This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him: a vapour, a drop of water is enough to kill him But even if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than his slayer, because he knows that he is dying and the advantage the universe has over him. the universe knows none of this. Thus all our dignity consists in thought. It is on thought that we must depend for our recovery, not on space and time, which we could never fill. Let us then strive to think well; that is the basic principle of morality." - Blaise Pascal
"No race can prosper till it learns there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem." - Booker T. Washington, fully Booker Taliaferro Washington
"In pulpit eloquence, the grand difficulty lies here; to give the subject all the dignity it so fully deserves, without attaching any importance to ourselves." - Charles Caleb Colton
"“True men”… are strong willed, have dignity in their demeanor, serenity in their expression. They are cool like autumn, warm like spring. Their passions arise like the four seasons, in harmony with the ten thousand creatures, and no one knows their limits." - Chuang Tzu, also spelled Chuang-tsze, Chuang Chou, Zhuangzi, Zhuang Tze, Zhuang Zhou, Chuang Tsu, Chouang-Dsi, Chuang Tse, or Chuangtze
"The only kind of dignity which is genuine is that which is not diminished by the indifference of others." - Dag Hammarskjöld
"The final test of science is not whether it adds to our comfort, knowledge and power, but whether it adds to our dignity as men, our sense of truth." - David Sarnoff
"Human dignity, economic freedom, individual responsibility, these are the characteristics that distinguish democracy from all other forms devised by man." - Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower
"The new religion will teach the dignity of human nature and its infinite possibilities for development. It will teach the solidarity of the race and that all must rise and fall as one. Its creed will be justice, liberty, equality for all the children of earth." - Elizabeth Cady Stanton
"The ultimate end of all revolutionary social change is to establish the sanctity of human life, the dignity of man, the right of every human being to liberty and well-being." - Emma Goldman
"Men possessing minds which are morose, solemn, and inflexible enjoy generally a greater share of dignity than of happiness." - Francis Bacon
"If perfection is, as it should be, the ultimate justification of being, we may understand the ground of the moral dignity of beauty." - George Santayana
"Our dignity is not in what we do, but what we understand." - George Santayana
"Perhaps the only true dignity of man is his capacity to despise himself." - George Santayana
"Religion in its humility restores man to his only dignity, the courage to live by grace." - George Santayana
"In the Kingdom of God there are no claims, but only love, which, as something which cannot be coordinated into a given structure, knows no calculations. All claimfulness is overcome because it is realized that complete dependence and freedom, human dignity and divine grace, are not opposites as the autonomous self-centered man supposes." - Emil Brunner, fully Heinrich Emil Brunner
"The truth [is] that there is only one terminal dignity - love. And the story of a love is not important - what is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps the only glimpse we are permitted in eternity." - Helen Hayes
"A lie is the abandonment and, as it were, the annihilation of the dignity of man." - Immanuel Kant
"Every man is to be respected as an absolute end in himself: and it is a crime against the dignity that belongs to him as a human being, to use him as a mere means for some external purpose." - Immanuel Kant
"There is only one thing that remains to us, that cannot be taken away: to act with courage and dignity and to stick to the ideals that have given meaning to life." - Jawaharlal Nehru
"The word “independence” is united to the accessory ideas of dignity and virtue. The word “dependence” is united to the ideas of inferiority and corruption." - Jeremy Bentham
"All sober inquirers after truth, ancient and modern, pagan and Christian, have declared that the happiness of man, as well as his dignity, consists in virtue." - John Adams
"A man is known to his dog by the smell, to his tailor by the coat, to his friend by the smile; each of these know him, but how little or how much depends on the dignity of the intelligence. That which is truly and indeed characteristic of the man is known only to God." - John Ruskin
"The highest thoughts are those which are least dependent on language, and the dignity of any composition and praise to which it is entitled are in exact proportion to is dependency of language and expression." - John Ruskin
"From the moment an offending scholar receives his punishment, he is your brother. And it is proper the punishment be administered privately, not to diminish his dignity." - Maimonides, given name Moses ben Maimon or Moshe ben Maimon, known as "Rambam" NULL
"We ought to regard amiability as the quality of woman, dignity that of man." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"What is dignity without honesty?" - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"Where is there dignity unless there is honesty?" - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"We need a free economy not only for the renewed material prosperity it will bring, but because it is indispensable to individual freedom, human dignity and to a more just, more honest society." - Margaret Thatcher, fully Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, née Roberts
"Twelve Things to Remember: The value of time. The success of perseverance. The pleasure of working. The dignity of simplicity. The worth of character. The power of kindness. The influence of example. The obligation of duty. The wisdom of economy. The virtue of patience. The improvement of talent. The joy of originating." - Marshall Field
"Dignity and love do not blend well, nor do they continue long together." - Ovid, formally Publius Ovidius Naso NULL
"True dignity is never gained by place, and never lost when honors are withdrawn." - Philip Massinger
"Education has two branches - one of gymnastic, which is concerned with the body, and the other of music, which is designed for the improvement of the soul. And gymnastic has also two branches - dancing and wrestling; and one sort of dancing imitates muscial recitation, and aims at preserving dignity and freedom, the other aims at producing health, agility, and beauty in the limbs and parts of the body, giving the proper flexion and extension to each of them, a harmonious motion being diffused everywhere, and forming suitabile accompaniment to the dance." - Plato NULL
"The study of history is in the truest sense an education and a training for political life... The most instructive, or rather the only, method of learning to bear with dignity the vicissitudes of fortune is to recall the catastrophes of others." - Polybius NULL
"Let us not accept violence as the way of peace. Let us instead begin by respecting true freedom: the resulting peace will be able to satisfy the world’s expectations, for it will be a peace built on justice, a peace founded on the incomparable dignity of the free human being." - Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL
"Let not a man guard his dignity, but let his dignity guard him." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Wit makes its own welcome, and levels all distinction. No dignity, no learning, no force of character, can make any stand against good wit. It is like ice, on which no beauty of form, no majesty of carriage, can plead any immunity; they must walk gingerly, according tot he laws of ice, or down they must go, dignity and all." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"He who values his own dignity will hold the world in little esteem." - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
"Man can preserve a vestige of spiritual freedom, of independence of mind, even in such terrible conditions of psychic and physical stress... Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way. And there is always a choice to make. Every day, every hour, offered the opportunity to make a decision, a decision which determined whether you would or would not submit to those powers which threatened to rob you of your very self, your inner freedom; which determine whether or not you would become the plaything of circumstance, renouncing freedom and dignity to become molded into the form of the typical inmate" -
"Reserve may be pride fortified in ice; dignity is worth reposing on truth." - William Rounseville Alger
"No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem." - Booker T. Washington, fully Booker Taliaferro Washington
"The primal principle of democracy is the worth and dignity of the individual" - Edward Bellamy
"Such a weapon goes far beyond any military objective and enters the range of very great natural catastrophes. By its very nature it cannot be confined to a military objective but becomes a weapon which in practical effect is almost one of genocide. It is clear that the use of such a weapon cannot be justified on any ethical ground which gives a human being a certain individuality and dignity even if he happens to be a resident of an enemy country... The fact that no limits exist to the destructiveness of this weapon makes its very existence and the knowledge of its construction a danger to humanity as a whole. It is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light." - Enrico Fermi
"Life is simply time given to man to learn how to live. Mistakes are always part of learning. The real dignity of life consists in cultivating a fine attitude towards our own mistakes and those of others. It is the fine tolerance of a fine soul. Man becomes great, not through never making mistakes, but by profiting by those he does make; by being satisfied with a single rendition of a mistake, not encoring it into a continuous performance; by getting from it the honey of new, regenerating inspiration with no irritating sting of morbid regret; by building better to-day because of his poor yesterday; and by rising with renewed strength, finer purpose and freshened courage every time he falls." - William George Jordan
"A truth our socetiy must not lose sight of and that is the sanctity of every human life and the dignity of every individual." - Frank Edward Peretti
"If a person goes to his job with a firm determination to give of himself the best of which he is capable, that job no matter what it is takes on dignity and importance." - Hortense McQuarrie Odlum
"If the equality of individuals and the dignity of man be myths, they are myths to which the republic is committed" - Howard Mumford Jones