You need food, clothes, and shelter, but when they become the means of personal aggrandizement, then exploitation begins. To use another to gain power and position, authority and domination, is exploitation. Exploitation is the problem and not who exploits. The capitalist, the ruler, the zamindar are like you; if you had the chance you would become like them. You would lose your generosity, your love, the moment you climb the ladder of success, of gain.
For the total development of the human being, solitude as a means of cultivating sensitivity becomes a necessity. One has to know what it means to be alone, what it is to meditate, what it is to die; and the implications of solitude, of meditation, of death, can be known only by seeking them out. These implications cannot be taught, they must be learnt. One can indicate, but learning by what is indicated is not the experiencing of solitude or meditation. To experience what is solitude and what is meditation, one must be in in a state of inquiry; only a mind that is in a state of inquiry is capable of learning. But when inquiry is suppressed by previous knowledge, or by the authority and experience of another, then learning becomes mere imitation, and imitation causes a human being to repeat what is learnt without experiencing it.
Authority | Experience | Imitation | Inquiry | Learning | Means | Mind | Solitude |