This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block of stone. In a sense the statue stood there from eternity. But there were a thousand different ones beside it, and the sculptor alone is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest.
So I am against all big organizations as such, national ones first and foremost; against all big successes and big results; and in favor of the eternal forces of truth which always work in the individual and immediately unsuccessful way, under-dogs always, till history comes, after they are long dead, and puts them on top.
Discipline | Force | War |
The war-party is assuredly right in affirming and reaffirming that the martial virtues, although originally gained by the race through war, are absolute and permanent human goods. Patriotic pride and ambition in their military form are, after all, only specifications of a more general competitive passion. They are its first form, but that is no reason for supposing them to be its last form. Men are now proud of belonging to a conquering nation, and without a murmur they lay down their persons and their wealth, if by so doing they may fend off subjection. But who can be sure that other aspects of one's country may not, with time and education and suggestion enough, come to be regarded with similarly effective feelings of pride and shame? Why should men not someday feel that is it worth a blood-tax to belong to a collectivity superior in any respect? Why should they not blush with indignant shame if the community that owns them is vile in any way whatsoever? Individuals, daily more numerous, now feel this civic passion. It is only a question of blowing on the spark until the whole population gets incandescent, and on the ruins of the old morals of military honor, a stable system of morals of civic honor builds itself up. What the whole community comes to believe in grasps the individual as in a vise. The war-function has grasped us so far; but the constructive interests may someday seem no less imperative, and impose on the individual a hardly lighter burden.
Better | Feelings | Glory | Ideals | Nations | Politics | Shame | War | Vicissitudes |
Take the happiest man, the one most envied by the world, and in nine cases out of ten his inmost consciousness is one of failure. Either his ideals in the line of his achievements are pitched far higher than the achievements themselves, or else he has secret ideals of which the world knows nothing, and in regard to which he inwardly knows himself to be found wanting.
Authority | Civilization | Cruelty | Discipline | Doubt | Duty | Force | Little | Manliness | Men | Opinion | Public | Question | War | Work | Cruelty | Afraid |
One was there who left all his friends behind; who going inland ever more and more, and being left quite alone, at last did find a lonely valley sheltered from the wind, wherein, amidst an ancient cypress wood, a long-deserted ruined castle stood.
Attention | Cause | Danger | Earth | Man | Men | Peace | Society | War | Society | Danger |
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
We're not obsessed by anything, you see, insisted Ford...And that's the deciding factor. We can't win against obsession. They care, we don't. They win. I care about lots of things, said Slartibartfast, his voice trembling partly with annoyance, but partly also with uncertainty. Such as? Well, said the old man, life, the Universe. Everything, really. Fjords. Would you die for them? Fjords? blinked Slartibartfast in surprise. No. Well then. Wouldn't see the point, to be honest.
Great men should not have great faults.
Now for the tea of our host Now for the rollicking bun, Now for the muffin and toast, Now for the gay Sally Lunn!
War |
Now it is the time of night That the graves, all gaping wide, Every one lets forth his sprite, In the churchway paths to glide. A Midsummer Night's Dream (Puck at V, i)
Discontent | Fright | Time | War |
Say the most personal thing, say it, nothing else matters, don’t be ashamed, the generalities can be found in the newspaper.
War |
Love of fighting was bred in the blood of the race because those who did not love fighting were not suited to their environment and perished.
War was forced upon mankind in his original civil and social condition.
Bitterness | Suspicion | War | Wrong |
The line of least resistance in the progress of civilization is to make that theoretical postulate real by the continually increasing force of the world's public opinion.
The popular tendency is to listen approvingly to the most extreme statements and claims of politicians and orators who seek popularity by declaring their own country right in everything and other countries wrong in everything.
Human nature | Nature | Peace | War |
The attractive idea that we can now have a parliament of man with authority to control the conduct of nations by legislation or an international police force with power to enforce national conformity to rules of right conduct is a counsel of perfection.