This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Charlotte Perkins Gilman, a.k.a. Charlotte Anna (nee Perkins), Charlotte Perkins Stetson
The first duty of a human being is to assume the right functional relationship to society - more briefly, to find your real job, and do it.
Take care of your health; you have no right to neglect it, and thus become a burden to yourself and perhaps others. Let you food be simple; never eat too much; take exercise enough; be systematic in all things; if unwell, starve yourself till you are well again, and you may throw care to the winds, and physic to the dogs.
Ulysses S. Grant, fully Ulysses Simpson Grant, born Hiram Ulysses Grant
Too long denial of guaranteed right is sure to lead to revolution - bloody revolution, where suffering must fall upon the innocent as well as the guilty.
Revolution | Right | Suffering | Wisdom |
Human beings have an inalienable right to invent themselves; when the right is pre-empted it is called brain-washing.
A philosopher, who purposes only to represent the common sense of mankind in more beautiful and more engaging colors, if by accident he falls into error, goes not farther; but renewing his appeal to common sense, and the natural sentiments of the; mind, returns into the right path, and secures himself from any dangerous illusions.
Accident | Common Sense | Error | Mankind | Mind | Right | Sense | Wisdom |
A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.
Look around this universe. What an immense profusion of beings, animated and organized, sensible and active! You admire this prodigious variety and fecundity. But inspect a little more narrowly these living existences, the only beings worth regarding. How hostile and destructive to each other! How insufficient all of them for their own happiness! How contemptible or odious to the spectator! The whole presents nothing but the idea of a blind nature, impregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children.
Care | Children | Discernment | Little | Nature | Nothing | Universe | Wisdom | Worth |
Hubert Humphrey, fully Hubert Horatio Humphrey
The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
Emil G. Hirsch, fully Emil Gustav Hirsch
Wherever the right of property clashes with a duty toward humanity, the former has not credentials that are entitled to consideration.
Consideration | Duty | Humanity | Property | Right | Wisdom |
Robert H. Jackson, fully Robert Houghwout Jackson
Freedom to differ is not limited to things that do not matter much. That would be a mere shadow of freedom. The test of its substance is the right to differ as to things that touch the heart of the existing order.