This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Society never advances. It recedes as fast on one side as it gains on the other. It undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is not amelioration. For every thing that is given something is taken. Society acquires new arts and loses old instincts.
Society undergoes continual changes; it is barbarous, it is civilized, it is Christianized, it is rich, it is scientific; but this change is no amelioration. For everything that is given something is taken. Society acquires new arts, and loses old instincts. The civilized man has built a coach, but has lose the use of his feet; he has a fine Geneva watch, but cannot tell the hour by the sun.
Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr
God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
Change | Courage | Distinguish | God | Grace | Serenity | Wisdom |
Robert Kennedy, fully Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy
Progress is a nice word. But change is its motivator. And change has its enemies.
Richard Shaull, fully Reverend M. Richard Shaull
The use of religion, psychoanalysis, or the mass media, as instruments by which people are helped to adjust to a dehumanizing social order without being challenged to change it, is essentially a betrayal of man.
Betrayal | Change | Man | Order | People | Psychoanalysis | Religion |
Robert Kennedy, fully Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy
Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of the rest or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance... Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change the world that yields most painfully to change.
Battle | Bravery | Censure | Change | Courage | Daring | Energy | Hope | Injustice | Injustice | Intelligence | Man | Oppression | Rest | Society | Time | World |
No change of circumstances can repair a defect of character.
Change | Character | Circumstances |
Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan
We have the means to change the laws we find unjust or onerous. We cannot, as citizens, pick and choose the laws we will or will not obey.
Robert Kennedy, fully Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy
Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is one essential vital quality for those who seek to change a world that yields most painfully to change.
Battle | Bravery | Censure | Change | Courage | Intelligence | Society | World |
Robert Kennedy, fully Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy
Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. n.
Belief | Change | Courage | Daring | Energy | Events | Greatness | History | Man | Oppression | Time | Will | Work |
Robert Kennedy, fully Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy
Great change dominates the world, and unless we move with change we will become its victims.
Arthur Eddington, fully Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington
This astonishing change in outlook has been brought about by assuming that, of all the elements of our total experience, only those elements which acquaint us with the quantitative aspects of material phenomona are concerned with the real world. They alone refer to an objective world. None of the other elements of our experience, our perception of colour, etc., our response to beauty, our sense of mystic communion with God, have objective counterparts. All these things, which are ultimately products of the motions of little particles, are illusory in the sense that they do not acquaint us with the nature of objective reality.
Beauty | Change | Experience | God | Little | Nature | Perception | Reality | Sense | World |
That realization of impermanence is paradoxically the only thing we can hold onto, perhaps our only lasting possession. It is like the sky, or the earth. No matter how much everything around us may change or collapse, they endure.
Theodor Herzl, born Benjamin Ze’ev Herzl
Whoever would change men must change the conditions of their lives.