This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
In our nation, the people are sovereign, not the government. It is the people, not the media or the financial system or megacorporations or the two political parties, who have the power to create change.
Change | Government | People | Power | System |
Al Gore, Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr.,
What makes the United States special in the history of nations is our commitment to the rule of law and our carefully constructed system of checks and balances. Our national distrust of concentrated power and our devotion to openness and democracy are what have led us as a people to consistently choose good over evil in our collective aspirations.
Commitment | Democracy | Devotion | Distrust | Evil | Good | History | Law | Nations | Openness | People | Power | Rule | System |
This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.
How freely we live life depends both on our political system and on our vigilance in defending its liberties. How long we live depends both on our genes and on the quality of our health care. How well we live ~ that is, how thoughtfully, how nobly, how virtuously, how joyously, how lovingly - depends both on our philosophy and on the way we apply it to all else. The examined life is a better life.
Better | Care | Health | Life | Life | Philosophy | System | Vigilance |
The educational system will always be applied toward serving the role of cultural transmission and preserving the status quo.
Christianity has this peculiar disadvantage, that unlike other religions, it is not a pure system of doctrine: its chief and essential feature is that it is a history, a series of events, a collection of facts, a statement of the actions and sufferings of individuals: it is this history which constitutes dogma, and belief in it is salvation.
Belief | Doctrine | Dogma | Events | History | Salvation | System |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
If an international system could be established which would remove the fear of war, the improvement in everyday mentality of everyday people would be enormous and very rapid. Fear, at present, overshadows the world.
Fear | Improvement | People | Present | System | War | World |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
In the visible world, the Milky Way is a tiny fragment; within this fragment, the solar system is an infinitesimal speck, and of the spec our planet is a microscopic dot. On this dot, tiny lumps of impure carbon and water, of complicated structure, with somewhat unusual physical and chemical qualities, crawl about for a few years, until they are dissolved again into the elements of which they are compounded.
It is certain that the soul is either mortal or immortal. The decision of this question must make a total difference in the principles of morals. Yet philosophers have arranged their moral system entirely independent of this. What an extraordinary blindness!
The most striking defect of our system of government is that it divides political power and thereby conceals political responsibility.
Government | Power | Responsibility | System | Government |
Trust in memory, in expectation, in mutual communication of many minds might have issued in a system like modern psychologism: the view that all we see, say, and think is false, but that the only truth is that we see, say and think it. If nothing be real except experience, nothing can be true except biography.
Expectation | Experience | Memory | Nothing | System | Trust | Truth | Think |
A good educational system should have three purposes: it should provide all who want to learn with access to available resources at anytime in their lives; empower all who want to share what they know to find those who want to learn it from them; and finally, furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to make their challenge known.
Challenge | Good | Opportunity | Present | Public | System | Learn |