This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
These people are either too superstitiously religious, or too cowardly for arms; they either cannot or dare not defend ; their property is open to anyone who has the courage to attack them... The supposed quietude of a good man allures the ruffian; while on the other hand, arms, like law, discourage and keep the invader and the plunderer in awe, and preserve order in the world as well as property. The balance of power is the scale of peace. The same balance would be preserved were all the world destitute of arms, for all would be alike; but since some will not, others dare not lay them aside. Horrid mischief would ensue were one-half the world deprived of the use of them; for while avarice and ambition have a place in the heart of man, the weak will become a prey to the strong.
There is a mystery in the countenance of some causes, which we have not always present judgment enough to explain. It is distressing to see an enemy advancing into a country, but it is the only place in which we can beat them, and in which we have always beaten them, whenever they made the attempt. The nearer any disease approaches to a crisis, the nearer it is to a cure. Danger and deliverance make their advances together, and it is only the last push, in which one or the other takes the lead.
The self can become a Buddha, a being of perfect wisdom and compassion; and the environment can become a perfect Buddha-land, wherein no one suffers pointlessly and all are there for the happiness of all.
Body | Cause | Death | Deeds | Evil | Fear | Good | Lord | Lying | Nature | Need | Pain | Reality | Time | Will | Deeds |
We have it in our power to begin the world over again
My eight years in Brooklyn gave me a new vision of America, or rather America gave me a new vision of a part of itself, Brooklyn. They were wonderful years. A community of over three million people, proud, hurt, jealous, seeking geographical, social, emotional status as a city apart and alone and sufficient. One could not live for eight years in Brooklyn and not catch its spirit of devotion to its baseball club, such as no other city in America equaled. Call it loyalty, and so it was. It would be a crime against a community of three million people to move the Dodgers. Not that the move was unlawful, since people have the right to do as they please with their property. But a baseball club in any city in America is a quasi-public institution, and in Brooklyn the Dodgers were public without the quasi.
Chance | Equality | Incredulity | Men | Opportunity | Posterity | Will | Wonder | Think |
Just as life begins at any moment, through an act of realization, so the work. But each beginning, whether of book page, paragraph, sentence or phrase, marks a vital connection, and it is in the vitality, the durability, the timelessness and changelessness of the thoughts and events that I plunge anew each time. Every line and word is vitally connected with my life, my life only, be it in the form of deed, event, fact, thought, emotion, desire, evasion, frustration, dream, revery, vagary, even the unfinished nothings which float listlessly in the brain like the snapped filaments of a spider’s web. There is nothing really vague or tenuous — even the nothingnessses are sharp, tough, definite, durable. Like the spider I return again and again to the task, conscious that the web I am spinning is made of my own substance, that it will never fail me, never run dry.
Disguise | Illusion | Invention | Lying | Order | Truth | World |
Though taste, though genius be to some divine excess, faint's the cold work till thou inspire the whole; what each, what all supply, may court, may charm our eye, thou, only thou, canst raise the meeting soul!
Opportunity | Tradition |
Ask yourself if there is any explanation of the mystery of your own life and death.
Evil | Good | Mercy | Mortal | Opportunity |
America is a nation that conceives many odd inventions for getting somewhere but it can think of nothing to do once it gets there.
Land | Opportunity |
Every man is ignorant - just on different subjects.
Man | Opportunity |
Whenever we take away the liberties of those whom we hate we are opening the way to loss of liberty for those we love.
Freedom | Opportunity | Society | Society |
I've been on so many blind dates I should get a free dog.
The most intellectual of men are moved quite as much by the circumstances which they are used to as by their own will. The active voluntary part of a man is very small, and if it were not economized by a sleepy kind of habit, its results would be null.
Religion, patriotism, race and sex are the favorite red herrings of foul political method – they are the most successful because they explode so easily and flood the mind with those unconscious prejudices which make critical thinking difficult. The final test of a leader is that he leaves behind him in other men the conviction and will to carry on.
I feel sorry for the person who can't get genuinely excited about his work. Not only will he never be satisfied, but he will never achieve anything worthwhile.
Life | Life | Opportunity | People | Reason |
To me every hour of the day and night is an unspeakably perfect miracle.
Life | Life | Opportunity | People | Reason |
Great Groups need to know that the person at the top will fight like a tiger for them.
Change | Life | Life | Meaning | Opportunity | People | Search | Think |