This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Throughout human history, progress has come through the men and women who dared to challenge the precepts and dogmas that curtailed freedoms. Freethinking (which includes skepticism, rationalism, unbelief, atheism, agnosticism, humanism and so forth) has made great and lasting contributions to human freedom, human rights, and human equality.
Atheism | Challenge | Equality | Freedom | History | Men | Progress | Rights | Skepticism | Unbelief |
Adrienne Rich, fully Adrienne Cecil Rich
Our history is the history of a majority of the species, yet the struggles of women for a “human” status have been relegated to footnotes to the sidelines. Above all, women’s relationships with women have been denied or neglected as a force in history.
Adrienne Rich, fully Adrienne Cecil Rich
[Responsibility to yourself] means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short, simply to avoid conflict and confrontation. And this, in turn, means resisting the forces in society which say that women should be nice, play safe, have low professional expectations, drown in love and forget about work, live through others, and stay in places assigned to us. It means that we insist on a life of meaningful work, insist that work be as meaningful as love and friendship in our lives. It means, therefore, the courage to be “different”; not to be continuously available to others when we need time for ourselves and our work; to be able to demand of others – parents, friends, roommates, teachers, lovers, husbands, children – that they respect our sense of purpose and our integrity as persons.
Children | Courage | Integrity | Life | Life | Love | Means | Need | Parents | Play | Purpose | Purpose | Respect | Responsibility | Safe | Sense | Society | Time | Work | Friendship | Society | Respect |
We only regard those unions as real examples of love and real marriages in which a fixed and unalterable decision has been taken. If men or women contemplate an escape, they do not collect all their powers for the task. In none of the serious and important tasks of life do we arrange such a "getaway." We cannot love and be limited.
H. Lawrence was the first modern novelist to realize that men and women cannot solve one another's loneliness.
Loneliness | Men |
(D. H. Lawrence) was the first modern novelist to realize that men and women cannot solve one another's loneliness.
Loneliness | Men |
Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr., born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger
Success in administration obviously stands or falls on skill in execution. Execution means, above, all, the right people – it means having men and women capable of providing the information and carrying out the decision.
Administration | Decision | Means | Men | People | Right | Skill | Success |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
From childhood upwards, everything is done to make the minds of men and women conventional and sterile. And if, by misadventure, some spark of imagination remains, its unfortunate possessor is considered unsound and dangerous, worthy only of contempt in time of peace and of prison or a traitor’s death in time of war.
Childhood | Contempt | Death | Imagination | Men | Peace | Prison | Time | Traitor | War |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
Love is something far more than desire for sexual intercourse; it is the principal means of escape from the loneliness which afflicts most men and women throughout the greater part of their lives.
Desire | Loneliness | Love | Means | Men |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
History is invaluable in increasing our knowledge of human nature because it shows how people may be expected to behave in new situations. Many prominent men and women are completely ordinary in character, and only exceptional in their circumstances.
Character | Circumstances | History | Human nature | Knowledge | Men | Nature | People |
Charles A. Beard, fully Charles Austin Beard
I am convinced that the world is not a mere bog in which men and women trample themselves in the mire and die. Something magnificent is taking place here amid the cruelties and tragedies, and the supreme challenge to intelligence is that of making the noblest and best on our curious heritage prevail.
Challenge | Intelligence | Men | World |
Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey
I know men and women can banish worry, fear and various kinds of illnesses, and can transform their lives by changing their thoughts. I know! I know! I know! I have seen such incredible transformations performed hundreds of times. I have seen them so often that I no longer wonder at them.
Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower
Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionaries and rebels – men and women who dared to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion.
What we take for virtues is often nothing but an assemblage of different actions, and of different interests, that fortune or our industry know how to arrange; and it is not always from valor and from chastity that men are valiant, an that women are chaste.
Chastity | Fortune | Industry | Men | Nothing | Valor | Valor |