This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The use of force alone is but temporary. It may subdue for a moment; but it does not remove the necessity of subduing again: and a nation is not governed, which is perpetually to be conquered.
If a man should transfer caution to those things in which the will may be exercised and the acts of the will, he will immediately, by willing to be cautious, have also the power of avoiding what he chooses: but if he transfer it to the things which are not in his power and will, and attempt to avoid the things which are in the power of others, he will of necessity fear, he will be unstable, he will be disturbed. For death or pain is not formidable, but the fear of pain or death.
Caution | Death | Fear | Man | Necessity | Pain | Power | Will |
Some men think that the gratification of curiosity is the end of knowledge; some the love of fame; some the pleasure of dispute; some the necessity of supporting themselves by their knowledge; but the real use of all knowledge is this, that we should dedicate that reason which was given us by God to the use and advantage of man.
Curiosity | Dispute | Fame | God | Knowledge | Love | Man | Men | Necessity | Pleasure | Reason | God | Think |
Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Life as a sum of ends has a right against abstract right. If for example it is only by stealing bread that the wolf can be kept from the door, the action is of course an encroachment on someone’s property, but it would be wrong to treat this action as an ordinary theft. To refuse to allow a man in jeopardy of his life to take such steps for self-preservation would be to stigmatize him as without rights, and since he would be deprived of his life, his freedom would be annulled altogether. Many diverse details have a bearing on the preservation of life, and when we have our eyes on the future we have to engage ourselves in these details. But the only thing that is necessary is to live now, the future is not absolute but ever exposed to accident. Hence it is only the necessity of the immediate present which can justify a wrong action, because not to do the action would in turn be to cause not to do the action would in turn be to commit an offense, indeed the most wrong of all offenses, namely the complete destruction of the embodiment of freedom.
Absolute | Abstract | Accident | Action | Cause | Ends | Example | Freedom | Future | Justify | Life | Life | Man | Necessity | Offense | Present | Property | Right | Rights | Self | Self-preservation | Wrong |
Leisure, though the propertied classes give its name to their own idleness, is not idleness. It is not even a luxury: it is a necessity, and a necessity of the first importance. Some of the most valuable work done in the world has been done at leisure, and never paid for in cash or kind. Leisure any be described as free activity, labor as compulsory activity. Leisure does what it likes: labor does what it must, the compulsion being that of Nature, which in these latitudes leaves men no choice between labor and starvation.
Choice | Idleness | Labor | Leisure | Luxury | Men | Nature | Necessity | Work | World |
Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Only that will which obeys law is free; for it obeys itself - it is independent and so free. When the state or our country constitutes a community of existence; when the subjective will of man submits to laws - the contradiction between liberty and necessity vanishes.
Contradiction | Existence | Law | Liberty | Man | Necessity | Will |
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
Money is not required to buy one necessity of the soul.
Philosophy must then assume that no real contradiction will be found between freedom and physical necessity of the same human actions, for it cannot give up the conception of nature any more than that of freedom.
Contradiction | Freedom | Nature | Necessity | Philosophy | Will |
Justice is a name for certain moral requirements, which, regarded collectively, stand higher in the scale of social utility, and are therefore of more paramount obligation, than any others; though particular cases may occur in which some other social duty is so important, as to overrule any one of the general maxims of justice. Thus, to save a life, it may not only be allowable, but a duty, to steal, or take by force, the necessary food or medicine, or to kidnap, and compel to officiate, the only qualified medical practitioner. In such cases, as we do not call anything justice which is not a virtue, we usually say, not that justice must give way to some other moral principle, but that what is just in ordinary case is, by reason of that other principle, not just in the particular case. By this useful accommodation of language, the character of indefeasibility attributed to justice is kept up, and we are saved from the necessity of maintaining that there can be laudable injustice.
Character | Duty | Force | Important | Injustice | Injustice | Justice | Language | Life | Life | Maxims | Necessity | Obligation | Reason | Virtue | Virtue |
The typical American believes that no necessity of the soul is free and that thee are precious few, if any, which cannot be bought.
Henri Poincaré, fully Jules Henri Poincaré
To doubt everything and to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both free us from the necessity of reflection.
Doubt | Necessity | Reflection |
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
But repression is not the way to virtue. When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. They become rigid and defensive, and their self stops growing. Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed, and still kept within the bounds of reason. If a person learns to control his instinctual desires, not because he has to, but because he wants to, he can enjoy himself without becoming addicted.
Control | Discipline | Fear | Life | Life | Necessity | People | Reason | Self | Virtue | Virtue | Wants |
Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson
The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.
Education | Intelligence | Necessity | Strength | Tenderness |
Michael Harrington, fully Edward Michael "Mike" Harrington
Democracy, it must be emphasized, is a practical necessity and not just a philosophic value.