This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
Laughing at his own son, who got his mother, and by his mother's means his father also, to indulge him, he told him that he had the most power of any one in Greece: "For the Athenians command the rest of Greece, I command the Athenians, your mother commands me, and you command your mother."
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 |
Our flag stands for "liberty and justice for all." Our flag must never be misused or defiled as a bandana for war crimes, as a gag against the people's freedom of speech and conscience or as a fig leaf to hide the shame of charlatans in high public office, who violate our Constitution, our laws and our founding fathers' framework for accountable, responsive government.
Conscience | Freedom of speech | Freedom | Government | Justice | Liberty | Office | People | Public | Shame | Speech | War |
The miracles of genius always rest on profound convictions which refuse to be analyzed.
Convictions | Genius | Miracles | Rest |
Examining attentively that which I was, I saw that I could conceive that I had no body, and that there was no world nor place where I might be; but yet that I could not for all that conceive that I was not. On the contrary, I saw from the very fact that I thought of doubting the truth of other things, it very evidently and certainly followed that I was; on the other hand if I had only ceased from thinking, even if all the rest of what I had ever imagined had really existed, I should have no reason for thinking that I had existed. From that I knew that I was a substance the whole essence or nature of which is to think, and that for its existence there is no need of any place, nor does it depend on any material thing; so that this ‘me,’ that is to say, the soul by which I am what I am, is entirely distinct from body, and is even more easy to know than is the latter; and even if body were not, the soul would not cease to be what it is.
Body | Existence | Nature | Need | Reason | Rest | Soul | Thinking | Thought | Truth | World | Thought |
Robert Kennedy, fully Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy
Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of the rest or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance... Few are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change the world that yields most painfully to change.
Battle | Bravery | Censure | Change | Courage | Daring | Energy | Hope | Injustice | Injustice | Intelligence | Man | Oppression | Rest | Society | Time | World |
Robert Fulghum, fully Robert Lee Fulghum
Doing a straight-forward, clear-cut task that has a beginning and an end balances out the complexity-without-end that often vexes the rest of my life. Sacred simplicity.
Beginning | Death | Dreams | Experience | Grief | History | Hope | Imagination | Knowledge | Laughter | Love | Myth | Rest | Sacred |
Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
It was asked of the sage, In what one virtue are all the rest comprised? Patience, was his answer. And in what single vice are all the others concentrated? Vindictiveness.
William Jones, fully Sir William Jones of Nayland, aka Trinity Jones
Voices of the glorified urge us onward. they who have passed from the semblances of time to the realities of eternity call upon us to advance. The rest that awaits us invites us forward. We do not pine for our rest before God wills it. We long for no inglorious rest. We are thankful rather for the invaluable training of difficulty, the loving discipline of danger and strife. Yet in the midst of it all the prospect of rest invites us heavenward. Through all, and above all, God cries, “Go forward!” “Come up higher.”
Danger | Difficulty | Discipline | Eternity | God | Rest | Time | Training | Wills | Danger | God |
In eating, a third of the stomach should be filled with food, a third with drink, and the rest left empty.
Rest |
Nothing is sweeter than love, nothing stronger or higher or wider, nothing is more pleasant, nothing fuller, and nothing better in heaven or on earth, for love is born of God and cannot rest except in God, Who is created above all things.
Better | Earth | God | Heaven | Love | Nothing | Rest | God |
In a symbol there is concealment and yet revelation: here therefore, by Silence and by Speech acting together, comes a double significance.
Concealment | Revelation | Silence | Speech |
Properly, there is no other knowledge but that which is got by working; the rest is yet all a hypothesis of knowledge; a thing to be argued of in schools; a thing floating in the clouds. endless logic vortices, till we try and fix it.
Hypothesis | Knowledge | Logic | Rest |
Liberty is the only true riches: of all the rest we are at once the masters and the slaves.
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
A man has found himself when he has found his relation to the rest of the universe.