This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
In the wildest anarchy of man’s insurgent appetites and sins there is still a reclaiming voice, a voice which, even when in practice disregarded, it is impossible not to own; and to which, at the very moment that we refuse our obedience, we find that we cannot refuse the homage of what ourselves do feel and acknowledge to be the best, the highest principles of our nature.
Anarchy | Character | Man | Nature | Obedience | Practice | Principles |
Saint Augustine, aka Augustine of Hippo, St. Austin, Bishop of Hippo NULL
Every disorder of the soul is its own punishment.
Punishment | Soul | Wisdom |
Cyril Connolly, fully Cyril Vernon Connolly
Our memories are card indexes consulted, and then put back in disorder by authorities whom we do not control.
With the seizing of the means of production by society, production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by plan-conforming, conscious organization. The struggle for individual existence disappears... Only from that time will man himself, with full consciousness, make his own history - only from that time will the social causes set in movement by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It is the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.
Anarchy | Consciousness | Existence | Freedom | History | Individual | Man | Means | Necessity | Organization | Plan | Society | Struggle | Time | Will | Wisdom |
That is not faith, to see God only in what is strange and rare; but this is faith, to see God in what is most common and simple, to know God's greatness not so much from disorder as from order, not so much from those strange sights in which God seems (but only seems) to break His laws, as from those common ones in which He fulfills His laws.
Plainly, the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. A majority, held in restraint by constitutional checks, and imitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does, of necessity, fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible; the rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy, or despotism in some form, is all that is left.
Anarchy | Majority | Necessity | People | Restraint | Rule | Wisdom |
Japanese poetry has as its subject the human heart. It may seem to be of no practical use and just as well left uncomposed, but when one knows poetry well, one understands also without explanation the reasons governing order and disorder in the world.
We spend a good part of our time establishing personal boundaries, creating individuality by drawing lines that define the limits of the self. But it becomes increasingly clear that these limits are artificial. We are part of the fabric and cannot avoid being so. Mere anarchy is seldom loosed upon the real world.
Anarchy | Good | Individuality | Self | Time | Wisdom | World |
Joseph de Maistre, fully Joseph-Marie, comte de Maistre
If each man relies on his individual reason for his religious beliefs, the result will be anarchy of belief or the annihilation of religious sovereignty.
Ta hseuh “Great Learning” NULL
From the Son of Heaven down to the common people, all must regard cultivation of the personal life as the root or foundation. There is never a case in which the root is in disorder and yet the branches are in order.
Cultivation | Heaven | Life | Life | Order | People | Regard |
Man is at bottom a wild and terrible animal. We know him only as what we call civilization has tamed and trained him; hence we are alarmed by the occasional breaking out of his true nature. But whenever the locks and chains of law and order are cast off, and anarchy comes in, he shows himself for what he really is.
Acute illnesses are, with a few exceptions, nothing other than curative processes instituted by nature itself to remedy some disorder in the organism.
If the will, which is the law of our nature, were withdrawn from our memory, fancy, understanding, and reason, no other hell could equal, for a spiritual being, what we should then feel from the anarchy of our powers. It would be conscious madness, a horrid thought!
Anarchy | Hell | Law | Madness | Memory | Nature | Reason | Thought | Understanding | Will |
Marquis de Sade, born Donatien Alphonse François de Sade
Are not laws dangerous which inhibit the passions? Compare the centuries of anarchy with those of the strongest legalism in any country you like and you will see that it is only when the laws are silent that the greatest actions appear.
The total disorder in the universe, as measured by the quantity that physicists call entropy, increases steadily over time. Also, the total order in the universe, as measured by the complexity and permanence of organized structures, also increases steadily over time.
Order |
For avoiding the extremes of despotism or anarchy ... the only ground of hope must be on the morals of the people. I believe that religion is the only solid base of morals and that morals are the only possible support of free governments.