This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Garrison Keillor, fully Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor
The only moral virtue of war is that it compels the capitalist system to look itself in the face and admit it is a fraud. It compels the present society to admit that it has no morals it will not sacrifice for gain.
Character | Fraud | Present | Sacrifice | Society | System | Virtue | Virtue | War | Will | Society |
John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
Today, every inhabitant of this planet must contemplate the day when it may no longer be habitable. Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident, miscalculation or madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.
Accident | Character | Day | Madness | Man | War | Weapons | Woman | Child |
Rufus Jones, fully Rufus Matthew Jones
[Conscience] is the voice of our ideal self, our complete self, our real self, laying its call upon the will.
Character | Conscience | Self | Will |
... an emerging world based on cooperation rather than on competition, on affirmation rather than on competition, on affirmation of the human spirit rather than on self-doubt, and on the certainty that all humanity is connected.
Character | Competition | Cooperation | Doubt | Humanity | Self | Spirit | Wisdom | World |
The measure of a man is not determined by his show of outward strength or the volume of his voice or the thunder of his action. It is to be seen rather in terms of the strength of his inner self in terms of the nature and depth of his commitments the sincerity of his purpose and his willingness to continue "growing up."
Action | Character | Man | Nature | Purpose | Purpose | Self | Sincerity | Strength |
Roy L. Smith, aka Mr. Methodist
As a man grows older, he values the voice of experience more and the voice of prophecy less. He finds more of life's wealth in the common pleasures - home, health, children. He thinks more about worth of men and less about their wealth. He boasts less and boosts more. He hurries less, and usually makes more progress. He esteems the friendship of God a little higher.
Character | Children | Experience | God | Health | Life | Life | Little | Man | Men | Progress | Prophecy | Wealth | Worth | Friendship | God |
Friedrich Schiller, fully Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
What the inner voice says will not disappoint the hoping soul.
Richard Steele, fully Sir Richard Steele
Each successive generation plunges into the abyss of passion, without the slightest regard to the fatal effects which such conduct has produced upon their predecessors; and lament, when too late, the rashness with which they slighted the advice of experience, and stifled the voice of reason.
Advice | Character | Conduct | Experience | Passion | Rashness | Reason | Regard |
Perhaps the most important single factor in the outbreak of war is misperception: a leader's image of himself; [his] view of his adversary's character; his view of his adversary's intentions, and of his adversary's capabilities.
There are those who are fearful to be alone with themselves. They run with the crowd not out of love for others but out of fear to remain alone with themselves, terrified lest they hear the voice of their own spirit, or fearful of remaining alone with their own void.
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
All I have is a voice to undo the folded lie, the romantic lie in the brain of the sensual man-in-the-street and the lie of Authority whose buildings grope the sky: there is no such thing as the State and no one exists alone; hunger allows no choice to the citizen or the police; we must love one another or die.