This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Everything is in our own hands; only through sheer cowardice will it slip through our fingers. " - Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
"So it is the fear, weakness, selfishness, and cowardice of onlookers that permit evil behavior to persist." - Laura Schlesinger, fully Laura Catherine Schlessinger, aka Dr. Laura
"The hereafter is certainly an excellent institution, A welcome asylum for cowardice and spiritual want." - Ludwig Feuerbach, fully Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach
"One of the basic causes for all the trouble in the world today is that people talk too much and think too little. They act too impulsively without thinking. I am not advocating in the slightest that we become mutes with our voices stilled because of fear of criticism of what we might say. That is moral cowardice. And moral cowardice that keeps us from speaking our minds is as dangerous to this country as irresponsible talk. The right way is not always the popular and easy way. Standing for right when it is unpopular is a true test of moral character. The importance of individual thinking to the preservation of our democracy and our freedom cannot be overemphasized. The broader sense of the concept of your role in the defense of democracy is that of the citizen doing his most for the preservation of democracy and peace by independent thinking, making that thinking articulate by translating it into action at the ballot boxes, in the forums, and in everyday life, and being constructive and positive in that thinking and articulation. The most precious thing that democracy gives to us is freedom. You and I cannot escape the fact that the ultimate responsibility for freedom is personal. Our freedoms today are not so much in danger because people are consciously trying to take them away from us as they are in danger because we forget to use them. Freedom unexercised may be freedom forfeited. The preservation of freedom is in the hands of the people themselves — not of the government." - Margaret Chase Smith
"Courage is an inner resolution to go forward despite obstacles; Cowardice is submissive surrender to circumstances. Courage breeds creativity; Cowardice represses fear and is mastered by it. Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency ask the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience ask the question, is it right? And there comes a time when we must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but one must take it because it is right." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
"With how many things are we on the brink of becoming acquainted, if cowardice or carelessness did not restrain our inquiries." - Mary Shelley, née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin
"Things are not bad in themselves, but our cowardice makes them so." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"True valor lies half way between cowardice and rashness." - Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa
"Surely, to a man of spirit, the degradation of cowardice must be immeasurably more grievous than the unfelt death which strikes him in the midst of his strength and patriotism!" - Pericles NULL
"Courage is often lack of insight, whereas cowardice in many cases is based on good information." - Peter Ustinov, fully Sir Peter Alexander Ustinov
"A high heart ought to bear calamities and not flee them, since in bearing them appears the grandeur of the mind and in fleeing them the cowardice of the heart." - Pietro Arentino
"Courage stands halfway between cowardice and rashness, one of which is a lack, the other an excess of courage. " - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
"In our time more than ever before, the chief strength of the wicked, lies in the cowardice and weakness of good men... All the strength of Satan’s reign is due to the easy-going weakness of Catholics. Oh! If I might ask the Divine Redeemer, as the prophet Zachary did in spirit: What are those wounds in the midst of Thy hands? The answer would not be doubtful: With these was I wounded in the house of them that loved Me. I was wounded by My friends, who did nothing to defend Me, and who, on every occasion, made themselves the accomplices of My adversaries. And this reproach can be leveled at the weak and timid Catholics of all countries." - Pope Pius X, aka Saint Pope Pius X and Pope of the Eucharist, born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto NULL
"Rest assured that, when you remain thus in the state in which obedience has placed you, the merit of this same obedience extends over everything you do, giving each action inestimable value, even when things do not turn out as you wish." - Saint Vincent de Paul
"Ease, a neutral state between pain and pleasure ... if it is not rising into pleasure will be falling towards pain." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"Extended empire, like expanded gold exchanges solid strength for feeble splendor." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"Had I learned to fiddle, I should have done nothing else." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"I hate mankind, for I think of myself as one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"We must remember not to judge any public servant by any one act, and especially should we beware of attacking the men who are merely the occasions and not the causes of disaster." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"An orator without judgment is a horse without a bridle" - Theophrastus NULL
"Superstition would seem to be simply cowardice in regard to the supernatural." - Theophrastus NULL
"Never had he felt the joy of the word more sweetly, never had he known so clearly that Eros dwells in language." - Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
"It is from the Bible that man has learned cruelty, rapine and murder; for the belief of a cruel God makes a cruel man." - Thomas Paine
"I would love to see Mr. (Henry) Ford in there, really. I don't know who started the idea that a President must be a Politician instead of a Business man. A Politician can't run any other kind of business. So there is no reason why he can run the U.S. That's the biggest single business in the World." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
"She would do a man’s work when she needed to, but she lived and died without ever putting on a pair of pants. She wore dresses. Being a widow, she wore them black. Being a woman of her time she wore them long. The girls of her day I think must have been like well wrapped gifts to be opened by their husbands on their wedding night, a complete surprise. 'Well! What's this!?" - Wendell Berry
"The law cannot equalize mankind in spite of nature." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
"It is well for the world that in most of us, by the age of thirty, the character has been set like plaster, and will never soften again." - William James
"Zaphod felt he was teetering on the edge of madness and wondered if he shouldn't just jump over and have done with it." - Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
"All good books have one thing in common - they are truer than if they had really happened." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"Switzerland is a small, steep country, much more up and down than sideways, and is all stuck over with large brown hotels built on the cuckoo clock style of architecture." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"I love every bone in their heads." - Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill