This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
Nine-tenths of the appeal of pornography is due to the indecent feelings concerning sex which moralists inculcate in the young; the other tenth is physiological, and will occur in one way or another whatever the state of the law may be.
As the grand discordant harmony of the celestial bodies may be explained by the simple principles of gravity and impulse, so also in that more wonderful and complicated microcosm the heart of man, all the phenomena of morals are perhaps resolvable into one single principle, the pursuit of apparent good; for although customs universally vary, yet man in all climates and countries is essentially the same.
Good | Harmony | Heart | Impulse | Man | Phenomena | Principles |
C. S. Lewis, fully Clive Staples "C.S." Lewis, called "Jack" by his family
There are people who want to keep our sex instinct inflamed in order to make money out of us. Because, of course, a man with an obsession is a man who has very little sales-resistance.
Instinct | Little | Man | Money | Obsession | Order | People |
Society considers the sex experiences of a man as attributes of his general development, while similar experiences in the life of a woman are looked upon as a terrible calamity, a loss of honor and of all that is good an noble in a human being.
Calamity | Good | Honor | Life | Life | Man | Society | Woman | Loss |
The Virtue of Prosperity is Temperance; the Virtue of Adversity is Fortitude: which in Morals is the more Heroical Virtue.
Adversity | Fortitude | Prosperity | Virtue | Virtue |
To speak in a mean, the virtue of prosperity is temperance, the virtue of adversity is fortitude, which in morals is the more heroic virtue.
Adversity | Fortitude | Prosperity | Virtue | Virtue |
The nation's morals are like its teeth: the more decayed they are the more it hurts to touch them.
Be good enough to remember that your morals are only your habits; and do not call other people immoral because they have other habits.
Love is but a prelude to life, an overture in which the theme of the impending work is exquisitely hinted at, but which remains nevertheless only a symbol and a promise. What is to follow, if all goes well, begins presently to appear. Passion settles down into possession, courtship into partnership, pleasure into habit. A child, half mystery and half plaything, comes to show us what we have done and to make its consequences perpetual. We see that by indulging our inclination we have woven about us a net from which we cannot escape: our choices, bearing fruit, begin to manifest our destiny. That life which once seemed to spread out infinitely before us is narrowed to one mortal career. We learn that in morals the infinite is a chimera, and that in accomplishing anything definite a man renounces everything else. He sails henceforth for one point of the compass.
Consequences | Destiny | Habit | Inclination | Life | Life | Love | Man | Mortal | Mystery | Passion | Pleasure | Promise | Work | Learn |
Isaac Asimov, born Isaak Yudovich Ozimov
Never let your sense of morals keep you from doing what is right.
So far as I have observed in this life, ten men have failed from defect in morals where one has failed from defect in intellect.
We must recognize that beneath the superficial classifications of sex and race the same potentialities exist, recurring generation after generation, only to perish because society has no place for them.
Menander, aka Menander of Athens NULL
He that lends an easy and credulous ear to calumny is either a man of very ill morals or has no more sense and understanding than a child.
Calumny | Man | Sense | Understanding |
Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk. The very hope of man. The thoughts of his heart, the religion of nations, the manners and morals of mankind are all at the mercy of a new generalization.
God | Heart | Hope | Man | Mankind | Manners | Mercy | Nations | Religion | Risk | God |
If a nation of men is exalted to that height of morals as to refuse to fight and choose rather to suffer loss of goods and loss of life than to use violence, they must be not helpless but most effective and great men; they would overawe their invader, and make him ridiculous; they would communicate the contagion of their virtue and inoculate all mankind.
Sexual boredom, that predator of marriages, is generally ascribed to overfamiliarity; but I think it mighty more aptly be blamed on the lack or failure of true intimacy... Sex thrives on the dynamics between novelty and intimacy... What is inalienably shared... for brief encounters, in which little is genuinely discovered or given, tend to emphasize people’s sameness rather than their individuality, and hence to obliterate the novelty that is sought. Intimacy, which demands time and trust, is available almost exclusively through marriage and long friendship.
Failure | Individuality | Little | Marriage | Novelty | People | Time | Trust | Novelty | Failure | Think |
AIDS obliges people to thin of sex as having, possibly, the direst consequences: suicide. Or murder.
Consequences | Murder | People | Suicide |