This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The proletarian state must effect the transition to collective farming with extreme caution and only very gradually, by the force of example, without any coercion of the middle peasant.
Majority | Revolution | Sympathy |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The state is a machine for the oppression layer by other machine intended to be subject to other layers layer adapted other.
Rule |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
We must pursue the removal of church property by any means necessary in order to secure for ourselves a fund of several hundred million gold rubles (do not forget the immense wealth of some monasteries and lauras). Without this fund any government work in general, any economic build-up in particular, and any upholding of soviet principles in Genoa especially is completely unthinkable. In order to get our hands on this fund of several hundred million gold rubles (and perhaps even several hundred billion), we must do whatever is necessary. But to do this successfully is possible only now. All considerations indicate that later on we will fail to do this, for no other time, besides that of desperate famine, will give us such a mood among the general mass of peasants that would ensure us the sympathy of this group, or, at least, would ensure us the neutralization of this group in the sense that victory in the struggle for the removal of church property unquestionably and completely will be on our side. One clever writer on statecraft correctly said that if it is necessary for the realization of a well-known political goal to perform a series of brutal actions then it is necessary to do them in the most energetic manner and in the shortest time, because masses of people will not tolerate the protracted use of brutality. … Now victory over the reactionary clergy is assured us completely. In addition, it will be more difficult for the major part of our foreign adversaries among the Russian emigres abroad, i.e., the Socialist-Revolutionaries and the Milyukovites, to fight against us if we, precisely at this time, precisely in connection with the famine, suppress the reactionary clergy with utmost haste and ruthlessness. Therefore, I come to the indisputable conclusion that we must precisely now smash the Black Hundreds clergy most decisively and ruthlessly and put down all resistance with such brutality that they will not forget it for several decades.… The greater the number of representatives of the reactionary clergy and the reactionary bourgeoisie that we succeed in shooting on this occasion, the better because this "audience" must precisely now be taught a lesson in such a way that they will not dare to think about any resistance whatsoever for several decades.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
When we are victorious on a world scale I think we shall use gold for the purpose of building public lavatories in the streets of some of the largest cities of the world.
Change | Difficulty | Position | Revolution | Time | Old |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
In one half of our lives we sacrifice our lives to make money. In the other half we sacrifice our money to get healthy again.
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
I am a little deaf, a little blind, a little impotent, and on top of this are two or three abominable infirmities, but nothing destroys my hope.
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
I have been a hundred times on the point of killing myself, but still was fond of life. This ridiculous weakness is perhaps one of our worst instincts. What can be more absurd than choosing to carry a burden that one really wants to throw to the ground? To detest, and yet to strive to preserve our existence? To caress the serpent that devours us, and hug him close to our bosoms till he has gnawed into our hearts?
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
I have received your new book against the human race, and thank you for it. Never was such a cleverness used in the design of making us all stupid. One longs, in reading your book, to walk on all fours. But as I have lost that habit for more than sixty years, I feel unhappily the impossibility of resuming it. Nor can I embark in search of the savages of Canada, because the maladies to which I am condemned render a European surgeon necessary to me; because war is going on in those regions; and because the example of our actions has made the savages nearly as bad as ourselves. [in response to Rousseau's The Social Contract]
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
I have only made but one prayer in my life: O Lord, make my enemies ridiculous. And God granted it.
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
My soul is the mirror of the universe, and my body is its frame.
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
All kinds are good except the kind that bores you.
Life | Life | Order | Revolution |
We are related organically, and we have to live that relationship. To be attentive to the dynamics of the inner being is not creating a network of escapes to avoid responsibility. It is not continuing a false superiority that I am sensitive and you are not. It is simply recognizing that our personal relationships and collective relationships are miserable affairs, and that these relationships stimulate fear and anxieties and throw us on the defensive. However much we yearn for peace, emotionally we are not mature enough for peace, and our immaturity affects everything we do, every action we take, even the most worthy of actions.
Body | Emotions | Friend | Motives | Wholeness | Will | World | Intellect |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
The art of medicine consists in amusing the patient while nature cures the disease.
Art | Government | Money | Government | Art |
The observation of the breathing rhythm is suggested as a support to those who cannot arrive at the spontaneous stillness of total mind without some support. But to depend upon the support for a long period is undesirable and unwarranted. One has to discover for oneself whether one is learning self-reliance through the support or not. Simple observation of the breathing rhythm culminates into silence or total awareness within a few weeks. Secondly the hour of silence should enable one to live in awareness throughout the day.
Discovery | Existence | Freedom | Journey | Meaning | Religion | Revolution | Truth | Discovery |
Most of us are not aware of our motivations for living or our priorities for action. We drift with the tides of societal fashions, floating in and out of social concerns at the whim of societal dictates and on the basis of images created by the media or superficial, personal desires to be helpful, useful persons. We are used to living at the surface, afraid of the depths, and therefore our actions and concerns about humanity are shallow, fragile vessels easily damaged. Ultimately most of us are concerned chiefly with our small lives, our collection of sensual pleasures, our personal salvation, and our anxiety about sickness and death, rather than the misery created by collective indifference and callousness.
Perfection | Silence | Understanding | Understand |
The cleverness of the human mind has led us to the complex, horrifying, and all-encompassing crisis that we now face. The familiar solutions, based on a limited view of what a human being is, continue to fail, to be pathetically inadequate. Yet we pour vast resources into these tired solutions and feel that if we achieve a grand enough scale, the old solutions will meet the new challenges. Do we have the courage to see failures as failures and leave them to the past? Do we have the vitality to go beyond narrow, one-sided views of human life and to open ourselves to totality and wholeness? The call of the hour is to move beyond the fragmentary, to awaken to total revolution.
Challenge | Life | Life | Little | Revolution | Safe | Ugly | Wholeness |
The essence of religion is the personal discovery of the meaning of life, the meaning of truth. Religion is related to the unconditional, total freedom that truth confers on us. It is a revolution of the whole way of living. Religion moves us from the superficial layers of existence and encourages us to go deeper to the roots of life. It is an inward journey to the depths of our being.
Anarchy | Behavior | Energy | Justify | Life | Life | Love | Revolution | Society | Truth | Ugly | Society |
The status critique does not actually say luxury is meaningless. To the contrary, the critics' usual argument is that such goods are only about meaning; they are 'objects as rich in meaning as they are low in utility.' The status critique sees only 2 possible sources of value: function and meaning; and it reduces meaning to a single idea: 'I'm better than you.' It denies the existence or importance of aesthetic pleasure and the many meanings and associations that can flow from that pleasure.
Individual | Revolution | Think |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
It was love, she thought, love that never clutch its object; but, like the love which mathematicians bear their symbols, or poets their phrases, was meant to be spread over the world and become part of human gain. The world by all means should have shared it, could Mr. Bankes have said why that woman pleased him so; why the sight of her reading a fairy tale to her boy had upon him precisely the same effect as the solution of a scientific problem.
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
One value of self-observation and self-knowledge is to see who you are “not”.
Freedom |