This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Let the ground of all thy religious actions be obedience; examine not why it is commanded, but observe it because it is commanded. True obedience neither procrastinates nor questions.
Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
Men are not corrupted by the exercise of power or debased by the habit of obedience, but by the exercise of a power which they believe to be illegitimate, and by obedience to a rule which they consider to be usurped and oppressive.
The more I consider the condition of the white men, the more fixed becomes my opinion that, instead of gaining, they have lost much by subjecting themselves to what they call the laws and regulations of civilized societies.
The theory that can absorb the greatest number of facts, and persist in doing so, generation after generation, through all changes of opinion and of detail, is the one that must rule all observation.
Observation | Opinion | Rule | Wisdom |
Public opinion is stronger than the Legislature, and nearly as strong as the Ten Commandments.
Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
All our distinctions are accidental; beauty and deformity, though personal qualities, are neither entitled to praise nor censure; yet it is so happens that they color our opinion of those qualities to which mankind have attached responsibility.
Beauty | Censure | Mankind | Opinion | Praise | Qualities | Responsibility | Wisdom | Beauty |
Joan Chittister, fully Sister Joan D. Chittister
Blind obedience is itself an abuse of human morality. It is a misuse of the human soul in the name of religious commitment. It is a sin against individual conscience. It makes moral children of the adults from whom moral agency is required. It makes a vow, which is meant to require religious figures to listen always to the law of God, beholden first to the laws of very human organizations in the person of very human authorities. It is a law that isn't even working in the military and can never substitute for personal morality.
Abuse | Children | Commitment | Conscience | God | Individual | Law | Morality | Obedience | Sin | Soul |
The most effective way to influence opinion is by the selection and arrangement of the appropriate facts.
Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem – in my opinion – to characterize our age.
Age | Goals | Means | Opinion | Perfection |
Action makes propaganda’s effect irreversible. He who acts in obedience to propaganda can never go back. He is not obliged to believe in that propaganda because of his past action. He is obliged to receive from it his justification and authority, without which his action will seem to him absurd or unjust, which would be intolerable.
Absurd | Action | Authority | Justification | Obedience | Past | Receive | Will | Propaganda |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
Words can become idols, and machines can become idols; leaders, the state, power, and political groups may also serve. Science and the opinion of one’s neighbors can become idols, and God has become an idol for many.
How a report is framed, which facts it contains and emphasizes and which it ignores, and in what context, are as important to sharing opinion as the bare facts themselves.
B. H. Liddell Hart, fully Captain B. H. Liddell
Be very careful never to show your own bias to anyone who is giving you information, or passing it on to you. Once he sees that you have a particular inclination he will instinctively tend to tell you what he thinks will suit you, and enhance your opinion of him.
Giving | Inclination | Opinion | Will |
Nothing makes the multitude angrier than when someone forces them to change their opinion of him.