This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
André Gide, fully André Paul Guillaume Gide
He who waits for God fails to understand that he possesses Him. Believe that God and happiness are one, and put all your happiness in the present moment.
God | Present | God | Happiness | Understand |
When occasions present themselves, in which the interests of the people are at variance with their inclinations, it is the duty of the persons whom they have appointed to be the guardians of those interests, to withstand the temporary delusion, in order to give them time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection.
Delusion | Duty | Opportunity | Order | People | Present | Reflection | Time |
Beyond the logic concerned with things, education must provide the possibility of awakening and cultivating moral aesthetic intuitions. It is the neglect of these higher values that has reduced life to a mere struggle for existence and to the detriment of social and human values in economic and political life.
Aesthetic | Awakening | Education | Existence | Life | Life | Logic | Neglect | Struggle |
The desperate rush to raise standards in schools was not initiated by educators or for educational reasons. Rather, it was mandated by politicians and corporate executives for political reasons…. The effect is to squeeze the intellectual life out of classrooms. Also, it has a disproportionately destructive effect on poor and minority kids, and it drives out some of our best teachers. Schools begin to look like test preparation factories.
The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust.
Good | Men | Public | Society | Trust | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom |
The amelioration of the condition of mankind, and the increase of human happiness ought to be the leading objects of every political institution, and the aim of every individual, according to the measure of his power, in the situation he occupies.
Individual | Mankind | Power | Happiness |
Class is an aura of confidence that is being sure without being cocky. Class has nothing to do with money. Class never runs scared. It is self-discipline and self-knowledge. It's the sure footedness that comes with having proved you can meet life.
Confidence | Discipline | Knowledge | Life | Life | Money | Nothing | Self | Self-knowledge |
Actual knowledge is identical with its object: in the individual, potential knowledge is in time prior to actual knowledge, but in the universe as a whole it is not prior even in time. Mind is not at one time knowing and at another not. When mind is set free from its present conditions it appears as just what is and nothing more: this alone is immortal and eternal (we do not, however, remember its former activity because while mind in this sense is impassable, mind as passive is destructible), and without it nothing thinks.
Eternal | Individual | Knowing | Knowledge | Mind | Nothing | Object | Present | Sense | Time | Universe |
Peace is present when man can see the face that is composed of things that have meaning and are in their place. Peace is present when things form part of a whole greater than their sum, as the diverse minerals in the ground collect to become the tree.
Every state is a community of some kind, and every community is established with a view to some good; for mankind always act in order to obtain that which they think good. But, if all communities aim at some good, the state or political community, which is the highest of all, and which embraces all the rest, aims at good in a greater degree than any other, and at the highest good.
Man is a political creature and one whose nature is to live with others.
The soul is present with us as much while we are asleep as while we are awake; and, while waking resembles active observation, sleep resembles the implicit though not exercised possession of knowledge.
Knowledge | Observation | Present | Soul |
Democracies are safer and more permanent than oligarchies, because they have a middle class which is more numerous and has a greater share in the government; for when there is no middle class, and the poor greatly exceed in number, troubles arise, and the state soon comes to an end.
Government | Troubles |