This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity - designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny of man." - Ernest Becker
"The irony of man's condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive" - Ernest Becker
"Let us pardon him his hope of a vain apocalypse, and of a second coming in great triumph upon the clouds of heaven. Perhaps these were the errors of others rather than his own; and if it be true that he himself shared the general illusion, what matters it, since his dream rendered him strong against death, and sustained him in a struggle to which he might otherwise have been unequal?" - Ernest Renan, aka Joseph Ernest Renan
"I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves." - Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara
"The university, vanguard of our struggling people, cannot become a backward element, but it would become so if the university did not incorporate itself into the great plans of the Revolution." - Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara
"Those who kill their own children and discriminate daily against them because of the color of their skin; those who let the murderers of blacks remain free, protecting them, and furthermore punishing the black population because they demand their legitimate rights as free men — how can those who do this consider themselves guardians of freedom?" - Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara
"All the common phenomena of Morphology and Physiology, of Chorology and Œkology, of Ontology and Paleontology, can be explained by the theory of descent, and referred to simple mechanical causes. It is precisely in this, viz., that the primary simple causes of all these complex aggregates of phenomena are common to them all, and that other mechanical causes for them are unthinkable—it is in this that, to us, the guarantee of their certainty consists." - Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel
"In the simple question of how we treat the land, next to people our most precious resource, our entire way of live is involved, and before our policies with regard to the land will really be changed, there will have to be a great deal of philosophical, not to say religious, change. It is not a question of what we can afford but of what we choose to spend our money on. If we could return to a generous recognition of meta-economic values, our landscapes would become healthy and beautiful again and our people would regain the dignity of manÂ…" - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
"On the basis of experience and conscious thought small ideas may easily be dislodged, but when it comes to bigger, more universal or more subtle ideas it may not be so easy to change them. Indeed, it is often difficult to become aware of them, as they are the instruments and not the results of our thinking—just as you can see what is outside you, but cannot easily see that with which you see, the eye itself." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
"The modern economy is propelled by a frenzy of greed and indulges in an orgy of envy, and these are not accidental features but the very causes of its expansionist success. The question is whether such causes can be effective for long or whether they carry within themselves the seeds of destruction." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
"The printing press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse of modern times, sometimes one forgets which it is." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
"There exists a modern trend towards total quantification at the expense of the appreciation of qualitative differences; for private enterprise is not concerned with what it produces but only with what it gains from production." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
"There is no answer to the evils of mass unemployment and mass migration into cities, unless the whole level of rural life can be raised, and this requires the development of an agro-industrial culture, so that each district, each community, can offer a colorful variety of occupations to its members." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
"Anyone who has to fight, even with the most modern weapons, against an enemy in complete command of the air, fights like a savage against modern European troops, under the same handicaps and with the same chances of success." - Erwin Rommel, fully Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel
"The irony here is that the rise of interest in spiritual direction almost certainly comes from the proliferation of role-defined activism in our culture. We are sick and tired of being slotted into a function and then manipulated with Scripture and prayer to do what someone has decided (often with the help of some psychological testing) that we should be doing to bring glory to some religious enterprise or other. And so when people begin to show up who are interested in us just as we are - our souls - we are ready to be paid attention to in this prayerful, listening, non-manipulative, nonfunctional way. Spiritual direction." - Eugene Peterson
"We live in a time when everyoneÂ’s goal is to be perpetually healthy and constantly happy. If any one of us fails to live up to the standards that are advertised as normative, we are labeled as a problem to be solved, and a host of well-intentioned people rush to try out various cures on us." - Eugene Peterson
"The two-party system has given this country the war of Lyndon Johnson, the Watergate of Nixon, and the incompetence of Carter. Saying we should keep the two-party system simply because it is working is like saying the Titanic voyage was a success because a few people survived on life rafts." - Eugene McCarthy, fully Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy
"Sex is. There is nothing more to be done about it. Sex builds no roads, writes no novels and sex certainly gives no meaning to anything in life but itself." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"The important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"TV is now so desperately hungry for material that theyÂ’re scraping the top of the barrel." - Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
"Am I my brother's keeper? [That frequently asked question] has never been answered in a way that is satisfactory to civilized society. Yes, I am my brother's keeper. I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by maudlin sentimentality, but by the higher duty I owe myself." - Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
"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
"There is nothing that helps the Socialist Party so much as receiving an occasional deathblow. The oftener it is killed the more active, the more energetic, the more powerful it becomes." - Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
"Yes, I am my brotherÂ’s keeper. I am under a moral obligation to him that is inspired, not by any maudlin sentimentality but by the higher duty I owe myself. What would you think me if I were capable of seating myself at a table and gorging myself with food and saw about me the children of my fellow beings starving to death." - Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
"Youth is the best time to be rich; and the best time to be poor." - Euripedes NULL
"Our strength lies in the fact that we are supported by the majority of Americans. And our motivation lies in our obligation to make sure their voices are heard and acknowledged by those who set public policy in this country." - Faye Wattleton
"Fanaticism and terrorism have no place in Islam." - Feisal Abdul Rauf
"Historians today are priests of a cult of truth, called to the service of a god whose existence they are doomed to doubt." - Felipe Fernández-Armesto
"The question what to believe is perhaps the most momentous that anyone can put to himself. Our beliefs are not to be classed among the luxuries, but among the necessaries of existence. They become particularly important in times of trouble. They are like the life-boats carried by ocean ships. As long as the sea is smooth and there is every appearance of a prosperous voyage, the passengers seldom take note of the boats or inquire into their sea-worthiness. But when the storm breaks and danger approaches, then the capacity of the boats and their soundness become matters of the first importance." - Felix Adler
"No one, ever, can give the exact measure of his needs, his apprehensions, or his sorrows; and human speech is like a cracked cauldron on which we bang out tunes that make bears dance, when we want to move the stars to pity." - Gustave Flaubert
"One enemy is too many, and a hundred friends are too few." - Italian Proverbs
"One today is worth two tomorrows." - Italian Proverbs
"With time and straw meddlers ripen." - Italian Proverbs
"Help means ruin and saving means slaying." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"The idea of death, the fear of it, haunts the human animal like nothing else; it is a mainspring of human activity - designed largely to avoid the fatality of death, to overcome it by denying in some way that it is the final destiny of man." - Ernest Becker
"The irony of man's condition is that the deepest need is to be free of the anxiety of death and annihilation; but it is life itself which awakens it, and so we must shrink from being fully alive" - Ernest Becker
"Let us pardon him his hope of a vain apocalypse, and of a second coming in great triumph upon the clouds of heaven. Perhaps these were the errors of others rather than his own; and if it be true that he himself shared the general illusion, what matters it, since his dream rendered him strong against death, and sustained him in a struggle to which he might otherwise have been unequal?" - Ernest Renan, aka Joseph Ernest Renan
"I am not a liberator. Liberators do not exist. The people liberate themselves." - Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara
"The university, vanguard of our struggling people, cannot become a backward element, but it would become so if the university did not incorporate itself into the great plans of the Revolution." - Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara
"Those who kill their own children and discriminate daily against them because of the color of their skin; those who let the murderers of blacks remain free, protecting them, and furthermore punishing the black population because they demand their legitimate rights as free men — how can those who do this consider themselves guardians of freedom?" - Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara
"All the common phenomena of Morphology and Physiology, of Chorology and Œkology, of Ontology and Paleontology, can be explained by the theory of descent, and referred to simple mechanical causes. It is precisely in this, viz., that the primary simple causes of all these complex aggregates of phenomena are common to them all, and that other mechanical causes for them are unthinkable—it is in this that, to us, the guarantee of their certainty consists." - Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel
"In the simple question of how we treat the land, next to people our most precious resource, our entire way of live is involved, and before our policies with regard to the land will really be changed, there will have to be a great deal of philosophical, not to say religious, change. It is not a question of what we can afford but of what we choose to spend our money on. If we could return to a generous recognition of meta-economic values, our landscapes would become healthy and beautiful again and our people would regain the dignity of manÂ…" - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
"On the basis of experience and conscious thought small ideas may easily be dislodged, but when it comes to bigger, more universal or more subtle ideas it may not be so easy to change them. Indeed, it is often difficult to become aware of them, as they are the instruments and not the results of our thinking—just as you can see what is outside you, but cannot easily see that with which you see, the eye itself." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
"The modern economy is propelled by a frenzy of greed and indulges in an orgy of envy, and these are not accidental features but the very causes of its expansionist success. The question is whether such causes can be effective for long or whether they carry within themselves the seeds of destruction." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
"The printing press is either the greatest blessing or the greatest curse of modern times, sometimes one forgets which it is." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
"There exists a modern trend towards total quantification at the expense of the appreciation of qualitative differences; for private enterprise is not concerned with what it produces but only with what it gains from production." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
"There is no answer to the evils of mass unemployment and mass migration into cities, unless the whole level of rural life can be raised, and this requires the development of an agro-industrial culture, so that each district, each community, can offer a colorful variety of occupations to its members." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
"Anyone who has to fight, even with the most modern weapons, against an enemy in complete command of the air, fights like a savage against modern European troops, under the same handicaps and with the same chances of success." - Erwin Rommel, fully Erwin Johannes Eugen Rommel
"The irony here is that the rise of interest in spiritual direction almost certainly comes from the proliferation of role-defined activism in our culture. We are sick and tired of being slotted into a function and then manipulated with Scripture and prayer to do what someone has decided (often with the help of some psychological testing) that we should be doing to bring glory to some religious enterprise or other. And so when people begin to show up who are interested in us just as we are - our souls - we are ready to be paid attention to in this prayerful, listening, non-manipulative, nonfunctional way. Spiritual direction." - Eugene Peterson
"We live in a time when everyoneÂ’s goal is to be perpetually healthy and constantly happy. If any one of us fails to live up to the standards that are advertised as normative, we are labeled as a problem to be solved, and a host of well-intentioned people rush to try out various cures on us." - Eugene Peterson