This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The whole world is bound together as never before; the bonds are sometimes those of hatred rather than love, but they are bonds nevertheless. Frowning or hopeful, every man of leadership in any line of thought or effort must now look beyond the limits of his own country… For weal or for woe, the peoples of mankind are knit together far closer than ever before.
Distinction | Good | Government | Life | Life | Man | Men | People | Principles | Public | System | Work | Worth | Government |
What pain and difficulty do men often find in bringing their hearts to pious duties! and what a task is it to the carnal heart to abide at them! It is a pain to it--to leave the world but a little to come before God. It is not easy to borrow time from the many things--to spend it upon the one thing needful. Men often go to God in duties, with their faces towards the world; and when their bodies are on the mount of ordinances, their hearts will be found at the foot of the hill "going after their covetousness.”
We need not a human answer to an earth problem, but an earth answer to an earth problem. The earth will solve its problems, and possibly our own, if we will let the earth function in its own ways. We need only listen to what the earth is telling us.
Evolution | Need | Principles | Understanding | Universe | Understand |
Why any man should take the law of his country rather than his own Inspiration, for the rule of his action.
Force | Meaning | Principles |
If, then, the control of the people over the organs of their government be the measure of its republicanism, and I confess I know no other measure, it must be agreed that our governments have much less of republicanism than ought to have been expected; in other words, that the people have less regular control over their agents, than their rights and their interests require. And this I ascribe, not to any want of republican dispositions in those who formed these constitutions, but to a submission of true principle to European authorities, to speculators on government, whose fears of the people have been inspired by the populace of their own great cities, and were unjustly entertained against the independent, the happy, and therefore orderly citizens of the United States. Much I apprehend that the golden moment is past for reforming these heresies. The functionaries of public power rarely strengthen in their dispositions to abridge it, and an unorganized call for timely amendment is not likely to prevail against an organized opposition to it.
Care | Esteem | Good | Life | Life | Object | Retirement | Will |
I am really mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, a fact like this can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too, as an offence against religion; that a question about the sale of a book can be carried before the civil magistrate. Is this then our freedom of religion? and are we to have a censor whose imprimatur shall say what books may be sold, and what we may buy? And who is thus to dogmatize religious opinions for our citizens? Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? Is a priest to be our inquisitor, or shall a layman, simple as ourselves, set up his reason as the rule for what we are to read, and what we must believe? It is an insult to our citizens to question whether they are rational beings or not, and blasphemy against religion to suppose it cannot stand the test of truth and reason.
Good | Government | Object | Opinion | People | Principles | Public | Sense | Spirit | Will | Government |
Everything predicted by the enemies of banks, in the beginning, is now coming to pass. We are to be ruined now by the deluge of bank paper. It is cruel that such revolutions in private fortunes should be at the mercy of avaricious adventurers, who, instead of employing their capital, if any they have, in manufactures, commerce, and other useful pursuits, make it an instrument to burden all the interchanges of property with their swindling profits, profits which are the price of no useful industry of theirs.
Everyone has a natural right to choose that vocation in life which he thinks most likely gives him comfortable subsistence.
Principles | Right | Society | Society |
I consider... the republican as one more willing to trust the legislature [than the Executive] as a broader representation of the people and a safer deposit of power for many reasons.
Government | Principles | Government | Trial |
I repair, then, fellow-citizens, to the post you have assigned me. With experience enough in subordinate offices to have seen the difficulties of this the greatest of all, I have learnt to expect that it will rarely fall to the lot of imperfect man to retire from this station with the reputation and the favor which bring him into it.
Abstract | Blessings | Consolation | Esteem | Government | Regret | Sacrifice | Suicide | Treason | Will | Government | Happiness |
A judiciary independent of a king or executive alone is a good thing; but independence of the will of the nation is a solecism, at least in a republican government.
Care | Principles | Revolution | Right | Safe |
Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to, convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty.
Absolute | Age | Care | Commerce | Creed | Error | Freedom | Government | Justice | Labor | Peace | People | Principles | Public | Revolution | Right | Sacred | Safe | War | Will | Wisdom | Friendship | Government | Trial | Commerce | Parent | Understand |
A little rebellion now and then is a good thing and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.
Government | Little | Luck | Opportunity | Patience | Principles | Public | Suffering | War | Luck | Government | Winning |
I am for freedom of religion, and against all maneuvers to bring about a legal ascendancy of one sect over another.
Commerce | Little | Principles | War | Commerce |
I own it to be my opinion, that good will arise from the destruction of our credit. I see nothing else which can restrain our disposition to luxury, and to the change of those manners which alone can preserve republican government. As it is impossible to prevent credit, the best way would be to cure its ill effects by giving an instantaneous recovery to the creditor. This would be reducing purchases on credit to purchases for ready money. A man would then see a prison painted on everything he wished, but had not ready money to pay for.
Authority | Confidence | Doubt | Events | Government | Growth | Peace | People | Principles | Public | Safe | Time | Government | Crisis |
It is, therefore, with the sincerest pleasure I have observed on the part of the British government various manifestations of a just and friendly disposition towards us; we wish to cultivate peace and friendship with all nations, believing that course most conducive to the welfare of our own; it is natural that these friendships should bear some proportion to the common interests of the parties.
Little | Principles |
It is to secure our rights that we resort to government at all.
Good | Peace | Principles | Time |
The principles on which we engaged, of which the charter of our independence is the record, were sanctioned by the laws of our being, and we but obeyed them in pursuing undeviatingly the course they called for. It issued finally in that inestimable state of freedom which alone can ensure to man the enjoyment of his equal rights.
Practice | Principles |