This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Fear is the anticipation of evil or pain, as contrasted with hope which is the anticipation of good. Awe, on the other hand, is the sense of wonder and humility inspired by the sublime or felt in the presence of mystery. Fear is “a surrender of the succors which reason offers”; awe is the acquisition of insights which the world holds in store for us. Awe, unlike fear, does not make us shrink from the awe-inspiring object, but, on the contrary, draws us near to it. This is why awe is compatible with both love and joy.
Anticipation | Awe | Evil | Fear | Hope | Humility | Love | Reason | Sense | Surrender | Wonder | World |
John Fowles, fully John Robert Fowles
It's despair at the lack of feeling, of love, of reason in the world. It's despair that anyone can even contemplate the idea of dropping a bomb or ordering that it should be dropped. It's despair that so few of us care. It's despair that there's so much brutality and callousness in the world. It's despair that perfectly normal young men can be made vicious and evil because they've won a lot of money.
Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman
The ICC [Interstate Commerce Commission] illustrates what might be called the natural history of government intervention. A real or fancied evil leads to demands to do something about it. A political coalition forms consisting of sincere, high-minded reformers and equally sincere interested parties. The incompatible objectives of the members of the coalition (e.g., low prices to consumers and high prices to producers) are glossed over by fine rhetoric about “the public interest,” “fair competition,” and the like. The coalition succeeds in getting Congress (or a state legislature) to pass a law. The preamble to the law pays lip service to the rhetoric and the body of the law grants power to government officials to “do something.” The high-minded reformers experience a glow of triumph and turn their attention to new causes. The interested parties go to work to make sure that the power is used for their benefit. They generally succeed. Success breeds its problems, which are met by broadening the scope of intervention. Bureaucracy takes its toll so that even the initial special interests no longer benefit. In the end the effects are precisely the opposite of the objectives of the reformers and generally do not even achieve the objectives of the special interests. Yet the activity is so firmly established and so many vested interests are connected with it that repeal of the initial legislation is nearly inconceivable. Instead, new government legislation is called for to cope with the problems produced by the earlier legislation and a new cycle begins.
Attention | Body | Commerce | Evil | Experience | Government | History | Law | Objectives | Power | Problems | Public | Rhetoric | Service | Success | Work | Government | Commerce |
There is not any present moment that is unconnected with some future one. The life of every man is a continued chain of incidents, each link of which hangs upon the former. The transition from cause to effect, from event to event, is often carried on by secret steps, which our foresight cannot divine, and our sagacity is unable to trace. Evil may at some future period bring forth good; and good may bring forth evil, both equally unexpected.
Cause | Evil | Foresight | Future | Good | Life | Life | Man | Present | Sagacity |
A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.
It is not those innocent of evil who are fullest of the life of God, but those who in their own case have experienced the triumph over evil.
Joseph de Maistre, fully Joseph-Marie, comte de Maistre
We are tainted by modern philosophy which has taught us that all is good, whereas evil has polluted everything and in a very real sense all is evil, since nothing is in its proper place.
Evil | Nothing | Philosophy | Sense |
Joseph de Maistre, fully Joseph-Marie, comte de Maistre
If there was no moral evil upon earth, there would be no physical evil.
Evil |
Joseph de Maistre, fully Joseph-Marie, comte de Maistre
In the whole vast dome of living nature there reigns an open violence. A kind of prescriptive fury which arms all the creatures to their common doom: as soon as you leave the inanimate kingdom you find the decree of violent death inscribed on the very frontiers of life. You feel it already in the vegetable kingdom: from the great catalpa to the humblest herb, how many plants die and how many are killed; but, from the moment you enter the animal kingdom, this law is suddenly in the most dreadful evidence. A Power, a violence, at once hidden and palpable. . . has in each species appointed a certain number of animals to devour the others. . . And who [in this general carnage] exterminates him who will exterminate all others? Himself. It is man who is charged with the slaughter of man. . . The whole earth, perpetually steeped in blood, is nothing but a vast altar upon which all that is living must be sacrificed without end, without measure, without pause, until the consummation of things, until evil is extinct, until the death of death.
Death | Evil | Exterminate | Fury | Law | Man | Nature | Nothing | Will |
No one is moral among the god-controlled puppets of the Iliad. Good and evil do not exist.
Brooks Atkinson, fully Justin Brooks Atkinson
We cheerfully assume that in some mystic way love conquers all, that good outweighs evil in the just balances of the universe and at the 11th hour something gloriously triumphant will prevent the worst before it happens.
Karl Menninger, fully Karl Augustus Menninger
Before we can diminish our sufferings from the ill-controlled aggressive assaults of fellow citizens, we must renounce the philosophy of punishment, the obsolete, vengeful penal attitude. In its place we would seek a comprehensive, constructive social attitude - therapeutic in some instances, restraining in some instances, but preventive in its total social impact. In the last analysis this becomes a question of personal morals and values. No matter how glorified or how piously disguised, vengeance as a human motive must be personally repudiated by each and every one of us. This is the message of old religions and new psychiatries. Unless this message is heard, unless we ... can give up our delicious satisfactions in opportunities for vengeful retaliation on scapegoats, we cannot expect to preserve our peace, our public safety, or our mental health... the punitive attitude persists. And just so long as the spirit of vengeance has the slightest vestige of respectability, so long as it pervades the public mind and infuses its evil upon the statute books of the law, we will make no headway toward the control of crime. We cannot assess the most appropriate and effective penalties so long as we seek to inflict retaliatory pain.
Books | Control | Evil | Mind | Philosophy | Public | Question | Retaliation | Spirit | Vengeance | Will | Old |
The greater evil who is in- when both in wayward paths are straying? The poor sinner for the pain or he who pays for the sin?
Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
Principles can always be used toward evil ends, so maybe if these principles never existed, the bad person wouldn't be able to do so much harm.
Evil | Principles |
Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
There is no greater evil than making light of the enemy... There is nothing so unfortunate as entering lightly into battle, for by so doing we are in danger of losing that which is most precious.
Laura Schlesinger, fully Laura Catherine Schlessinger, aka Dr. Laura
So it is the fear, weakness, selfishness, and cowardice of onlookers that permit evil behavior to persist.
Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
Having then for the first time clearly understood that before every man, and before himself, there lay only suffering, death, and eternal oblivion, he had concluded that to live under such conditions was impossible; that one must either explain life to oneself so that it does not seem to be an evil mockery by some sort of devil, or one must shoot oneself. But he had done neither the one nor the other, yet he continued to live, think, and feel, had even at that very time got married, experienced many joys, and been happy whenever he was not thinking of the meaning of his life. What did that show? It showed that he had lived well, but thought badly.
Eternal | Evil | Happy | Life | Life | Meaning | Mockery | Thinking | Thought | Time | Thought |
Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
Whereas at present, every man, even, if free, asks himself, " What can I do alone against all this ocean of evil and deceit which overwhelms us? Why should I express my opinion? Why indeed possess one? It is better not to reflect on these misty and involved questions. Perhaps these contradictions are an inevitable condition of our existence. And why should I struggle alone with all the evil in the world ? Is it not better to go with the stream which carries me along ? If anything can be done, it must be done not alone but in company with others."