This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The peril of every fine faculty is the delight of playing with it for pride. Talent is commonly developed at the expense of character, and the greater it grows, the more is the mischief. Talent is mistaken for genius, a dogma or system for truth, ambition for greatest, ingenuity for poetry, sensuality for art.
Ambition | Art | Character | Dogma | Genius | Ingenuity | Peril | Poetry | Pride | Sensuality | System | Truth | Talent | Ambition | Ingenuity |
For the Universe has three children, born at one time, which reappear under different names in every system of thought, whether they are called cause, operation and effect; or more poetically, Jove, Pluto, Neptune; or theologically, the Father, the Spirit and the Son; but we will call the Knower, the Doer and the Sayer. These stand respectively for the love of truth, for the love of good, and the love of beauty. These three are equal. The poets are thus liberating gods. They are free and they make free.
Beauty | Cause | Children | Father | Good | Love | Spirit | System | Thought | Time | Truth | Universe | Will |
Be as beneficent as the sun or the sea, but if your rights as a rational being are trenched on, die on the first inch of your territory.
Rights |
Socialism is that contemplated system of industrial society which proposes the abolition of private property in the great material instruments of production, and the substitution therefore of collective property; and advocates the collective management of production, together with the distribution of social income by society, and private property in the larger proportion of this social income.
Robert Ingersoll, fully Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll
I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot. Men are not superior by reason of the accidents of race or color. They are superior who have the best heart - the best brain. The superior man is the providence of the inferior. He is the eyes for the blind, strength for the weak, and a shield for the defenseless. He stands erect by bending above the fallen. He rises by lifting others.
Heart | Man | Men | Providence | Race | Reason | Rights | Strength |
The seniority system keeps a handful of old men... in control of the Congress. These old men stand inplacably across the paths that could lead us toward a better future. But worse than they, I think, are the majority of members of both Houses who continue to submit to the senility system.
Government exists to protect the rights of minorities. The loved and the rich need no protection - they have many friends and few enemies.
Government | Need | Rights | Friends |
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
Liberty does not consist... in mere declarations of the rights of man. It consists in the translation of those declarations into definite actions.
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
What is at the heart of all our national problems? It is that we have seen the hand of material interest sometimes about to close upon our dearest rights and possessions.
Heart | Possessions | Problems | Rights |
The soul is more interested in particulars than in generalities. That is true of personal identity as well. Identifying with a group or a syndrome or a diagnosis is giving in to an abstraction. Soul provides a strong sense of individuality - personal destiny, special influences and background, and unique stories. In the face of overwhelming need for both emergency and chronic care, the mental health system labels people schizophrenics, alcoholics, and survivors so that it can bring some order to the chaos of life at home and on the street, but each person has a special story to tell, no matter how many common themes it contains.
Care | Destiny | Giving | Health | Individuality | Life | Life | Need | Order | People | Sense | Soul | Story | System | Unique |
From Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit, there came a great unifying life force that flowed in and through all things - the flowers of the plains, blowing winds, rocks, trees, birds, animals - and was the same force that had been breathed into the first man. Thus all things were kindred, and were brought together by the same Great Mystery. Kinship with all creatures of the earth, sky, and water was a real and active principle. In the animal and bird world there existed a brotherly feeling that kept the Lakota safe among them. And so close did some of the Lakotas come to their feathered and furred friends that in true brotherhood they spoke a common tongue. The animals had rights - the right of man’s protection, the right to live, the right to multiply, and the right to freedom, and the right to man’s indebtedness - and in recognition of these rights the Lakota never enslaved an animal, and spared all life that was not needed for food and clothing. This concept of life and its relations was humanizing, and gave to the Lakota an abiding love. It filled his being with the joy and mystery of living; it gave him reverence for all life; it made a place for all things in the scheme of existence with equal importance to all. The Lakota could despise no creature, for all were of one blood, made by the same hand, and filled with the essence of the Great Mystery. In spirit, the Lakota were humble and meek. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” - this was true for the Lakota, and from the earth they inherited secrets long since forgotten. Their religion was sane, natural, and human.
Brotherhood | Despise | Earth | Existence | Force | Freedom | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Man | Mystery | Religion | Reverence | Right | Rights | Safe | Spirit | World | Friends |
An intellectual… [is] a person who has learned to establish relationships between the different elements of his sum of knowledge, one who possesses a coherent system of relationships into which he can fit all such new items of information as he may pick up in the course of his life.