This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"In the 1940s while serving as the executive officer of the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives in Washington, D.C., I saw in a Hilton Hotel a placard depicting Uncle Sam, representing America, on his knees in humility and prayer. Beneath the placard was the inscription, "Not beaten there by the hammer and sickle, but freely, responsibly, confidently. . . We need fear nothing or no one save God." That picture has stayed in my memory ever since; America on her knees in recognition that all our blessings come from God! America on her knees out of a desire to serve the God of this land by keeping his commandments! America on her knees, not driven there in capitulation to some despotic government, but on her knees freely, willingly, gratefully! This is the sovereign remedy to all of our problems and the preservation of our liberties." - Ezra Taft Benson
"It is a part of my religious belief that America is a land choice above all others, that we are not just another of the family of nations, but that we have been singled out to perform a divine mission for liberty-loving people everywhere. Those who founded this republic were wise men raised up by our Father in heaven to perform that very task, and the Constitution of this land was inspired by God. We have a divine duty — even a destiny — to preserve that Constitution from destruction and hold it aloft to the world." - Ezra Taft Benson
"Men and women who turn their lives over to God will discover that He can make a lot more out of their lives than they can. He will deepen their joys, expand their vision, quicken their minds, strengthen their muscles, lift their spirits, multiply their blessings, increase their opportunities, comfort their souls, raise up friends, and pour out peace. Whoever will lose his life in the service of God will find eternal life." - Ezra Taft Benson
"Prayer in the hour of need is a great boon. From simple trials to our Gethsemanes, prayer can put us in touch with God, our greatest source of comfort and counsel." - Ezra Taft Benson
"The moment you begin a serious study of the scriptures, you will find greater power to resist temptation. You will find the power to avoid deception. You will find the power to stay on the straight and narrow path... When you begin to hunger and thirst after those words, you will find life in greater abundance." - Ezra Taft Benson
"The tenth plank in Karl Marx's Manifesto for destroying our kind of civilization advocated the establishment of free education for all children in public schools. There were several reasons why Marx wanted government to run the schools.…one of them [was that] ‘It is capable of exact demonstration that if every party in the State has the right of excluding from public schools whatever he does not believe to be true, then he that believes most must give way to him that believes least, and then he that believes least must give way to him that believes absolutely nothing, no matter in how small a minority the atheists or agnostics may be.’ It is self-evident that on this scheme, if it is consistently and persistently carried out in all parts of the country, the United States system of national popular education will be the most efficient and widespread instrument for the propagation of atheism which the world has ever seen." - Ezra Taft Benson
"Thoughts lead to acts, acts lead to habits, habits lead to character - and our character will determine our eternal destiny." - Ezra Taft Benson
"I could I trust starve like a gentleman. It's listed as part of the poetic training, you know." - Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
"The author's conviction on this day of New Year is that music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance; that poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music; but this must not be taken as implying that all good music is dance music or all poetry lyric. Bach and Mozart are never too far from physical movement." - Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
"The only chance for victory over the brainwash is the right of every man to have his ideas judged one at a time. You never get clarity as long as you have these packaged words, as long as a word is used by twenty-five people in twenty-five different ways. That seems to me to be the first fight, if there is going to be any intellect left." - Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
"There is natural ignorance and there is artificial ignorance. I should say at the present moment the artificial ignorance is about eighty-five per cent." - Ezra Pound, fully Ezra Weston Loomis Pound
"It has been said that the modern world is divided between the hot and hasty pursuit of affairs in the hours of labor, and the no less eager chase of pleasure in the hours of leisure. But even our pleasures are calculated and business like. We measure our enjoyments by the sum expended. Our salons are often little better than bazaars of fashion." - Felix Adler
"It is the business of the preacher, not only to state moral truths, but to inspire his hearers with a realizing sense of their value, and to awaken in them the desire to act accordingly. He can do this only by putting his own purpose as a yeast into their hearts. The influence of the right sort of preachers cannot be spared. The human race is not yet so far advanced that it can dispense with the impulses that come from men of more than average intensity of moral energy. Let us produce, through the efficacy of a better moral life and of a deeper moral experience, a surer faith in the ultimate victory of the good." - Felix Adler
"Theologians often say that faith must come first, and that morality must be deduced from faith. We say that morality must come first, and faith, to those whose nature fits them to entertain it, will come out of the experience of a deepened moral life as its richest, choicest fruit. Precisely because moral culture is the aim, we cannot be content merely to lift the mass of mankind above the grosser forms of evil. We must try to advance the cause of humanity by developing in ourselves, as well as in others, a higher type of manhood and womanhood than the past has known. To aid in the evolution of a new conscience, to inject living streams of moral force into the dry veins of materialistic communities is our aim. We seek to come into touch with the ultimate power in things, the ultimate peace in things, which yet, in any literal sense, we know well that we cannot know. We seek to become morally certain — that is, certain for moral purposes — of what is beyond the reach of demonstration. But our moral optimism must include the darkest facts that pessimism can point to, include them and transcend them." - Felix Adler
"On the Place she met Lestivoudois on his way back, for, in order not to shorten his day's labour, he preferred interrupting his work, then beginning it again, so that he rang the Angelus to suit his own convenience. Besides, the ringing over a little earlier warned the lads of catechism hour." - Gustave Flaubert
"We were Red Romantics, perfectly ridiculous to be sure, but in full bloom. The little good which remains to me comes from that epoch." - Gustave Flaubert
"Democracy is the pathetic belief in the wisdom of collective ignorance." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"To believe that Russia has got rid of the evils of capitalism takes a special kind of mind. It is the same kind that believes that a Holy Roller has got rid of sin." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"He who would be a leader must pay the price in self-discipline and moral restraints. This details the correction and improvement of his personal character, the checking of passions and desires and an exemplary control of one's bodily needs and desires." - Haile Selassie
"If you have democracy, people will vote for washing machines. They love them!" - Hans Rosling
"No good lawyer ever goes to court himself." - Italian Proverbs
"One who makes his bed must lie in it." - Italian Proverbs
"Saying is one thing, doing another." - Italian Proverbs
"The ass does not know the worth of this tail till he has lost it." - Italian Proverbs
"The devil is bad because he is old." - Italian Proverbs
"The dying cannot leave their wisdom or experience to their heirs." - Italian Proverbs
"The same fire purifies gold and consumes straw." - Italian Proverbs
"The sick man sleeps when the debtor cannot." - Italian Proverbs
"The sun is still beautiful, though ready to set." - Italian Proverbs
"There is never enough where nought is left." - Italian Proverbs
"There is no rule without an exception." - Italian Proverbs
"Two women and a goose make a market." - Italian Proverbs
"Very seldom does any good thing arise but there comes an ugly phantom of a caricature of it." - Italian Proverbs
"Where passion is high, reason is low." - Italian Proverbs
"Wise men learn by other men's mistakes, fools by their own." - Italian Proverbs
"As we read the school reports on our children, we realize a sense of relief, that can rise to delight, that, thank Heaven, nobody is reporting in this fashion on us." - J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
"But some of us are beginning to pull well away, in our irritation, from... the exquisite tasters, the vintage snobs, the three-star Michelin gourmets. There is, we feel, a decent area somewhere between boiled carrots and Beluga caviar, sour plonk and Chateau Lafitte, where we can take care of our gullets and bellies without worshipping them." - J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
"If we openly declare what is wrong with us, what is our deepest need, then perhaps the death and despair will by degrees disappear." - J. B. Priestly, fully John Boynton Priestly
"Capitalism, though it may not always give the scientific worker a living wage, will always protect him, as being one of the geese which produce golden eggs for its table." - J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
"We must, I think, regard the normal death as a feature characteristic of life. Normal death is sometimes regarded as a wearing out of the machinery of life; but it is evidently a quite unsuitable metaphor, since living structure, when we consider it closely, can easily be seen to be constantly renewing itself, so that it cannot be regarded as mere machinery which necessarily wears out. Normal death must apparently be regarded from the biological standpoint as a means by which room is made for further more definite development of life." - J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
"Pray not too often for great favors, for we stand most in need of small ones." - J. L. Balsford
"All my own perception of beauty both in majesty and simplicity is founded upon Our Lady." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"All your words are but to say: you are a woman, and your part is in the house. But... I can ride and wield blade, and I do not fear either pain or death." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"Although now long estranged, Man is not wholly lost nor wholly changed. Dis-graced he may be, yet is not de-throned, and keeps the rags of lordship once he owned: Man, Sub-creator, the refracted Light through whom is splintered from a single White to many hues, and endlessly combined in living shapes that move from mind to mind. Though all the crannies of the world we filled with Elves and Goblins, though we dared to build Gods and their houses out of dark and light, and sowed the seed of dragons- 'twas our right (used or misused). That right has not decayed: we make still by the law in which we're made. Fantasy remains a human right: we make in our measure and in our derivative mode, because we are made: and not only made, but made in the image and likeness of a Maker." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"Among those who still have enough wisdom not to think fairy-stories are pernicious, the common opinion seems to be that there is a natural connection between the minds of children and fairy-stories, of the same order as the connection between children's bodies and milk. I think this is an error; at best an error of false sentiment, and one that is therefore most often made by those who, for whatever private reason (such as childlessness), tend to think of children as a special kind of creature, almost a different race, rather than normal, if immature, members of a particular family, and of the human family at large." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"And as the captains gazed south to the Land of Mordor, it seemed to them that, black against the pall of cloud, there rose a huge shape of shadow, impenetrable, lightning-crowned, filling all the sky. Enormous it reared above the world, and stretched out towards them a vast threatening hand, terrible but impotent: for even as it leaned over them, a great wind took it, and it was all blown away, and passed; and then a hush fell." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"And Gandalf said: 'This is your realm, and the heart of the greater realm that shall be. The Third Age of the world is ended, and the new age is begun; and it is your task to order it's beginning and to preserve what must be preserved. For though much has been saved, much must now pass away; and the power of the Three Rings also is ended. And all the lands that you see, and those that lie round about them, shall be dwellings of Men. For the time comes of the Dominion of Men, and the Elder Kindred shall fade or depart." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"And he sang to them, now in the Elven tongue, now in the speech of the West, until their hearts, wounded with sweet words, overflowed, and their joy was like swords, and they passed in thought out to regions where pain and delight flow together and tears are the very wine of blessedness." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"And still Meriadoc the hobbit stood there blinking through his tears, and no one spoke to him, indeed none seemed to heed him. He brushed away the tears, and stooped to pick up the green shield that Eowyn had given him, and he slung it at his back. Then he looked for his sword that he had let fall; for even as he struck his blow his arm was numbed, and now he could only use his left hand." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien