This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Even granting the author [Rutherford]... his main principle, ‘That every man’s own happiness is the ultimate end, which nature and reason teach him to pursue’, why may not nature and reason teach him, too, to have some desire to see others happy as well as himself, or give him some delight in doing what seems fit and right, if these things do not interfere with his own happiness?... Why may he not, with the pursuit of that end, join some other pursuits not inconsistent with it, instead of transforming every benevolent affection, every moral view, into self-interest? This surely neither does honour to religion, nor justice to human nature.
Character | Desire | Happy | Human nature | Justice | Man | Nature | Reason | Religion | Right | Self | Self-interest | Teach | Happiness |
There is no man in any rank who is always at liberty to act as he would incline. In some quarter or other he is limited by circumstances.
Circumstances | Liberty | Man | Rank | Wisdom |
The tree of liberty grows only when watered by the blood of tyrants.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
A reform is a correction of abuses; a revolution is a transfer of power.
Power | Reform | Revolution | Wisdom |
There is no sense of weariness like that which closes a day of eager and unintermitted pursuit of pleasure. The apple is eaten and the core sticks in the throat. Expectation has given way to ennui, and appetite to satiety.
Appetite | Day | Ennui | Expectation | Pleasure | Satiety | Sense | Wisdom | Expectation |
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
Personal liberty is the paramount essential to human dignity and human happiness.
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
Political freedom is, or ought to be, the best guaranty for the safety and continuance of spiritual, mental, and civil freedom. It is the combination of numbers to secure the liberty to each one.
What is Zen in the art of helping? It is easier to say what it is not than more positively to describe the essence. It is to avoid the boosting of the ego through ‘good works’. It is to aid oneself and others in the pursuit of the good life; to discover and uncover new vigour and freshness in the art of living; to uncover the primal ability of love. Living in the here and now is a major ingredient.
Ability | Aid | Art | Ego | Good | Life | Life | Love | Wisdom | Zen | Art |
Edmond Cahn, fully Edmond Nathaniel Cahn
Freedom is not free. Shaping and preserving society necessarily involves personal commitment, costly risk and constant effort; the cultivation of civil liberty can be no more passive than the cultivation of a farm. A man can inherit the land on which he lives, he can even inherit the first crop of produce after he takes over from those who came before him. But then if he stops, everything stops, and begins to crumble. Nothing grows, nothing ripe and rewarding comes to him, unless he plows, plants and tends the soil and unless he keeps it fertile year after year with the chemistry of effort and forethought.
Commitment | Cultivation | Effort | Forethought | Freedom | Land | Liberty | Man | Nothing | Risk | Society | Wisdom | Society |
Clarence Darrow, fully Clarence Seward Darrow
The pursuit of truth shall set you free - even if you never catch up with it.
Religion, in its purity, is not so much a pursuit as a temper; or rather it is a temper, leading to the pursuit of all that is high and holy. Its foundation is faith; its action, works; its tempter, holiness; its aim, obedience to God in improvement of self and benevolence to men.
Action | Benevolence | Faith | God | Improvement | Men | Obedience | Purity | Religion | Self | Temper | Wisdom | God |
E. M. Forster, fully Edward Morgan Forster
The hungry and the homeless don't care about liberty any more than they care about cultural heritage. To pretend that they do care is cant.
François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
Beware of fatiguing them by ill-judged exactness. If virtue offers itself to the child under a melancholy and constrained aspect, while liberty and license present themselves under an agreeable form, all is lost, and your labor is in vain.
Labor | Liberty | Melancholy | Present | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | Child |