This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Christianity is most admirably adapted to the training of slaves, to the perpetuation of a slave society; in short, to the very conditions confronting us to-day... The rulers of the earth have realized long ago what potent poison inheres in the Christian religion. That is the reason they foster it; that is why they leave nothing undone to instill it into the blood of the people. They know only too well that the subtleness of the Christian teachings is a more powerful protection against rebellion and discontent than the club or the gun." - Emma Goldman
"‎Civilization has been a continuous struggle of the individual or of groups of individuals against the State and even against society, that is, against the majority subdued and hypnotized by the State and State worship." - Emma Goldman
"Free love? As if love is anything but free! Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. High on a throne, with all the splendor and pomp his gold can command, man is yet poor and desolate, if love passes him by. And if it stays, the poorest hovel is radiant with warmth, with life and color. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king. Yes, love is free; it can dwell in no other atmosphere. In freedom it gives itself unreservedly, abundantly, completely. All the laws on the statutes, all the courts in the universe, cannot tear it from the soil, once love has taken root." - Emma Goldman
"Give us what belongs to us in peace, and if you don't give it to us in peace, we will take it by force." - Emma Goldman
"Man has bought brains, but all the millions in the world have failed to buy love. Man has subdued bodies, but all the power on earth has been unable to subdue love. Man has conquered whole nations, but all his armies could not conquer love. Man has chained and fettered the spirit, but he has been utterly helpless before love. Thus love has the magic power to make of a beggar a king." - Emma Goldman
"Mankind has been punished long and heavily for having created its gods; nothing but pain and persecution have been man's lot since gods began." - Emma Goldman
"There are these alone; but, running through one another, they become men and the tribes of beasts. At one time they are all brought together into one order by Love; at another, they are carried each in different directions by the repulsion of Strife, till they grow once more into one and are wholly subdued. Thus in so far as they are wont to grow into one out of many, and again divided become more than one, so far they come into being and their life is not lasting; but insofar as they never cease changing continually, so far are they evermore, immovable in the circle." - Empedocles NULL
"For we may ask in return, what has any secret purpose to do with our role of judgment and action? “Secret things,” we are told, “belong unto the Lord our God; but things which are revealed, unto us and to our children.” The question taken from the hidden purposes of the divine mind, can have no force whatever, because it is an appeal to our ignorance. We know, and can know nothing about them. One thing, however, we do know. God must be always and everywhere consistent with himself; and whether we can understand it or not, it is certain that there can be no inconsistency between revealed and unrevealed truths; and if God has made an offer of eternal life through the atonement unto all men, and commanded all men to embrace it, there cannot be in any purpose of God concerning its nature, anything which will clash with, and so contradict this universal offer." - Erskine Mason
"The influence of one's parents is powerful and permanent." - Faye Wattleton
"If life is a bowl of cherries, then what am I doing in the pits?" - Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
"We've got a generation now who were born with semi-equality. They don't know how it was before, so they think, this isn't too bad. We're working. We have our attaché cases and our three-piece suits. I get very disgusted with the younger generation of women. We had a torch to pass, and they are just sitting there. They don't realize it can be taken away. Things are going to have to get worse before they join in fighting the battle." - Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
"But I could tell thee of other things, Inglés, and do not doubt what thou simply cannot see nor cannot hear. Thou canst not hear what a dog hears. Nor canst thou smell what a dog smells. But already thou hast experienced a little of what can happen to man." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"Every day is a new day. It is better to be lucky. But I would rather be exact. Then when luck comes you are ready." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"For luck you carried a horse chestnut and a rabbitÂ’s foot in your right pocket. The fur had been worn off the rabbitÂ’s foot long ago and the bones and the sinews were polished by the wear. The claws scratched in the lining of your pocket and you knew your luck was still there." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"She was sick and when she was sick she was sick as Southern women are sick." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"She's vicious,' Miss Stein said. 'She's truly vicious, so she can never be happy except with new people. She corrupts people." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth of it being above water'." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"There was nothing to do about him. It was Easter Sunday and the Fascists were advancing toward the Ebro. It was a gray overcast day with a low ceiling so their planes were not up. That and the fact that cats know how to look after themselves was all the good luck that old man would ever have." - Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
"At the lowest stage, the rude--we may say animal--phase of prehistoric primitive man, is the "ape-man," who, in the course of the tertiary period, has only to a limited degree raised himself above his immediate pithecoid ancestors, the anthropoid apes. Next come successive stages of the lowest and simplest kind of culture, such as only the rudest of still existing primitive peoples enable us in some measure to conceive. These "savages" are succeeded by peoples of a low civilization, and from these again, by a long series of intermediate steps, we rise little by little to the more highly civilized nations. To these alone--of the twelve races of mankind only to the Mediterranean and Mongolian--are we indebted for what is usually called "universal history." This last, extending over somewhat less than six thousand years, represents a period of infinitesimal duration in the long millions of years of the organic world's development." - Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel
"Even today, we are generally told that gigantic organizations are inescapably necessary; but when we look closely we can notice that as soon as great size has been created there is often a strenuous attempt to attain smallness within bigness." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
"It kills the pain. You go back until at last you are beyond its reach. Only the past when you were happy is real." - Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
"Why am I afraid to live, I who love life and the beauty of flesh and the living colors of earth and sky and sea? Why am I afraid of love, I who love love? Why must I hide myself in self-contempt in order to understand? Why was I born without a skin, O God, that I must wear armor in order to touch or to be touched?" - Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
"Why canÂ’t you remember your Shakespeare and forget the third-raters. YouÂ’ll find what youÂ’re trying to say in him- as youÂ’ll find everything else worth saying. 'We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with sleep.'' 'Fine! ThatÂ’s beautiful. But I wasnÂ’t trying to say that. We are such stuff as manure is made on, so letÂ’s drink up and forget it. ThatÂ’s more my idea." - Eugene O'Neill, fully Eugene Gladstone O'Neill
"I have begun writing what I have said I'd never write, a memoir ("I am not my own subject," I used to say with icy superiority)." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"On September , when the Commerce Department announced that the United States had become a debtor nation, the American Empire died." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"Those who have not undergone minor disasters are being held in reserve for something major." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"Of course, Socialism is violently denounced by the capitalist press and by all the brood of subsidized contributors to magazine literature, but this only confirms the view that the advance of Socialism is very properly recognized by the capitalist class as the one cloud upon the horizon which portends an end to the system in which they have waxed fat, insolent and despotic through the exploitation of their countless wage-working slaves." - Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
"The Elgin writer says that we shall "jeopardize the best interests of the Socialist Party" if we insist upon the political equality of the Negro. I say that the Socialist Party would be false to its historic mission, violate the fundamental principles of Socialism, deny its philosophy and repudiate its own teachings if, on account of race considerations, it sought to exclude any human being from political equality and economic freedom. Then, indeed, would it not only "jeopardize" its best interests, but forfeit its very life, for it would soon be scorned and deserted as a thing unclean, leaving but a stench in the nostrils of honest men." - Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
"Love makes the time pass. Time makes love pass." - Euripedes NULL
"Never say that marriage has more of joy than pain." - Euripedes NULL
"Of mortals there is no one who is happy. If wealth flows in upon one, one may be perhaps Luckier than one's neighbor, but still not happy." - Euripedes NULL
"Young people, the most beautiful jewels in wealth is also the most beautiful in the case of want and woe!" - Euripedes NULL
"The next four weeks of solitary confinement were among the happiest of Paul's life...It was so exhilarating, he found, never to have to make any decision on any subject, to be wholly relieved from the smallest consideration of time, meas, or clothes, to have no anxiety ever about what kind of impression he was making; in fact, to be free." - Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
"Freedom of choice is more to be treasured than any earthly possession. As a United States citizen I believe it is guaranteed in our heaven-inspired Constitution." - Ezra Taft Benson
"We pay lip service to the principles embodied in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution without realizing what they are and the danger of ignoring them." - Ezra Taft Benson
"What are these fundamental principles which have allowed the United States to progress so rapidly and yet remain free? First, a written Constitution clearly defining the limits of government so that government will not become more powerful than the people." - Ezra Taft Benson
"Choosing a career in nursing was perhaps my most important professional decision. Had I not had direct experiences with patients and gained an understanding of what goes on in women's lives, I would not have had the determination and commitment to non-compromise on the gains that women have made with respect to reproductive choice." - Faye Wattleton
"The ultimate vision is to instate in the Muslim world the notion of multiculturalism, which is part of our heritage and history, part of the fundamental, mainstream ideals of Islam." - Feisal Abdul Rauf
"Gladness, in some instances, springs from a natural buoyancy of temperament, and is quite consistent with shallowness and superficiality of character. In other cases it is coincident with the swift flow of the currents of the blood, and ceases when the stream flows more slowly and begins to stagnate. Or it is due to gifts which an exceptional good fortune showers into the laps of favoured mortals. Gladness of this sort comes with happiness and departs with it." - Felix Adler
"A fool who, after plain warning, persists in dosing himself with dangerous drugs should be free to do so, for his death is a benefit to the race in general." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"In plain words; now that Britain has told the world she has the H-Bomb, she should announce as early as possible that she has done with it, that she proposes to reject, in all circumstances, nuclear warfare. This is not pacifism. There is no suggestion here of abandoning the immediate defence of this island...No, what should be abandoned is the idea of deterrence-by-threat-of-retaliation. There is no real security in it, no decency in it, no faith, hope, nor charity in it." - J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
"In ultimate analysis, the universe can be nothing less than the progressive manifestation of God." - J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
"All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost; the old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost. From the ashes a fire shall be woken, a light from the shadows shall spring; renewed shall be blade that was broken, the crownless again shall be king." -