This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Politics is a pendulum whose swings between anarchy and tyranny are fueled by perpetually rejuvenated illusions.
The Iliad is the private lives of people thrown into disorder by history.
People |
Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon
If, when the chips are down, the world's most powerful nation, the United States of America, acts like a pitiful, helpless giant, the forces of totalitarianism and anarchy will threaten free nations and free institutions throughout the world.
To seek for utopia is to end in disaster, the conservative says: we are not made for perfect things.
Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton, fully Elizabeth Ann Bayley Seton
Every truth we see is one to give to the world, not to keep to ourselves alone
Faith has to do with things that are not seen and hope with things that are not at hand.
Good | Harm | Man | Order | Perfection | Punishment | Reason | Soul | Will |
Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir
It is for man to establish the reign of liberty in the midst of the world of the given. To gain the supreme victory, it is necessary, for one thing, that by and through their natural differentiation men and women unequivocally affirm their brotherhood.
Absolute | Anarchy | Ethics | Existence | Freedom | Heart | Individual | Law | Man | Means | Merit | Oppression | Power | Relationship | Sense | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | World | Value |
Gregory Nazianzen, aka Saint Gregory of Nazianzus or Gregory the Theologian
To say the truth, I go so far as to praise and congratulate them. Yea! would that I were one of those who contend and incur hatred for the truth’s sake: or rather, I can boast of being one of them. For better is a laudable war than a peace which severs a man from God: and therefore it is that the Spirit arms the gentle warrior, as one who is able to wage war in a good cause.
Let me describe briefly how a black hole might be created. Imagine a star with a mass 10 times that of the sun. During most of its lifetime of about a billion years the star will generate heat at its center by converting hydrogen into helium. The energy released will create sufficient pressure to support the star against its own gravity, giving rise to an object with a radius about five times the radius of the sun. The escape velocity from the surface of such a star would be about 1,000 kilometers per second. That is to say, an object fired vertically upward from the surface of the star with a velocity of less than 1,000 kilometers per second would be dragged back by the gravitational field of the star and would return to the surface, whereas an object with a velocity greater than that would escape to infinity.
Each exists for but a short time, and in that time explore but a small part of the whole universe.
Time |
The first requisite of a good citizen in this Republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his weight; that he shall not be a mere passenger, but shall do his share in the work that each generation of us finds ready to hand; and, furthermore, that in doing his work he shall show, not only the capacity for sturdy self-help, but also self-respecting regard for the rights of others.
Anarchy | Civilization | Habit | Justice | Law | Little | Means | Nothing | Obedience | Order | Rule | Spirit | Strength | Tyranny | Weakness |
Our fellow-citizens think they have a right to full information, in a case of such great concernment to them. It is their sweat which is to earn all the expenses of the war, and their blood which is to flow in expiation of the causes of it.
You and I have formerly seen warm debates and high political passions. But gentlemen of different politics would then speak to each other and separate the business of the Senate from that of society. It is not so now. Men who have been intimate all their lives, cross the streets to avoid meeting, and turn their heads another way, lest they should be obliged to touch their hats. This may do for young men with whom passion is enjoyment. But it is afflicting to peaceable minds. Tranquility is the old man's milk.
Anarchy | Death | God | History | People | Public | Quiet | Rebellion | Will | Wrong | God |
Say what you will, 'tis better to be left than never to have been loved.
Nothing |
Wilkie Collins, fully William Wilkie Collins
I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of work of fiction should be to tell a story.
There is a growing belief that Johnson's American is no longer the historic America, that it is a bastard empire which relies on superior force to achieve its purposes, and is no longer providing an example of the wisdom and humanity of a free society.
In general, I weathered even the worst sermons pretty well. They had the great virtue of causing my mind to wander. Some of the best things I have ever thought of I have thought of during bad sermons. Or I would look out the windows. In winter, when the windows were closed, the church seemed to admit the light strictly on its own terms, as if uneasy about the frank sunshine of this benighted world. In summer, when the sashes were raised, I watched with a great, eager pleasure the town and the fields beyond, the clouds, the trees, the movements of the air—but then the sermons would seem more improbable. I have always loved a window, especially an open one.