This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Being morally good, for the majority of Americans, means following the norms and values of their society or culture - whether this be their peer culture, their church, their country, or a combination of these. The theory that morality is relative to societal norms is known in moral philosophy as cultural relativism. Many others claim that morality is relative to the individual and is different for every person depending on what they feel. This theory is known in philosophy as ethical subjectivism.
Church | Culture | Good | Individual | Majority | Means | Morality | Philosophy | Society | Society | Following |
Compassion leaves an indelible blueprint of the recognition that life so sorely needs between one individual and another; one nation and another; one culture and another. It is also valid for the road which our spirit should be building now for crossing the historical abyss that still separates us from a truly contemporary vision of life, and the increase of life and meaning that awaits us in the future.
Compassion | Culture | Future | Individual | Life | Life | Meaning | Spirit | Vision |
Anti-Semitism in any form is a barbaric insult to our culture and our civilization, which have been moulded by Christianity, and as a breakdown of Christian values, which have become confused and lacking in humanity.
Anti-semitism | Civilization | Culture | Humanity | Insult | Insult |
Joseph Chilton Pearce, aka Joe
Our children’s growth: joyful learning or cultural conditioning? A child’s socialization, which can be characterized as learning in its most complete form, encouraging reflective thought, is instinctual and arises spontaneously on its own. Culture is something quite the opposite: an intellectual, arbitrary conditioning and enhancement of automatic reflexes that must be both induced and enforced.
The capacity for friendship usually goes with highly developed civilizations. The ability to cultivate people differs by culture and class; but on the whole, educated people have more ways to make friends.
Ability | Capacity | Culture | People | Friendship |
We do not make use of our freedom. We have given away the fundamental freedom to visualize and shape our world. We allow actors, advertisers and politicians to dream for us. And a culture that does not dream is not free.
Max Lerner, fully Maxwell "Max" Alan Lerner, aka Mikhail Lerner
In our culture we make heroes of the men who sit on top of a heap of money, and we pay attention not only to what they say in their field of competence, but to their wisdom on every other question in the world.
Attention | Competence | Culture | Men | Money | Question | Wisdom | World |
Max Lerner, fully Maxwell "Max" Alan Lerner, aka Mikhail Lerner
We cannot live by power, and a culture that seeks to live by it becomes brutal and sterile. But we can die without it.
Michael Harrington, fully Edward Michael "Mike" Harrington
There are tens of millions of Americans who are beyond the welfare state. Taken as a whole there is a culture of poverty... bad health, poor housing, low levels of aspiration and high levels of mental distress. Twenty per cent of a nation, some 32,000,000.
Aspiration | Culture | Distress | Health | Poverty | Aspiration |
Noam Chomsky, fully Avram Noam Chomsky
Government secrecy is not for security reasons, overwhelmingly it's just to prevent the population from knowing what's going on. I mean, a lot of secret internal documents get declassified after thirty years or so, and if you look over the entire long record of them, there's virtually nothing in there that ever had any security-related concern.
Government | Knowing | Nothing | Secrecy | Security |
Noam Chomsky, fully Avram Noam Chomsky
Every aspect of the culture implicitly involves an expression of what a "proper" life and a "proper" set of values are, and that's all indoctrination.
Paul Tillich, fully Paul Johannes Tillich
Religion is the substance of culture, and culture the form of religion.
By the time you rise through the ranks, the culture of homogenization has bred the spirit and imagination out of you.
Culture | Imagination | Spirit | Time |
It is the property of the religious spirit to be the most refining of all influences. No external advantages, no culture of the tastes, no habit of command, no association with the elegant, or even depth of affection, can bestow that delicacy and that grandeur of bearing which belong only to the mind accustomed to celestial conversation, all else is but gilt and cosmetics, beside this, as expressed in every look and gesture.
Association | Conversation | Culture | Habit | Mind | Property | Spirit | Association |
Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
Better | Conformity | Conspiracy | Culture | Liberty | Self | Self-reliance | Society | Surrender | Virtue | Virtue | Society |
Ruth Benedict, born Ruth Fulton
There has never been a time when civilization stood more in need of individuals who are genuinely culture conscious, who can see objectively the social behaviors of other peoples without fear and recrimination.
Civilization | Culture | Fear | Need | Time |