This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
It is astonishing with how little wisdom mankind can be governed, when that little wisdom is its own.
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
The greatest part of mankind have no other reason for their opinion than that they are in fashion.
Any attempt to replace the personal conscience by a collective conscience does violence to the individual and is the first step toward totalitarianism.
Conscience | Individual |
Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression, and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.
Aggression | Love | Mankind | Method | Need | Oppression | Retaliation | Revenge | Time |
Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
The more law and orders are multiplied, the more theft and violence increase.
Law |
Today the choice is no longer between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence.
Choice |
In the field of modern cosmology, the first principle is called “the Cosmological Principle.” It says that the universe has no center, that it has the same properties throughout. Every place in the universe has, in this sense, equal rights. How can the human race, which has evolved in a universe of such fundamental equality, fail to strive for a society without violence and terror? How can we fail to build a world in which the rights due to every human being from birth are respected?
Birth | Equality | Human race | Race | Rights | Sense | Society | Terror | Universe | World | Society |
The stock of ideas which mankind has to work with is very limited, like the alphabet, can at best have an air of freshness given it by new arrangements and combinations, or by application to new times and circumstances.
Circumstances | Ideas | Mankind | Work |
Ernest Renan, aka Joseph Ernest Renan
The highest goal of mankind is the liberty of the individual.
Individual | Liberty | Mankind |
All mankind is divided into three classes – the immovable, the movable, and those who move.
Mankind |
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
The wars of mankind are like children’s fights - all meaningless, pitiless and contemptible.
The knowledge that mankind needs is not the way or principle which has an absolute existence, but the particular truths for here and now and for particular individuals. Absolute truth is imaginary, abstract, vague, without evidence, and cannot be demonstrated.
Absolute | Abstract | Evidence | Existence | Knowledge | Mankind | Truth | Truths |