This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
This institution will be based upon the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it.
Age | Hope | Principles | Will |
Though you cannot see, when you take one step, what will be the next, yet follow truth, justice, and plain dealing, and never fear their leading you out of the labyrinth, in the easiest manner possible. The knot which you thought a Gordian one will untie itself before you.
Passion | People | Principles |
We are firmly convinced, and we act on that conviction, that with nations, as with individuals, our interests soundly calculated, will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties; and history bears witness to the fact, that a just nation is taken on its word, when recourse is had to armaments and wars to bridle others.
Government | Practice | Principles | Government |
We see the wisdom of Solon's remark, that no more good must be attempted than the nation can bear.
Justify | Men | Principles |
Tobacco is a culture productive of infinite wretchedness.
Better | Fear | Looks | Man | Melancholy | Mind | Nothing | Opinion | Principles | Sound | Suppression | Truth | Will | Learn |
To myself, personally, it brings nothing but increasing drudgery and daily loss of friends.
Circumstances | Esteem | Future | Individual | Opinion | Past | Present | Question | Will |
Were I to commence my administration again, the first question I would ask respecting a candidate would be, Does he use ardent spirits?
Argument | Belief | Body | Confidence | Dependence | Evidence | Faith | Fear | God | Hypocrisy | Influence | Lord | Man | Men | Mind | Money | Nothing | Object | Opinion | Plan | Power | Presumption | Principles | Public | Reason | Religion | Rights | Thinking | Trust | Truth | Will | World | God |
Prayer is the movement of trust, of gratitude, of adoration, or of sorrow, that places us before God, seeing both Him and ourselves in the light of His infinite truth, and moves us to ask Him for the mercy, the spiritual strength, the material help, that we all need. The man whose prayer is so pure that he never asks God for anything does not know who God is, and does not know who he is himself: for he does not know his own need of God. All true prayer somehow confesses our absolute dependence on the Lord of life and death. It is, therefore, a deep and vital contact with Him whom we know not only as Lord but as Father. It is when we pray truly that we really are. Our being is brought to a high perfection by this.
Abstract | Enemy | Evil | God | Grace | Justify | Law | Love | Mercy | Nature | Oneness | Principles | Reality | Respect | Right | Rights | Understanding | Respect | God | Intellect |
If there must be trouble, let it be in my day so my child may have peace.
Difficulty | Extravagance | Government | Industry | Nothing | People | Principles | Rights | Society | World | Society | Government |
The stupid texts of the Bible - from which, be the talents of the preacher what they may, only stupid sermons can be preached.
Principles | Science | Study | Theology |
It requires but a very small glance of thought to perceive, that although laws made in one generation often continue in force through succeeding generations, yet that they continue to derive their force from the consent of the living. A law not repealed continues in force, not because it cannot be repealed, but because it is not repealed; and the non-repealing passes for consent.
Absolute | Business | Cause | Character | Children | Conscience | Evil | Heart | Individual | Kill | Life | Life | Little | Love | Man | Pardon | Principles | Rank | Reason | Smile | Soul | Strength | Time | Will | Business | Think |
The declaration which says that God visits the sins of the fathers upon the children is contrary to every principle of moral justice.
Danger | Principles | Success | Danger |
The United States of America will sound as pompously in the world or in history as The Kingdom of Great Britain.
Greatness | Principles |
An avidity to punish is always dangerous to liberty. It leads men to stretch, to misinterpret, and to misapply even the best of laws. He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself.
Principles | Will | World |
It is a general idea, that when taxes are once laid on, they are never taken off.
It is a contradiction in terms and ideas to call anything a revelation that comes to us at second hand, either verbally or in writing. Revelation is necessarily limited to the first communication. After this, it is only an account of something which that person says was a revelation made to him; and though he may find himself obliged to believe it, it cannot be incumbent on me to believe it in the same manner, for it was not a revelation made to me, and I have only his word for it that it was made to him.
Government | Man | Principles | Right | Thought | Time | Government | Govern | Thought |
The seductive appeal of objective reality depends on a mistake. It is not the given. Sometimes ... the truth is not found by traveling as far away from one's personal perspective as possible.
Impulse | Mind | Objectivity | Philosophy | Principles | Question | Reality | Thinking | Understanding | Waste | Weakness | Will | Work | World | Think | Understand |