This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Getting alone with others is the essence of getting ahead, success being linked with cooperation." - William Feather
"... an emerging world based on cooperation rather than on competition, on affirmation rather than on competition, on affirmation of the human spirit rather than on self-doubt, and on the certainty that all humanity is connected." - Hal and Linda Kramer
"Let this be anchored in our minds: Peace is never long preserved by weight of metal or by an armament race. Peace can be made tranquil and secure only by understanding and agreement fortified by sanctions. We must embrace international cooperation or international disintegration." - Bernard Baruch, fully Bernard Mannes Baruch
"American society is characterized by spontaneous, voluntary, non-governmental cooperation of citizens in their local communities. It is brotherhood in actin." - Erwin Dain Canham
"It is through cooperation, rather than conflict, that you greatest successes will be derived." - Ralph Charell
"Every kind of peaceful cooperation among men is primarily based on mutual trust and only secondarily on institutions such as courts of justice and police." - Albert Einstein
"Man is going to evolve. It is our destiny. As in any evolution, parts of us will die in order for other parts to be born. Choosing at each moment the feelings, attitudes and values - acceptance, cooperation, caring, loving, forgiving - that will be the building blocks of the emerging reality is what it means to choose to evolve. At each moment we can choose to behave as natives of this new reality and co-creators in our evolution." - Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos
"If we care about the land, it will be necessary to redefine whole economies, not just the farm economy. A complex, solid economy could certainly grow around a policy of cooperation with natural environments. Why haven’t we proposed such policies - on a grand a scale as national defense - when our own species is at stake?" - Janet Kauffman
"Just as education without humanity is the most dangerous thing in the world, so education in love, human understanding and cooperation is the greatest hope of the world." - Joy Elmer Morgan
"Business is founded on vision and confidence; success on industry and cooperation." - John Henry Patterson
"In my humble opinion, non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
"Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
"The test of friendship is assistance in adversity – and that, too, unconditional assistance. Cooperation which needs consideration is a commercial contract, and not friendship. Conditional cooperation is like adulterated cement which does not bind." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
"Tolerance… is the lowest form of human cooperation. It is the drab, uncomfortable, halfway house between hate and charity." - Robert I. Gannon, fully Robert Ignatius Gannon
"Anarchism is [not] synonymous with chaos. Translated from the Greek, anarchism means the absence of rulers, or orders – not of rules or order. Order emanates naturally from the free cooperation of persons in a community." - Michael Kane
"To accept passively an unjust system is to cooperate with that system; thereby the oppressed become as evil as the oppressor. Non-cooperation with evil is as much a moral obligation as is cooperation with good." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
"What the schools can teach is what we value as a community… love, empathy, caring, cooperation, commitment to others, spiritual and ethical sensitivity, respect for difference, self-discipline, tolerance and honesty." - Michael Lerner
"The oppressor must have the cooperation of the oppressed, of those he must feel better than. The oppressed and the damned are placed in an inferior position by force of arms, physical strength, and later, by threats of such force. But the long-time maintenance of power over others is secured by psychological manipulation and seduction." - Patricia Rawlins Robinson
"Evolution progresses toward greater cooperation by discovering ways to build cooperative organization out of components that are self-interested… Evolution’s ultimate goal is an intelligence-filled, life-filled, cooperative universe." - John Stewart
"Humanity is in a precarious balance between the forces of violence and the forces of peace. It is by no means clear at this time which of these forces will prevail. We do not ask, however, whether religion will not become an aid to the forces of peace or cooperation." - Obert C. Tanner, fully Obert Clark Tanner
"This sharpening of skills is the real value of competition. Many have lost sight of the purpose of healthy competition, which helps us to draw forth inner strength and encourages us to transcend our ideas of personal limitation. The real competition, however, is within the person, and not between people... In essence, competition is cooperation." - Alan Cohen
"This sharpening of skills is the real value of competition. Many have lost sight of the purpose of healthy competition, which helps us to draw forth inner strength and encourages us to transcend our ideas of personal limitation. The real competition, however, is within the person, and not between people... In essence, competition is cooperation." -
"This sharpening of skills is the real value of competition. Many have lost sight of the purpose of healthy competition, which helps us to draw forth inner strength and encourages us to transcend our ideas of personal limitation. The real competition, however, is within the person, and not between people... In essence, competition is cooperation." -
"The value of philosophy is to be sought largely in its very uncertainty. He who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the cooperation or consent of his deliberate reason. As soon as we begin to philosophize, on the contrary, we find that even the most everyday things lead to problems to which only very incomplete answers can be given. Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thought and free them from the tyranny of custom." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"Ethics is in origin the art of recommending to others the sacrifices required for cooperation with oneself." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"I can foresee a day when education will routinely include inculcating essential human competencies such as self-awareness, self-control, and empathy, and the arts of listening, resolving conflicts, and cooperation." - Daniel Goleman
"Decency - generosity - cooperation - assistance in trouble - devotion to duty; these are the things that are of greater value than surface appearances and custom." - Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower
"All larger organisms, including ourselves, are living testimonies to the fact that destructive practices do not work in the long run. In the end, the aggressors always destroy themselves, making way for others who know how to cooperate and get along. Life is much less a competitive struggle for survival than a triumph of cooperation and creativity." - Fritjof Capra
"The stronger one’s real position, the less one needs to rub in the other side’s discomfiture. It is rarely wise to inflame a setback with an insult. An important aspect of the art of diplomacy consists of doing what is necessary without producing extraneous motives for retaliation, leaving open the option of later cooperation on other issues." - Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger
"Nonviolence does not mean acceptance, but resistance - not waiting, but acting. It is not at all passive. It involves strikes, boycotts, non-cooperation, mass demonstrations, and sabotage, as well as appeals to the conscience of the world, even to individuals in the oppressing group who might break away from their past." - Howard Zinn
"The most generous dreams of the past have not become immediate practical necessities: a word-wide cooperation of people, a more just distribution of al the goods of life; the use of knowledge and energy or the service of life, and the use of life itself for the extension of the human spirit to provinces where human values and purposes could not heretofore penetrate. If we awaken in time to overcome the automatisms and irrational compulsions that are now pushing nations toward destruction, we shall create a universal community." - Lewis Mumford
"There are two opposite tendencies in evolution: changes that lead toward harmony (i.e., the ability to obtain energy through cooperation, and through the utilization of unused or wasted energy); and those that lead toward entropy (or ways of obtaining energy for one’s purposes through exploiting other organisms, thereby causing conflict and disorder.)" - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
"Fundamentally, there are only two ways of coordinating the economic activities of millions. One is central direction involving the use of coercion – the technique of the army and of the modern totalitarian state. The other is voluntary cooperation of individuals – the technique of the market place." -
"The world basically and fundamentally is constituted on the basis of harmony. Everything works in cooperation with something else." - Preston Bradley
"If we see the universe as not simply a bunch of dead matter and empty space but actually a living system, then our story may well be one of learning how to live together in a living universe. If we don't have a story to guide us into the future, we're going to pull back into our smaller life stories of the past--stories of nationalism, of ethnic groups, of tribal groups, of geographic groups--and instead of pulling together in cooperation we're going to pull apart in conflict. What I am suggesting is to step back and see the universe as our original, larger home. If we are going to pull together as a human family for a promising future, this is an inclusive project; no one is left out." - Duane Elgin
"One social structure will be conducive to cooperation and solidarity another social structure to competition, suspiciousness, avarice; another to child-like receptiveness, another to destructive aggressiveness. All empirical forms or human needs and drives have to be understood as results of the social practice (in the last analysis based on the productive forces, class structure, etc., etc.) but they all have to fulfill the functions which are inherent in man’s nature in general, and that is to permit him to relate himself to others and share a common frame of reference, etc. The existential contradiction within man (to which I would now add also the contradiction between limitations which reality imposes on his life, and the virtually limitless imagination which his brain permits him to follow) is what I believe to be one of the motives of psychological and social dynamics. Man can never stand still. He must find solutions to this contradiction, and ever better solutions to the extent to which reality enables him. The question then arises whether there is an optimal solution which can be inferred from man’s nature, and which constitutes a potential tendency in man. I believe that such optimal solutions can be inferred from the nature of man, and I have recently found it quite useful to think in terms of what in sociology and economy is now often called »system analysis«. One might start with the idea, in the first place, that human personality — just like society — is a system, that is to say, that each part depends on every other, and no part can be changed unless all or most other parts are also changed. A system is better than chaos. If a society system disintegrates or is destroyed by blows from the outside the society ends in chaos, and a completely new society is built upon its ruins, often using the elements of the destroyed system to build the new. That has happened many times in history. But, what also happens is that the society is not simply destroyed but that the system is changed, and a new system emerges which can be considered to be a transformation of the old one." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"It will appear evident upon attentive consideration that equality of intellectual and physical advantages is the only sure foundation of liberty, and that such equality may best, and perhaps only, be obtained by a union of interests and cooperation in labor. " - Frances Wright, known as Fanny Wright
"It is easier to gain cooperation by changing moods than by changing minds. " - Haim Ginott, fully Haim G. Ginott, orignially Ginzburg
"The right kind of education is concerned with individual freedom, which alone can bring true cooperation with the whole, with the many; but this freedom is not achieved through the pursuit of one's own aggrandizement and success. Freedom comes with self-knowledge, when the mind goes above and beyond the hindrances it has created for itself through craving its own security." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
"It would be especially tragic if the people who most cherish ideals of peace, who are most anxious for political cooperation on a wider than national scale, made the mistake of underestimating the pace of economic change in our modern world." - Lester Pearson, fully Lester Bowles "Mike" Pearson