This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers
The pessimist stared at his visitor. He had never talked with the Devil before. But he had read descriptions of him by people who had and who remembered Satan as a goat, a bull, a dog, a cat, a big black man with horns, claws and a tail. The presence beside him looked distinguished, relaxed, urbane. Except for a face too characterful to be contemporary, the Devil might have been a movie magnate, an airline executive, a college president, a great surgeon or a grain speculator. “And yet,” thought the pessimist, “those are certainly not the eyes of a Yale man.”
Change | Politics | Power | Purpose | Purpose | Reform | Revolution |
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
What chemistry! That the winds are really not infectious, that this is no cheat, this transparent green-wash of the sea which is so amorous after me, that it is safe to allow it to lick my naked body all over with its tongues, that it will not endanger me with the fevers that have deposited themselves in it, that all is clean forever and forever,
Walter J. Ong, fully Walter Jackson Ong
Exact observation does not begin with modern science. For ages, it has always been essential for survival among, for example, hunters and craftsmen of many sorts. What is distinctive of modern science is the conjuncture of exact observation and exact verbalization: exactly worded descriptions of carefully observed complex objects and processes. The availability of carefully made, technical prints implemented such exactly worded descriptions.
No, the love which survives the tomb is one of the noblest attributes of the soul. If it has its woes, it has likewise its delights; and when the overwhelming burst of grief is calmed into the gentle tear of recollection, when the sudden anguish and the convulsive agony over the present ruins of all that we most loved are softened away in pensive meditation on all that it was in the days of its loveliness - who would root out such a sorrow from the heart? Though it may sometimes throw a passing cloud over the bright hour of gaiety, or spread a deeper sadness over the hour of gloom, yet who would exchange it even for the song of pleasure, or the burst of revelry?
Reform |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
Every man is a creature of the age in which he lives, and few are able to raise themselves above the ideas of the time.
To rescue from oblivion even a fragment of a language which men have used and which is in danger of being lost --that is to say, one of the elements, whether good or bad, which have shaped and complicated civilization --is to extend the scope of social observation and to serve civilization.
Tom Hayden, fully Thomas Emmet "Tom" Hayden
The peace and justice movement has to expand and not run away from the plight of gang members.
Reform |
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
Up the road, in his shack, the old man was sleeping again. He was still sleeping on his face and the boy was sitting by him watching him. The old man was dreaming about the lions.
Reform |