This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Let what will be said or done, preserve your sang-froid immovably, and to every obstacle, oppose patience, perseverance, and soothing language." - Thomas Jefferson
"Man [is] a rational animal, endowed by nature with rights, and with an innate sense of justice; and... he [can] be restrained from wrong and protected in right, by moderate powers, confided to persons of his own choice, and held to their duties by dependence on his own will." - Thomas Jefferson
"Men have differed in opinion, and been divided into parties by these opinions, from the first origin of societies, and in all governments where they have been permitted freely to think and to speak." - Thomas Jefferson
"Opinion, and the just maintenance of it, shall never be a crime in my view." - Thomas Jefferson
"Peace with all nations, and the right which that gives us with respect to all nations, are our object." - Thomas Jefferson
"Public employment contributes neither to advantage nor happiness. It is but honorable exile from one's family and affairs." - Thomas Jefferson
"Some are whigs, liberals, democrats, call them what you please. Others are tories, serviles, aristocrats, andc. The latter fear the people, and wish to transfer all power to the higher classes of society; the former consider the people as the safest depository of power in the last resort; they cherish them therefore, and wish to leave in them all the powers to the exercise of which they are competent." - Thomas Jefferson
"The genuine and simple religion of Jesus will one day be restored: such as it was preached and practiced by Himself." - Thomas Jefferson
"To secure these [inalienable] rights [to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness], governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed... Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on suchprinciples, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." - Thomas Jefferson
"We were laboring under a dropsical fullness of circulating medium. Nearly all of it is now called in by the banks, who have the regulation of the safety-valves of our fortunes, and who condense and explode them at their will. Lands in this State cannot now be sold for a year’s rent; and unless our Legislature have wisdom enough to effect a remedy by a gradual diminution only of the medium, there will be a general revolution of property in this state." - Thomas Jefferson
"I must tell you that we artists cannot tread the path of Beauty without Eros keeping company with us and appointing himself as our guide." - Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
"But with respect to religion itself, without regard to names, and as directing itself from the universal family of mankind to the divine object of adoration, it is man bringing to his maker the fruits of his heart; and though these fruits may differ from each other like the fruits of the earth, the grateful tribute of everyone is accepted." - Thomas Paine
"Calumny is a vice of curious constitution; trying to kill it keeps it alive; leave it to itself and it will die a natural death." - Thomas Paine
"I believe in one God, and no more; and I hope for happiness beyond this life. I believe in the equality of man; and I believe that religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow-creatures happy. But, lest it should be supposed that I believe in many other things in addition to these, I shall, in the progress of this work, declare the things I do not believe, and my reasons for not believing them. I do not believe in the creed professed by the Jewish church, by the Roman church, by the Greek church, by the Turkish church, by the Protestant church, nor by any church that I know of. My own mind is my own church. All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit. I do not mean by this declaration to condemn those who believe otherwise; they have the same right to their belief as I have to mine. But it is necessary to the happiness of man, that he be mentally faithful to himself. Infidelity does not consist in believing, or in disbelieving; it consists in professing to believe what he does not believe." - Thomas Paine
"Independence is my happiness, and I view things as they are, without regard to place or person; my country is the world, and my religion is to do good." - Thomas Paine
"It is of the utmost danger to society to make it (religion) a party in political disputes." - Thomas Paine
"One step above the sublime makes the ridiculous; and one step above the ridiculous makes the sublime again." - Thomas Paine
"The character which Mr. Washington has attempted to act in the world is a sort of nondescribable, chameleon-colored thing called prudence. It is, in many cases, a substitute for principle, and is so nearly allied to hypocrisy that it easily slides into it. His genius for prudence furnished him in this instance with an expedient that served, as is the natural and general character of all expedients, to diminish the embarrassments of the moment and multiply them afterwards; for he authorized it to be made known to the French Government, as a confidential matter (Mr. Washington should recollect that I was a member of the Convention, and had the means of knowing what I here state), he authorized it, I say, to be announced, and that for the purpose of preventing any uneasiness to France on the score of Mr. Jay's mission to England, that the object of that mission, and of Mr. Jay's authority, was restricted to that of demanding the surrender of the western posts, and indemnification for the cargoes captured in American vessels." - Thomas Paine
"The real man smiles in trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection." - Thomas Paine
"When I see throughout this book, called the Bible, a history of the grossest vices and a collection of the most paltry and contemptible tales and stories, I could not so dishonor my Creator by calling it by His name." - Thomas Paine
"Before The Rain - We knew it would rain, for all the morn A spirit on slender ropes of mist Was lowering its golden buckets down Into the vapory amethyst. Of marshes and swamps and dismal fens-- Scooping the dew that lay in the flowers, Dipping the jewels out of the sea, To sprinkle them over the land in showers. We knew it would rain, for the poplars showed The white of their leaves, the amber grain Shrunk in the wind--and the lightning now Is tangled in tremulous skeins of rain!" - Thomas Bailey Aldrich
"Did he smile his work to see? Did he who made the lamb make thee?" - William Blake
"Disenchantment, whether it is a minor disappointment or a major shock, is the signal that things are moving into transition in our lives." - William Bridges, fully Sir William Throsby Bridges
"They whom truth and wisdom lead, can gather honey from a weed." - William Cowper
"I'm convinced that before the year 2000 is over, the first child will have been born on the moon." - Wernher von Braun, fully Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun
"For the world, as seen in materialist view from the Right, scarcely differs from the same world seen in materialist view from the Left. The question become chiefly: who is to run that world in whose interests, or perhaps, at best, who can run it more efficiently? Something of this implication is fixed in the book’s dictatorial tone, which is much its most striking feature. Out of a lifetime of reading, I can recall no other book in which a tone of overriding arrogance was so implacably sustained. Its shrillness is without reprieve. Its dogmatism is without appeal.… From almost any page of Atlas Shrugged, a voice can be heard, from painful necessity, commanding, “To a gas chamber—go!”" - Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers
"My children, as long as you live, the shadow of the Hiss Case will brush you. In every pair of eyes that rests on you, you will see pass, like a cloud passing behind a woods in winter, the memory of your father - dissembled in friendly eyes, lurking in unfriendly eyes." - Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers
"The mass of Americans, who vehemently made known their views in (and during) a recent general election, know perfectly well that they are not living in a reign of terror and that they seldom look behind a door for anything more frightening than an umbrella." - Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers
"Toscanini was hailing a great artist, but that voice was more than a magnificent personal talent. It was the religious voice of a whole religious people — probably the most God-obsessed (and man-despised) people since the ancient Hebrews." - Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers
"If you have to prove you are worthy of credit, your credit is already gone." - Walter Bagehot
"The caucus is a sort of representative meeting which sits voting and voting till they have cut out all the known men against whom much is to be said, and agreed on some unknown man against whom there is nothing known, and therefore nothing to be alleged." - Walter Bagehot
"The mystic reverence, the religious allegiance, which are essential to a true monarchy, are imaginative sentiments that no legislature can manufacture in any people." - Walter Bagehot
"These costs are now being incurred in amounts that will cause shareholders to earn far less than they historically have." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"Some books are undeservedly forgotten none are undeservedly remembered." - W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
"Terror is everywhere the beginning of religion." - W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky
"All doctrines relating to the creation of the world, the government of man by superior beings, and his destiny after death, are conjectures which have been given out as facts, handed down with many adornments by tradition, and accepted by posterity as revealed religion. They are theories more or less rational which uncivilized men have devised in order to explain the facts of life, and which civilized men believe that they believe." - W. Winwood Reade, fully William Winwood Reade
"Doubt is the offspring of knowledge: the savage never doubts at all." - W. Winwood Reade, fully William Winwood Reade
"If indeed there were a judgment-day, it would be for man to appear at the bar not as a criminal but as accuser." - W. Winwood Reade, fully William Winwood Reade
"Industry is the only true source of wealth, and there was no industry in Rome. By day the Ostia road was crowded with carts and muleteers, carrying to the great city the silks and spices of the East, the marble of Asia Minor, the timber of the Atlas, the grain of Africa and Egypt; and the carts brought nothing out but loads of dung. That was their return cargo. London turns dirt into gold. Rome turned gold into dirt." - W. Winwood Reade, fully William Winwood Reade
"Our business is to help get everything possible done to make sure the "last" chance for a peaceful development of the revolution, to help by the presentation of our programme, by making clear its national character, its absolute accord with the interests and demands of a vast majority of the population." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
"Social-Democracy, however, wants, on the contrary, to develop the class struggle of the proletariat to the point where the latter will take the leading part in the popular Russian revolution, i.e., will lead this revolution to a the democratic-dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
"The art of any propagandist and agitator consists in his ability to find the best means of influencing any given audience, by presenting a definite truth, in such a way as to make it most convincing, most easy to digest, most graphic, and most strongly impressive." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
"We set ourselves the ultimate aim of abolishing the state, i.e., all organized and systematic violence, all use of violence against people in general. We do not expect the advent of a system of society in which the principle of subordination of the minority to the majority will not be observed. In striving for socialism, however, we are convinced that it will develop into communism and, therefore, that the need for violence against people in general, for the subordination of one man to another, and of one section of the population to another, will vanish altogether since people will become accustomed to observing the elementary conditions of social life without violence and without subordination." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
"So conscience for the sinner distorts the truth of the upright, but (his) soul is in agony at the judgment of the Chinvat Bridge, having strayed by his own deeds and tongue from the Path of Righteousness." - Zoroaster, aka Zarathustra or Zarathushtra Spitama NULL
"Could I write an autobiographical novel, I wonder? Can one make a book out of the very essence of one's self? Perhaps so, if one was left with one's gift stripped bare of all that made it worth having, and nothing else was left..." - Vera Mary Brittain
"He thought himself stronger than he was and believed he could play mouse with a lion." - Victor Hugo
"One should performed karma for the benefit of humanity with an unbiased approach because bias gives birth to evil, which creates thousands of obstacles in our path." - Rig Veda, or The Rigveda
"Now and then it occurs to one to reflect upon what slender threads of accident depend the most important circumstances of his life; to look back and shudder, realizing how close to the edge of nothingness his being has come." - Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.
"The law cannot equalize mankind in spite of nature." - Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL