This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"For a lifetime people struggle to prolong their mortal lives." - Al-Akhtal, full name Ghiyath ibn Ghawth al-Taghlibi al-Akhtal NULL
"There’s a scheme of evasion that has gotten into everybody. It’s as though people were to say: “I get home dog tired after a terrible day out in that jungle, and then I don’t want to think about it. Enough! I want to be brainwashed. I’m going to have my dinner and drink some beer, and I’m going to sit watching TV until I pass out – because that’s how I feel.” That means people are not putting up a struggle for the human part of themselves." - Saul Bellow
"Always remember that the people are not fighting for ideas, nor for what is in men’s minds. The people fight and accept the sacrifices demanded by the struggle in order to gain material advantages, to live better and in peace, to benefit from progress, and for the better future of their children. National liberation, the struggle against colonialism, the construction of peace, progress and independence are hollow words devoid of any significance unless they can be translated into real improvement of living conditions." - Amilcar Cabral
"The goal of... life is not to save your soul but to transcend yourself, to vindicate the human struggle of which all of us are a part, to keep hope advancing." - William Sloane Coffin, Jr.
"We were never promised a life free from fear and struggle. We were offered the hope that by committing ourselves to the struggle for a righteous society in solidarity with the wretched of the earth we would discover the secret of life." - Sheila Collins
"After the day’s struggle there is no freedom like unfettered thoughts, no sound like the music of silence. And though behind you lies a road of dust and heat and discouragement, and before you the challenge and uncertainty of untried paths, in this brief hour you are master of all highways, and the universe nestles in your soul." - Max Ehrmann
"Bad news never flows up. The only times I saw anyone struggle to warn his superior of impending trouble… were on those occasions when the superior was sure to find out anyway… When this is multiplied over dozens of departments and hundreds of thousands of employees, the result is a vast conspiracy of self-protection, benign in origin but devastating in effect." - James Fallows
"There is perhaps no one of the natural passions so hard to subdue as pride. Disguise it, struggle with it, beat it down, stifle it, mortify it as much as one pleases, it is still alive, and will every now and then peep out and show itself." - Benjamin Franklin
"Our whole universe is a universe of perceived phenomena in which all that is perceived embodies part of what is ourselves. A person and all his perceived world, thought, motives, and acts, are active manifestations of personality… personality represents a constant struggle to realize itself. This is why for personality there is always a now’ entering into the meaning of the past and the nature of the future." -
"There is no liberation without prophets. The story of the exodus makes it quite clear that a people does not spontaneously struggle out of a state of wretched dependence." - Bakola wa Ilunga
"Faith is not a momentary feeling, but a struggle against the discouragement that threatens us every time we meet with resistance." - Bakola wa Ilunga
"Life is a struggle and not a matter of privilege. It is nothing but one’s knowledge of the temporal and the spiritual world." - Mohamed Iqbal or Sir Muhammad Iqbal, aka Allama Iqbal
"The struggle of today is not altogether for today – it is for a vast future also." - Abraham Lincoln
"Happiness is to take up the struggle in the midst of the raging storm and not to pluck the lute in the moonlight or recite poetry among the blossoms." - Ding Ling, pseudonym of Jiǎng Bīngzhī, aka Bīn Zhǐ
"Moral courage, the courage of one’s convictions, the courage to see things through. The world is in a constant conspiracy against the brave. It’s the age-old struggle – the roar of the crowd on one side and the voice of your conscience on the other." - Douglas MacArthur
"The most excellent jihad [holy war, inner struggle that transforms your character] is that for the conquest of the self." - Muhammad, also spelled Mohammad, Mohammed or Mahomet, full name Muhammad Ibn `Abd Allāh Ibn `Abd al-Muttalib NULL
" Where are we going? We came only to be born. Our home is beyond: In the realm of the defleshed ones. 4 I suffer: Happiness, good fortune never comes my way. Have I come here to struggle in vain? This is not the place to accomplish things. Certainly nothing grows green here: Misfortune opens its blossoms. " - Nahuatl Wise Men including Nezahualcoyotl NULL
"God established the world as “A will to existence, to consciousness, to spirit.” He established it, not as complete, but as becoming. He does not build it as a house, but plants it, like a flower, in the seed, that it may grow, that it may struggle upwards stage by stage to fuller existence, aspiring with toil and endeavor towards the height where, in the image of the Creator, as a free and reasonable spirit capable of personality, it may realize the aim of its being." - Rudolf Otto
"A people can never rise from low estate as long as the engrossed in the painful struggle for daily bread. On the other hand leisure alone is not sufficient to effect the self-promotion of man." - Winwood Reade, fully William Winwood Reade
"The major power facing bureaucracy is not the struggle for power but the evasion of responsibility; bureaucrats are very reluctant to take action." - Dean Rusk, fully David Dean Rusk
"The Perfect Way is difficult only for those who pick and choose; do not like, do not dislike; all will then be clear. Make a hairbreadth difference, and Heaven and Earth are set apart: if you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between “for” and “against” is the mind’s worst disease... There is no need to seek Truth; only stop having views... The ultimate Truth about both Extremes is that they are One Emptiness." -
"Only for the soul that is reconciled to God is nature as a whole renewed; difficult moral questions, which are insoluble for the mind, resolve themselves without the least struggle; life once more becomes beautiful and lofty." - Nicholas Stankevich
"Revolution is only true revolution if it is a continuous struggle – not just an external struggle against an enemy, but an inner struggle, fighting and subduing all negative aspects which hinder or do damage to the course of the revolution. In this light, revolution is… a mighty symphony of victory over the enemy and over oneself." - Achmad Sukarno, born Kusno Sosrodihardjo
"A meaningful life is also not one that has merely instrumental value to some goal, even if the goal is divine. This suggests two important conclusions; First, meaningful activities are those that have a certain kind of non-instrumental value, and a meaningful life is one that consists of such activities. Second, derived from this, the meaning of a life must be in the living of it, or rather in the way it is lived. These are important conclusions, because they apply even if God has a purpose in mind for us and even if there is an everlasting afterlife. Even if there is a goal worth struggling for, the meaning is in the struggle." - Garrett Thomson
"The interdependence of the contradictory aspects in all things and the struggle between these aspects determine the life of all things and push their development forward. There is nothing that does not contain contradiction; without contradiction nothing would exist." - Mao Tse-tung, alternatively Zedong, Ze dong, aka Chairman Mao
"[Plato's ideal society] guarantees to all people the right to an education that diagnoses and perfects their unique talents, plus a work role that conveys a sense of self-esteem, saving them from the neuroses of megalomania and the lust for power. It forbids privilege and sexism and all other criteria irrelevant to merit. It eliminates conflict of interest from those who hold office and gives the masses a potent checklist they can use to hold their rulers to account. Best of all, it eliminates all traces of "might makes right" and serves as a pattern laid up in heaven to rank actual societies in terms of what corrupts them. Society becomes more corrupt as the struggle for power becomes more brutal." - James R. Flynn, aka Jim Flynn
"If we are to reach peace in this world and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children; and if they will grow up in their natural innocence, we won't have to struggle; we won't have to pass fruitless idle resolutions, but we shall go from love to love and peace to peace, until at last all the corners of the world are covered with that peace and love for which consciously or unconsciously the whole world is hungering." -
"A bold policy to reduce the addiction to oil would be the most powerful weapon to win the epic struggle against terrorism. In the short term, this means saving energy through more efficient technologies, necessary anyway to slow the greenhouse effect and global warming." - Lutz Kleveman
"Each struggle, each defeat, sharpens your skills and strengths, your courage and your endurance, your ability and your confidence."" - Og Mandino
"Obstacles are necessary for success because in selling, as in all careers of importance, victory comes only after many struggles and countless defeats. Yet each struggle, each defeat, sharpens your skills and strengths, your courage and your endurance, your ability and your confidence and thus each obstacle is a comrade-in-arms forcing you to become better or quit. Each rebuff is an opportunity to move forward; turn away from them, avoid them, and you throw away your future." - Og Mandino
"The hardest struggle of all is to be something different from what the average man is." - Charles Schwab, fully Charles R. "Chuck" Schwab
"Let's face it. Let's talk sense to the American people. Let's tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the eve of great decisions, not easy decisions, like resistance when you're attacked, but along, patient, costly struggle which alone can assure triumph over the great enemies of man - war, poverty and tyranny - and the assaults upon human dignity which are the most grievous consequences of each." - Adlai Ewing Stevenson
"Let's face it. Let's talk sense to the American people. Let's tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the eve of great decisions, not easy decisions, like resistance when you're attacked, but along, patient, costly struggle which alone can assure triumph over the great enemies of man - war, poverty and tyranny - and the assaults upon human dignity which are the most grievous consequences of each." -
"Let's face it. Let's talk sense to the American people. Let's tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the eve of great decisions, not easy decisions, like resistance when you're attacked, but along, patient, costly struggle which alone can assure triumph over the great enemies of man - war, poverty and tyranny - and the assaults upon human dignity which are the most grievous consequences of each." -
"The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a human heart. One must imagine Sisyphus is happy." - Albert Camus
"The feeling of inferiority rules the mental life and can be clearly recognized as the sense of incompleteness and unfulfillment, and in the uninterrupted struggle both of individuals and of humanity." - Alfred Adler
"The riddle of the universe is not so simple. There is the aspect of permanence in which a given type of attainment is endlessly repeated for its own sake; and there is the aspect of transition to other things - it may be of higher worth and it may be of lower worth. Also there are aspects of struggle and of friendly help. But romantic ruthlessness is no nearer to real politics, than is romantic self-abnegation." - Alfred North Whitehead
"Beyond the logic concerned with things, education must provide the possibility of awakening and cultivating moral aesthetic intuitions. It is the neglect of these higher values that has reduced life to a mere struggle for existence and to the detriment of social and human values in economic and political life." - Alfred North Whitehead
"If we turn from contemplating the world as a whole, and, in particular, the generations of men as they live their little hour of mock-existence, and then are swept away in rapid succession; if we turn from this, and look at life in its small details, as presented, say, in a comedy, how ridiculous it all seems ! It is like a drop of water seen through a microscope, a single drop teeming with infusoria; or a speck of cheese full of mites invisible to the naked eye. How e laugh as they bustle about so eagerly, and struggle with one another in so tiny a space! And whether here, or in the little span of human life, this terrible activity produces a comic effect." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or little, has its stages of drudgery and triumph; a beginning, a struggle, and a victory." - Author Unknown NULL
"Youth is a blunder; manhood a struggle; old age a regret." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
"All is mystery; but he is a slave who will not struggle to penetrate the dark veil." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield