This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
In the social production of their existence, human beings necessarily enter into determinate relations, independent of their will, relations of production, corresponding to a given stage of development of their material productive powers. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation on which rises a legal and political superstructure and tow which correspond determinate forms of social consciousness. the mode of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political and spiritual life. It is not the consciousness of human beings which determines their existence, but their social existence determines their consciousness. At a certain stage of development, the material productive powers of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or - this merely expresses the same things in terms of right - with the property relations in the framework of which they have thus far operated. From forms of development of the productive powers these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution. The changes in the economic foundation lead sooner or later to the transformation of the whole immense superstructure.
Consciousness | Era | Existence | Life | Life | Property | Revolution | Right | Society | Will | Society |
By his very success in inventing labor-saving devices, modern man has manufactured an abyss of boredom that only the privileged class in earlier civilizations have ever fathomed.
It would not be going too far to assert that… conflict confronts every woman who ventures upon a career of her own and hwo is… unwilling to pay for her daring with the renunciation of her femininity.
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, born Mahesh Prasad Varma
All occurrences of violence, negativity, conflict crisis, or problems in any society are just the expression of growth of stress in collective consciousness. When the level of stress becomes sufficiently great, it bursts out into large-scale violence, war, and civil uprising necessitating military action.
Action | Consciousness | Growth | Problems | Society | War | Society |
Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL
I will destroy my enemies by converting them to friends.
Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim
God’s never tied man’s salvation to any pattern. Whatever possibilities inhere in any pattern of life inhere in all, because God has given it so and denied it to none. One good way does not conflict with another, for not all people may travel the same road.
Max Lerner, fully Maxwell "Max" Alan Lerner, aka Mikhail Lerner
Do not confuse your vested interests with ethics. Do not identify the enemies of your privilege with enemies of humanity.
Norman Mailer, fully Norman Kingsley Mailer
The working class is loyal to friends, not ideas.
Ideas |
Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I
Knowledge and history are the enemies of religion.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
There are two opposite tendencies in evolution: changes that lead toward harmony (i.e., the ability to obtain energy through cooperation, and through the utilization of unused or wasted energy); and those that lead toward entropy (or ways of obtaining energy for one’s purposes through exploiting other organisms, thereby causing conflict and disorder.)
Ability | Cooperation | Energy | Evolution | Harmony |
No accurate thinker will judge another person by that which the other person’s enemies say about him.
Will |
The philosophic aim of education must be to get one out of his isolated class and into one humanity.
Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
Our worst enemies are those we carry about with us in our own hearts.
Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
We have to depend on our enemies to hear the truth.
Truth |
The studious class are their own victims; they are thin and pale, their feet are cold, their heads are hot, the night is without sleep, the day a fear of interruption - pallor, squalor, hunger, and egotism. If you come near them and see what conceits they entertain - they are abstractionists, and spend their days and nights in dreaming some dream; in expecting the homage of society to some precious scheme built on a truth, but destitute of proportion in its presentment, of justness in its application, and of all energy of will in the schemer to embody and vitalize it.
Day | Energy | Fear | Hunger | Society | Truth | Will | Society |
Every revolution was first a thought in one man's mind; and when the same thought occurs to another man, it is the key to that era.
You must pay for conformity. All goes well as long as you run with conformists. But you, who are honest men in other particulars, know that there is alive somewhere a man whose honesty reaches to this point also, that he shall not kneel to false gods, and, on the day when you meet him, you sink into the class of counterfeits.
Conformity | Day | Honesty | Man | Men |
We have among us a class of mammon worshippers, whose one test of conservatism or radicalism is the attitude one takes with respect to accumulated wealth. Whatever tends to preserve the wealth of the wealthy is called conservatism, and whatever favors anything else, no matter what is called socialism.
Conservatism | Radicalism | Respect | Wealth | Respect |