This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"[Responsibility to yourself] means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short, simply to avoid conflict and confrontation. And this, in turn, means resisting the forces in society which say that women should be nice, play safe, have low professional expectations, drown in love and forget about work, live through others, and stay in places assigned to us. It means that we insist on a life of meaningful work, insist that work be as meaningful as love and friendship in our lives. It means, therefore, the courage to be “different”; not to be continuously available to others when we need time for ourselves and our work; to be able to demand of others – parents, friends, roommates, teachers, lovers, husbands, children – that they respect our sense of purpose and our integrity as persons." - Adrienne Rich, fully Adrienne Cecil Rich
"Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear." - Albert Camus
"A brilliant achievement may win for you the favor of a people at one stroke; but to earn the love and respect of the population that surrounds you, a long succession of little services rendered and of obscure good deeds, a constant habit of kindness and an established reputation for disinterestedness will be required." - Alexis de Tocqueville, Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
"The secret of success [in education] is pace, and the secret of pace is concentration. But, in respect to precise knowledge, the watchwords is pace, pace, pace. Get your knowledge quickly, and then use it. If you can use it, you will retain it." - Alfred North Whitehead
"If a mother respects both herself and her child from his very first day onward, she will never need to teach him respect for others." - Alice Duer Miller
"Nor do we accept as genuine the person not characterized by this blushing bashfulness, this youthfulness of heart, this sensibility to the sentiment of suavity, and self-respect. Modesty is bred of self-reverence. Fine manners are the mantle of fair minds. None are truly great without his ornament." - Amos Bronson Alcott
"Great authors are admirable in this respect: in every generation they make for disagreement. Through them we become aware of our differences." - André Gide, fully André Paul Guillaume Gide
"I have accustomed myself to receive with respect the opinion of others but always take the responsibility of deciding for myself." - Andrew Jackson
"I have no right, by anything I do or say, to demean a human being in his own eyes. What matters is not what I think of him; it is what he thinks of himself. To undermine a man's self-respect is a sin." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Love, friendship, respect, do not unite people as much as a common hatred of something... Man is what he believes." - Anton Chekhov, fully Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
"Love, friendship, respect, do not unite people as much as a common hatred of something." - Anton Chekhov, fully Anton Pavlovich Chekhov
"Virtue consists in doing our duty in the several relations we sustain in respect to ourselves, to our fellow-men, and to God, as known from reason, conscience and revelation." - Archibald Alexander
"If, then, being is in itself desirable for the supremely happy man (since it is by its nature good and pleasant), and that of his friends very much the same, a friend will be one of the things that are desirable. Now that which is desirable form him must have, or he will be deficient in this respect. The man who is to be happy will therefore need virtuous friends." - Aristotle NULL
"Some of the virtues are intellectual and others moral, philosophic wisdom and understanding and practical wisdom being intellectual, liberality and temperance moral. For in speaking about a man’s character we do not say that he is wise or has understanding but that he is good-tempered or temperate; yet we praise the wise man also with respect to his state of mind; and of states of mind we call those which merit praise virtues." - Aristotle NULL
"The coward... is a despariging sort of person; for he fears everything. The brave man, on the other hand, has the opposite disposition; for confidence is the mark of a hopeful disposition... Courage is a mean with respect to things that inspire confidence or fear." - Aristotle NULL
"Democracy arose from men's thinking that if they are equal in any respect, they are equal absolutely." - Aristotle NULL
"Virtue is as little to be acquired by learning as genius; nay, the idea is barren, and is only to be employed as an instrument, in the same way as genius in respect to art. It would be as foolish to expect that our moral and ethical systems would turn out virtuous, noble, and holy beings, as that our aesthetic systems would produce poets, painters and musicians." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much; who has gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who has left the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who has never lacked appreciation of earth's beauty or failed to express it; who has always looked for the best in others and given the best he had; whose life was an inspiration; whose memory a benediction." - Author Unknown NULL
"Respect yourself if you would have others respect you." - Baltasar Gracián
"Where we do not respect, we soon cease to love." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
"All must respect those who respect themselves." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
"Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth- even more than death. Thought is subversive, and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; though its merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless to the well-trained wisdom of ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid... Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world and the chief glory of man. But if thought is to become the possession of the many, and not the privilege of the few, we must have done with fear. It is fear that holds man back - fear that their cherished beliefs should prove delusions, fear lest the institutions by which they live should prove harmful, fear least they themselves prove less worthy to the respect they have supposed themselves to be." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"One should respect public opinion insofar as is necessary to avoid starvation and keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"Men despise religion; they hate it and fear it is true. To remedy this, we must begin by showing that religion is not contrary to reason; that it is venerable, to inspire respect for it; then we must make it lovable, to make good men hope it is true; finally, we must prove it is true. Venerable, because it has perfect knowledge of man; lovable because it promises the true good." - Blaise Pascal
"Those whom we call ancients were in truth new in every respect, and actually formed the childhood of man; and since we have added to their knowledge the experience of the succeeding centuries, it is in ourselves that that antiquity can be found which we revere in others." - Blaise Pascal
"What but this faculty of imagination dispenses reputation, awards respect and veneration to persons, works, laws, and the great? How insufficient are all the riches of the earth without her consent!" - Blaise Pascal
"Gross and vulgar minds will always pay a higher respect to wealth than to talent; for wealth, although it be a far less efficient source of power than talent, happens to be far more intelligible." - Charles Caleb Colton
"Gross and vulgar minds will always pay a higher respect to wealth than to talent; for wealth, although it be a far less efficient sources of power than talent, happens to be far more intelligible." - Charles Caleb Colton
"Religion has treated knowledge sometimes as an enemy, sometimes as an hostage; often as a captive and more often as a child; but knowledge has become of age, and religion must either renounce her acquaintance, or introduce her as a companion and respect her as a friend." - Charles Caleb Colton
"The consideration of the small addition often made by wealth to the happiness of the possessor may check the desire and prevent the insatiability which sometimes attends it... Gross and vulgar minds will always pay a higher respect to wealth than to talent; for wealth, although it be a far less efficient source of power than talent, happens to be far more intelligible." - Charles Caleb Colton
"The only things in which we can be said to have any property are our actions. Our thoughts may be bad, yet produce no poison; they may be good, yet produce no fruit. Our riches may be taken away by misfortune, our reputation by malice, our spirits by calamity, our health by disease, our friends by death. But our actions must follow us beyond the grave; with respect to them alone, we cannot say that we shall carry nothing with us when we die, neither that we shall go naked out of the world." - Charles Caleb Colton
"If you wish to be miserable, think about yourself; about what you want, what you like, what you respect people ought to pay you, what people think of you; and then to you nothing will be pure. You will spoil everything you touch; you will make sin and misery for yourself out of everything God sends you; you will be as wretched as you choose." -
"Nothing the Great Mystery placed in the land of the Indian pleased the white man, and nothing escaped his transforming hand. Wherever forests have not been mowed down, wherever the animal is recessed in their quiet protection, wherever the earth is not bereft of four-footed life - that to him is an “unbroken wilderness.” But, because for the Lakota there was no wilderness, because nature was not dangerous but hospitable, not forbidding but friendly, Lakota philosophy was healthy - free from fear and dogmatism. And here I find the great distinction between the faith of the Indian and the white man. Indian faith sought the harmony of man with his surrounding; the other sought the dominance of surrounding. In sharing, in loving all and everything, one people naturally found a due portion of the thing they sought, while, in fearing, the other found need of conquest. For one man the world was full of beauty; for the other it was a place of sin and ugliness to be endured until he went to another world, there to become a creature of wings, half-man and half-bird. Forever one man directed his Mystery to change the world He had made; forever this man pleaded with Him to chastise the wicked ones; and forever he implored his God to send His light to earth. Small wonder this man could not understand the other. But the old Lakota was wise. He knew that man’s heart, away from nature, become hard; he knew that lack of respect for growing, living things soon led to lack of respect for humans, too. So he kept his children close to nature’s softening influence." -
"Respect yourself and others will respect you." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
"A youth is to be regarded with respect. How do you know that his future will not be equal to our present?" - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
"Respect yourself, and others will respect you." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
"Without feelings of respect, what is there to distinguish men from beasts?" - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
"A school where you've got good character education is one where the culture of the school puts a high premium on respect, honesty, and kids being responsible for their actions and adults doing the same." - Esther Schaeffer
"Reverence for superiors, respect for equals, regard for inferiors - these form the supreme trinity of the virtues." - Felix Adler
"All must respect those who respect themselves." - Francis Bacon
"Democracy, the practice of self-government, is a covenant among free men to respect the rights and liberties of their fellows." - Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR
"Passions, private aims, and the satisfaction of selfish desires, are… most effective springs of action. Their power lies in the fact that they would respect none of the limitations which justice and morality would impose on them; and [they] have a more direct influence over man than the artificial and tedious discipline that tends to order and self-restraint, law and morality." - Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
"No man who is occupied in doing a very difficult thing, and doing it very well, ever loses his self-respect." - George Bernard Shaw
"As the earth is but a point in respect to the heavens, so are earthly troubles compared to heavenly joys." - George Herbert
"A parent must respect the spiritual person of his child, and approach it with reverence." - George MacDonald