This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
W. Somerset Maugham, fully William Somerset Maugham
We are all greater than we know and that wisdom is the means to freedom... Work done with no selfish interest purifies the mind and that duties are opportunites afforded to man to sink his separate self and become one with the universal self.
PAC [Political Action Committee] money is destroying the electoral process. It feeds the growth of special interest groups created solely to channel money into political campaigns. It creates an impression that every candidate is bought and owned by the biggest givers.
Action | Growth | Impression | Money |
C. S. Lewis, fully Clive Staples "C.S." Lewis, called "Jack" by his family
The safest road to Hell is the gradual one - the gentle slope, soft underfoot, without sudden turnings, without milestones, without signposts.
Hell |
Dante, full name Durante degli Alighieri, aka Dante Alighieri NULL
The darkest places in hell are reserved for those who maintain their neutrality in times of moral crisis.
Hell | Neutrality |
Marquis de Sade, born Donatien Alphonse François de Sade
Those laws, being forged for universal application, are in perpetual conflict with personal interest, just as personal interest is always in contradiction with the general interest. Good for society, our laws are very bad for the individuals whereof.
Contradiction | Good | Society |
Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
The principle of self-interest rightly understood produces no great acts of self-sacrificed, but it suggest daily small acts of self-denial. By itself it cannot suffice to make a man virtuous; but it disciplines a number of person sin habits of regularity, temperance, moderation, foresight, self-command; and if it does not lead men straight to virtue by the will, it gradually draws them in that direction by their habits. If the principle of interest rightly understood were to sway the whole moral world, extraordinary virtues would doubtless be more rare; but I think that gross depravity would then also be less common. The principle of interest rightly understood perhaps prevents men from rising far above the level of mankind, but a great number of other men, who were falling far below it, are caught and restrained by it.
Foresight | Man | Mankind | Men | Moderation | Self | Self-denial | Self-interest | Sin | Virtue | Virtue | Will | World | Think |
Americans continue to suffer from a notoriously short attention span. They get mad as hell with reasonable frequency, but quickly return to their families and sitcoms. Meanwhile, the corporate lobbies stay right where they are, outlasting all the populist hysteria.
Elizabeth Grymeston (or Grimston)
A fair woman is a paradise to the eye, a purgatory to the purse, and a hell to the soul.
Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
To hell with the truth! As the history of the world proves, the truth has no bearing on anything. It's irrelevant and immaterial, as the lawyers say. The lie of a pipe dream is what gives life to the whole misbegotten mad lot of us, drunk or sober.
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
By narcissism is meant ceasing to have an authentic interest in the outside world but instead an intense attachment to oneself, to one’s own group, clan, religion, nation, race, etc. — with consequent serious distortions of rational judgment. In general, the need for narcissistic satisfaction derives from the necessity to compensate for material and cultural poverty.
Objects and their functions no longer had any significance. All I perceived was perception itself, the hell of forms and figures devoid of human emotion and detached from the reality of my unreal environment. I was an instrument in a virtual world that constantly renewed its own meaningless image in a living world that was itself perceived outside of nature. And since the appearance of things was no longer definitive but limitless, this paradisiacal awareness freed me from the reality external to myself. The fire and the rose, as it were, became one.
Appearance | Awareness | Hell | Perception | Reality | World | Awareness |
The conception of worth, that each person is an end per se, is not a mere abstraction. Our interest in it is not merely academic. Every outcry against the oppression of some people by other people, or against what is morally hideous is the affirmation of the principle that a human being as such is not to be violated. A human being is not to be handled as a tool but is to be respected and revered.
Oppression | People |
F. H. Bradley, fully Frances Herbert "F.H." Bradley
There are persons who, when they cease to shock us, cease to interest us.
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
Nationalism is our form of incest, is our idolatry, is our insanity. "Patriotism” is its cult. It should hardly be necessary to say, that by "patriotism” I mean that attitude which puts the own nation above humanity, above the principles of truth and justice; not the loving interest in one’s own nation, which is the concern with the nation’s spiritual as much as with its material welfare — never with its power over other nations. Just as love for one individual which excludes the love for others is not love, love for one’s country which is not part of one’s love for humanity is not love, but idolatrous worship.
Humanity | Individual | Love | Power | Principles | Truth |
There are persons who, when they cease to shock us, cease to interest us.
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
He who lives by fighting with an enemy has an interest in preservation of the enemy's life.
George Berkeley, also Bishop Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne
That thing of hell and eternal punishment is the most absurd, as well as the most disagreeable thought that ever entered into the head of mortal man.
These cases . . . teach us the immense importance of Right Knowledge. Love is not enough unless it is complete love; that is, understanding as well as attachment, comprehension as well as compassion, intelligent interest as well as emotive affection. We must grasp what the process is, of which we are the growing edge.
Enough | Love | Right | Teach | Understanding |