This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Louis D. Brandeis, fully Louis Dembitz Brandeis
The margin between that which men naturally do, and that which they can do, is so great that a system which urges men on to action and develops individual enterprise and initiative is preferable, in spite of the wastes that necessarily attend their process.
Action | Individual | Initiative | Men | System |
Joseph Chilton Pearce, aka Joe
All hormonal function, including that of the immune system and even allergic responses, occur as a sophisticated memory system handled primarily by our emotional brain. Because learning and memory are emotional-cognitive functions, the neural pattern, imprint, or “structure of knowledge” (to use Piaget’s term) of specific learning events includes in its content the memory patterns of those emotional hormones prominent in the body at the time of that learning.
Body | Events | Knowledge | Learning | Memory | System | Time |
Just because a child’s parents are poor or uneducated is no reason to deprive the child of basic human rights to health care, education, proper nutrition. Clearly we ignore the needs of black children, poor children, and handicapped children in the country.
Care | Children | Education | Health | Parents | Reason | Rights | Child |
Those of us who shout the loudest about Americanism in making character assassinations are all too frequently those who, by our own words and acts, ignore some of the basic principles of Americanism - The right to criticize. The right to hold unpopular beliefs. The right to protest. The right of independent thought. The exercise of these rights should not cost one single American citizen his reputation or his right to a livelihood nor should he be in danger of losing his reputation or livelihood merely because he happens to know someone who holds unpopular beliefs. Who of us does not? Otherwise none of us could call our souls our own. Otherwise thought control would have set in. The American people are sick and tired of being afraid to speak their minds lest they be politically smeared as Communists or Fascists by their opponents. Freedom of speech is not what is used to be in America. It has been so abused by some that it is not exercised by others. The American people are sick and tired of seeing innocent people smeared and guilty people whitewashed.
Character | Control | Cost | Danger | Freedom of speech | Freedom | People | Principles | Protest | Reputation | Right | Rights | Speech | Thought | Words | Danger | Afraid | Guilty | Thought |
Marcel Proust, fully Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust
We feel in one world, we think and name in another. Between the two we can set up a system of references, but we cannot fill the gap.
A kind of mysterious instinct is supposed to reside in the soul, that instantaneously discerns truth, without the tedious labour of ratiocination. This instinct, for I know not what other name to give it, has been termed common sense, and more frequently, sensibility; and, by a kind of indefeasible right, it has been supposed, for rights of this kind are not easily proved, to reign paramount over the other faculties of the mind, and to be an authority from which there is no appeal.
Authority | Common Sense | Instinct | Mind | Right | Rights | Sense | Sensibility | Soul | Truth |
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
Harmony is usually achieved by evolutionary changes involving an increase in an organism’s complexity, that is, an increase in both differentiation and integration. (Differentiation refers to the degree to which a system (i.e., an organ such as the brain, or an individual, a family, a corporation, a culture, or humanity as a whole) is composed of parts that differ in structure or function from one another. Integration refers to the extent to which the parts communicate and enhance one another’s goals. A system that is more differentiated and integrated than another is said to be more complex.)
Culture | Family | Goals | Harmony | Humanity | Individual | Integration | System |
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
Just as we have learned to separate ourselves from each other and from the environment, we now need to learn how to reunite ourselves with other entities around us without losing our hard-won individuality. The most promising faith for the future might be based on the realization that the entire universe is a system related by common laws and that it makes no sense to impose our dreams and desires on nature without taking them into account. Recognizing the limitations of human will, accepting a cooperative rather than a ruling role in the universe, we should feel the relief of the exile who is finally returning home. The problem of meaning will then be resolved as the individual's purpose merges with the universal flow.
Dreams | Faith | Future | Individual | Individuality | Meaning | Nature | Need | Purpose | Purpose | Sense | System | Universe | Will | Learn |
Noam Chomsky, fully Avram Noam Chomsky
The [United States] educational system is geared toward obedience.
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
Truth is no theory, no speculative system of philosophy. Truth is exact correspondence with Reality. For man, truth is unshakable knowledge of his real nature, his Self as soul.
Knowledge | Man | Nature | Philosophy | Reality | Self | Soul | System | Truth |
Our system of morality is a body of imperfect social generalizations expressed in terms of emotion.
Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
A mere law to give all men equal rights is but useless, if the poor man must sacrifice those rights to their debts, and, in the very seats and sanctuaries of equality, the courts of justice, the offices of state, and the public discussions, be more than anywhere at the beck and bidding of the rich.
Equality | Justice | Law | Man | Men | Public | Rights | Sacrifice |
The system of equality...must result from, rather than precede, the moral improvement of humankind.
Equality | Improvement | System |
A function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it indices a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with things as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it presses for understanding.
Confidence | Free speech | Government | People | Purpose | Purpose | Society | Speech | System | Government |