This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
L. G. Elliott, fully Lloyd George Elliott
Act as though everything you do, rightly or wrongly, accurately or carelessly, may tip the scale of the bigger things of tomorrow for all of us, as indeed every act, potentially, can. Remember Enemies try to break through at the weakest point. Don't let it be on your sector
Tomorrow |
L. G. Elliott, fully Lloyd George Elliott
Act as though everything you do, rightly or wrongly, accurately or carelessly, may tip the scale of the bigger things of tomorrow for all of us, as indeed every act, potentially, can. Remember: Enemies try to break through at the weakest point. Don’t let it be on your sector.
Tomorrow |
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
Your enemies can kill you, but only your friends can hurt you.
Max Lerner, fully Maxwell "Max" Alan Lerner, aka Mikhail Lerner
A President is best judged by the enemies he makes when he has really hit his stride.
Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman
The two chief enemies of the free society or free enterprise are intellectuals on the one hand and businessmen on the other, for opposite reasons. Every intellectual believes in freedom for himself, but he’s opposed to freedom for others.…He thinks…there ought to be a central planning board that will establish social priorities.…The businessmen are just the opposite—every businessman is in favor of freedom for everybody else, but when it comes to himself that’s a different question. He’s always the special case. He ought to get special privileges from the government, a tariff, this, that, and the other thing.
Free enterprise | Freedom | Society | Will | Society |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding.
True victory does not come from defeating an enemy, true victory comes from giving love and changing an enemies heart.
Bawa Mahaiyadden, fully Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen
Killing, cutting, slaughtering, destroying, injuring or abusing another's life is not Islam. But to each one of us is enjoined the Qurban, the sacrifice - the sacrifice of our Nafs, our base desires, our animosities, our egoism. Other than Allah and His Truth, every other thing must be the object of our sacrifice. His Word, His Qualities, His Traits, His Actions, His unique Three- thousand Qualities, - other than these, everything else are all enemies unto you and these must be sacrificed. And to wage total war against such enemies unto oneself, is Islam. Anger, hastiness, rage, fury, impatience, feelings of superiority of 'I' and 'you', pride, jealousy, treachery, selfishness, sorcery and black magic, mesmerism trickery, self-praise, conceit, titles, position and status, exclusiveness as between 'you' and 'I', falsehood, envy, - to cut away these base qualities and more, - is Islam. Such then is the formidable war within. This is one's very own battle, one's own sacrifice or Qurban, this is one's own war of purification, one's own purging of all that are enemies unto oneself. It is these which are the wars of Islam. Islam is certainly vehemently not a war which kills man or another human being or which slaughters or divides human kind or causes dissensions in human societies or annihilates humans. This is not Islam... For, Islam by its definition, has no enmity, no differences, no distinctions. To segregate and divide those who themselves divide and cause separation among the children of Adam, - is not Islam.
Cause | Children | Feelings | Life | Life | Man | Object | Position | Qualities | Sacrifice | Superiority | Unique | War |
Nāgārjuna, fully Acharya Nāgārjuna NULL
Whoever benefits his enemy with straightforward intention, that man's enemies will soon fold their hands in devotion.
If you want to humble an empire it makes sense to maim its cathedrals. They are symbols of its faith, and when they crumple and burn, it tells us we are not so powerful and we can't be safe. The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, planted at the base of Manhattan island with the Statue of Liberty as their sentry, and the Pentagon, a squat, concrete fort on the banks of the Potomac, are the sanctuaries of money and power that our enemies may imagine define us. But that assumes our faith rests on what we can buy and build, and that has never been America's true God.
Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new.
Old |
They tell us, sir, that we are weak; unable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance by lying supinely on our backs and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot? Sir, we are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power.
God | Irresolution | Lying | Means | Nature | Strength | Will | God |
Paul Valéry, fully Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry
Books have the same enemies as people: fire, humidity, animals, weather, and their own content.
Don't be like those people who believe in positive thinking and tell themselves that they're loved and strong and capable. You don't need to do that because you know it already. And when you doubt it — which happens, I think, quite often at this stage of evolution — do as I suggested. Instead of trying to prove that you're better than you think, just laugh. Laugh at your worries and insecurities. View your anxieties with humor. It will be difficult at first, but you'll gradually get used to it. Now go back and meet all those people who think you know everything. Convince yourself that they're right, because we all know everything; it's merely a question of believing… Don't explain. Your friends do not need it, and your enemies will not believe you… Don't think about what you'll tell people afterward. The time is here and now. Make the most of it… Don't waste your time with explanations: people only hear what they want to hear.
Better | Doubt | Evolution | Need | People | Question | Thinking | Time | Waste | Will | Friends | Think |
There are three kinds of enemy: the enemy himself, the friends of your enemy, and the enemies of your friends.
Our most imperial and stupendous qualities — those on which the majesty and the power of humanity is erected — are, relatively to the inferior portion of its mechanism, active and imperial; but they are the passive slaves of some higher and more omnipotent Power. This Power is God; and those who have seen God have, in the period of their purer and more perfect nature, been harmonized by their own will to so exquisite consentaneity of power as to give forth divinest melody, when the breath of universal being sweeps over their frame. That those who are pure in heart shall see God, and that virtue is its own reward, may be considered as equivalent assertions. The former of these propositions is a metaphorical repetition of the latter. The advocates of literal interpretation have been the most efficacious enemies of those doctrines whose nature they profess to venerate.
God | Heart | Humanity | Nature | Power | Qualities | Virtue | Virtue | Will | God |
Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin
But the inveterate enemies of thought — the government, the lawgiver, and the priest — soon recover from their defeat. By degrees they gather together their scattered forces, and remodel their faith and their code of laws to adapt them to the new needs.
Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin
Is it possible that you do not know what a hostage really is — a man imprisoned not because of a crime he has committed, but only because it suits his enemies to exert blackmail on his companions? ... If you admit such methods, one can foresee that one day you will use torture, as was done in the Middle Ages.
Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
There is not a more prudent maxim, than to live with one's enemies as if they may one day become one's friends; as it commonly happens, sooner or later, in the vicissitudes of political affairs.
Day | Vicissitudes |