This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
For the vast majority of mankind the most urgent problem is not war, or communism, or the cost of living, or taxation. It is hunger. Over 15,000,00,00 people, something like two-thirds of the world's population, are living in conditions of acute hunger, defined in terms of identifiable nutritional disease. This hunger is at the same time the effect and the cause of the poverty, squalor and misery in which they live.
Livy, formally Titus Livius, aka Titus Livy NULL
The worst kind of shame is being ashamed of frugality or poverty.
One of the misfortunes of our time is that in getting rid of false shame we have killed off so much real shame as well.
Mary Shelley, née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin
What is there so fearful as the expectation of evil tidings delayed? ... Misery is a more welcome visitant when she comes in her darkest guise and wraps us in perpetual black, for then the heart no longer sickens with disappointed hope.
Evil | Expectation | Heart | Expectation |
Max Planck, fully Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck
Religion represents a bond (Bindung) of man to god. It consists in reverent aw of supernatural might (Macht), to which human life is subordinated [?] and which has in its power (Gewalt) our wellfare and misery (Wohl und Wehe). To remain in permanent contact with this might and keep it all the time inclined to oneself, is the unending effort and the highest goal of believing man. Because only [?] in such a way can one feel himself safe before expected and unexpected dangers, which threaten one in his life, and can take part in the highest happiness – inner psychical peace – which can be attained only [?] by means of strong bond to god and unconditional trust to his omnipotence and willingness to help. As far as here the religion originates in the consciousness of individual man.
Consciousness | Effort | God | Individual | Life | Life | Man | Means | Omnipotence | Peace | Power | Religion | Safe | Time | Trust | God | Happiness |
Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani
Trust God completely and He will solve all your difficulties. Faithfully leave everything to Him and He will see to everything. Love God sincerely and He will reveal Himself to you. I am never silent. I speak eternally. The voice that is heard deep within the soul is My voice...the voice of inspiration, of intuition, of guidance. To those who are receptive to this voice, I speak. Everything is Mine except for Myself; Myself is for those who love Me. I am the Ancient One, The Highest of the High. Love Me; Love Me; Love Me; and you will find Me. This is Truth but intellect cannot grasp it, wisdom cannot weigh it, space cannot hold it, time cannot check it, angels cannot fathom it, but human beings can realize it through love, the Divine Love, the Love for the Almighty, except whom, nothing is. If you have rock-like faith in God and flame-like love for Him, nothing in this world will affect you. Misery will not trouble you, flattery will not touch you, happiness will not humour you. Such faith and love will cause you to rise above the imaginary phenomenon and make you understand that God alone is real. Trust God completely and He will solve all your difficulties. Faithfully leave everything to Him and He will see to everything. Love God sincerely and He will reveal Himself to you. This love needs no ceremonies and show. Your heart must love so that even your mind is not aware of it. Let nothing shake your faith in Me, and all your bindings will be shaken off. Once you open your wings to fly, you must fly straight like the swan. Do not flit from tree to tree like the sparrow, or many things will distract you.
Cause | Faith | Flattery | God | Heart | Love | Mind | Nothing | Soul | Space | Time | Truth | Will | Trouble | God | Happiness | Intellect | Understand |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
Let us not be ashamed to speak what we shame not to think.
Shame |
Miguel de Unamuno, fully Miguel de Unamuno y Jogo
It is only in solitude, when it has broken the thick crust of shame that separates us from one another and separates us all from God, that we have no secrets from God; only in solitude do we raise our hearts to the Heart of the Universe; only in solitude does the redeeming hymn of supreme confession issue from our soul.
Mitch Albom, fully Mitchell David "Mitch" Albom
It’s such a shame to waste time. We always think we have so much of it.
Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
What all other men are is of the greatest importance to me. However independent I may imagine myself to be, however far removed I may appear from mundane considerations by my social status, I am enslaved to the misery of the meanest member of society. The outcast is my daily menace. Whether I am Pope, Czar, Emperor, or even Prime Minister, I am always the creature of their circumstance, the conscious product of their ignorance, want and clamoring. They are in slavery, and I, the superior one, am enslaved in consequence.
Men |
Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman
The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government. Columbus did not set out to seek a new route to China in response to a majority directive of a parliament, though he was partly financed by an absolute monarch. Newton and Liebnitz; Einstein and Bohr; Shakespeare, Milton, and Pasternak; Whitney, McCormick, Edison, and Ford; Jane Addams, Florence Nightingale, and Albert Scweitzer; no one of these opened new frontiers in human knowledge and understanding, in literature, in technical possibilities, or in the relief of human misery in response to governmental directives. Their achievements were the product of individual genius, of strongly held minority views, of a social climate permitting variety and diversity.
Absolute | Individual | Industry | Knowledge | Majority | Science |
What is man? A creature of dust; a thing of transience whose days fly by faster than a weaver's shuttle; a fragile being crushed sooner than a moth; a body, sustaining and reproducing itself after the fashion of the beast; a vessel filled with shame and confusion, impelled by pride and self-love, driven by passions.
Pride | Shame | Transience |
The basis of shame is not some personal mistake of ours, but the ignominy, the humiliation we feel that we must be what we are without any choice in the matter, and that this humiliation is seen by everyone.
Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
A person is strong only when he stands upon his own truth, when he speaks and acts from his deepest convictions. Then, whatever the situation he may be in, he always knows what he must say and do. He may fall, but he cannot bring shame upon himself or his causes.
Shame |
Acquire knowledge. It enableth its posessor to distinguish right from wrong it lighteth the way to Heave it is our friend in the desert, our society in solitude, our companion when friendless it guideth us to happiness it sustaineth us in misery it is an ornament among friends, and an armour against enemies.
Distinguish | Friend | Right | Society | Wrong | Society | Happiness |
Morrie Schwartz, fully Morris "Morrie" S. Schwartz
All this emphasis on youth - I don’t buy it. Listen, I know what a misery being young can be, so don’t tell me it’s so great. All these kids who came to me with their struggles, their strife, their feelings of inadequacy, their sense that life was miserable, so bad they wanted to kill themselves... and in addition to all the miseries, the young are not wise. They have very little understanding about life. Who wants to live everyday when you don’t know what’s going on? When people are manipulating you, telling you to buy this perfume and you’ll be beautiful, or this pair of jeans and you’ll be sexy - and you believe them! It’s such nonsense.
Feelings | Kill | Life | Life | Little | People | Sense | Understanding | Wants | Youth | Youth |