This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We think in America that it is necessary to introduce the people into every department of government as far as they are capable of exercising it; and that this is the only way to ensure a long-continued and honest administration of its powers. 1. They are not qualified to exercise themselves the EXECUTIVE department: but they are qualified to name the person who shall exercise it. With us therefore they chuse this officer every four years. 2. They are not qualified to LEGISLATE. With us therefore they only chuse the legislators. 3. They are not qualified to JUDGE questions of law; but they are very capable of judging questions of fact. In the form of JURIES therefore they determine all matters of fact, leaving to the permanent judges to decide the law resulting from those facts. But we all know that permanent judges acquire an esprit de corps; that, being known, they are liable to be tempted by bribery; that they are misled by favor, by relationship, by a spirit of party, by a devotion to the executive or legislative; that it is better to leave a cause to the decision of cross and pile than to that of a judge biased to one side; and that the opinion of twelve honest jurymen gives still a better hope of right than cross and pile does. It is left therefore, to the juries, if they think the permanent judges are under any bias whatever in any cause, to take on themselves to judge the law as well as the fact. They never exercise this power but when they suspect partiality in the judges; and by the exercise of this power they have been the firmest bulwarks of English liberty.
Only the man who has had to face despair is really convinced that he needs mercy. Those who do not want mercy never seek it. It is better to find God on the threshold of despair than to risk our lives in a complacency that has never felt the need of forgiveness. A life that is without problems may literally be more hopeless than one that always verges on despair.
Ability | Beauty | Beginning | Life | Life | Beauty | Value |
I am concerned… with the “good” people, the right-thinking people, who stick to principle all right except where it conflicts with the chance to make a fast buck. It seems to me that there are very dangerous ambiguities about our democracy in its actual present condition. I wonder to what extent our ideals are now a front for organized selfishness and systematic irresponsibility… Some Americans are not too far from the law of the jungle. If our affluent society ever breaks down, what are we going to have left?
It is both dangerous and easy to hate man as he is because he is not what he ought to be. If we do not first respect what he is we will never suffer him to become what he ought to be: In our impatience we do away with him altogether.
Beginning | Blessedness | Faith | Humility | Life | Life | Perfection | Power | Problems | Selfishness | Soul | Value |
Indeed, the truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering, the more you suffer, because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you, in proportion to your fear of being hurt. The one who does most to avoid suffering is, in the end, the one who suffers the most: and his suffering comes to him from things so little and so trivial that one can say that it is no longer objective at all. It is his own existence, his own being, that is at once the subject and the source of his pain, and his very existence and consciousness is his greatest torture.
One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary right in kings is, that Nature disapproves it; otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule by giving mankind an ass in place of a lion.
Men who are sincere in defending their freedom, will always feel concern at every circumstance which seems to make against them; it is the natural and honest consequence of all affectionate attachments, and the want of it is a vice. But the dejection lasts only for a moment; they soon rise out of it with additional vigor; the glow of hope, courage and fortitude, will, in a little time, supply the place of every inferior passion, and kindle the whole heart into heroism.
Earth | Individual | Land | Value |
Willard Quine, fully Willard Van Orman Quine
I have been accused of denying consciousness but I am not conscious of having done so.
Conformity | Doctrine | Value |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
I should like to say two things, one intellectual and one moral. The intellectual thing I should want to say to them is this: When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only what are the facts and what is the truth that the facts bear out. Never let yourself be diverted either by what you wish to believe, or by what you think would have beneficent social effects if it were believed. But look only, and solely, at what are the facts. That is the intellectual thing that I should wish to say. The moral thing I should wish to say to them is very simple: I should say, love is wise, hatred is foolish. In this world which is getting more and more closely interconnected, we have to learn to tolerate each other, we have to learn to put up with the fact that some people say things that we don’t like. We can only live together in that way — and if we are to live together and not die together, we must learn a kind of charity and a kind of tolerance, which is absolutely vital to the continuation of human life on this planet.
Argument | Authority | Dissent | Evidence | Fear | Husband | Inconvenient | Intelligence | Opinion | Pleasure | Power | Respect | Thinking | Truth | Will | Worth | Respect | Happiness | Old | Think | Value |
Willard Quine, fully Willard Van Orman Quine
To call a posit a posit is not to patronize it. A posit can be unavoidable except at the cost of other no less artificial expedients. Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built.
Value |
The Worship of God - It is easier to forgive an Enemy than to forgive a Friend. The man who permits you to injure him deserves your vengeance; He also will receive it. Go, Spectre! obey my most secret desire, Which thou knowest without my speaking. Go to these Friends of Righteousness, Tell them to obey their Humanities, and not pretend Holiness, When they are murderers. As far as my Hammer and Anvil permit, Go tell them that the Worship of God is honouring His gifts In other men, and loving the greatest men best, each according To his Genius, which is the Holy Ghost in Man: there is no other God than that God who is the intellectual fountain of Humanity. He who envies or calumniates, which is murder and cruelty, Murders the Holy One. Go tell them this, and overthrow their cup, Their bread, their altar-table, their incense, and their oath, Their marriage and their baptism, their burial and consecration. I have tried to make friends by corporeal gifts, but have only Made enemies; I never made friends but by spiritual gifts, By severe contentions of friendship, and the burning fire of thought. He who would see the Divinity must see Him in His Children, One first in friendship and love, then a Divine Family, and in the midst Jesus will appear. So he who wishes to see a Vision, a perfect Whole, Must see it in its Minute Particulars, organized; and not as thou, O Fiend of Righteousness, pretendest! thine is a disorganized And snowy cloud, brooder of tempests and destructive War. You smile with pomp and rigour, you talk of benevolence and virtue; I act with benevolence and virtue, and get murder’d time after time; You accumulate Particulars, and murder by analysing, that you May take the aggregate, and you call the aggregate Moral Law; And you call that swell’d and bloated Form a Minute Particular. But General Forms have their vitality in Particulars; and every Particular is a Man.
Church | Dawn | God | Little | Need | Riches | Wife | Worship | Riches | God | Value |
William Cohen, fully William Sebastian Cohen
The terrorists have to understand they can't force us out of areas of our interests. So we're not going to be driven away by any terrorist group.
Willard Gibbs, fully Josiah Willard Gibbs
I only wish to add that the road taken by Gibbs in his book [Elementary Principles in Statistical Mechanics], which consists in one’s starting directly from the canonical ensemble, is in my opinion preferable to the road I took. Had I been familiar with Gibbs’ book at that time, I would not have published all those papers at all, but would have limited myself to the discussion of just a few points.
A man may not always be what he appears to be, but what he appears to be is always a significant part of what he is.