This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare
Love, it has been said, flows downward. The love of parents for their children has always been far more powerful than that of children for their parents; and who among the sons of men ever loved God with a thousandth part of the love which Go has manifested to us.
Robert A. Heinlein, fully Robert Anson Heinlein, pen name for Anson MacDonald
Do not handicap your children by making their lives easy.
Richard M. Hare, fully Richard Mervyn Hare
It is, most fundamentally, because moral judgments are universablizable that we can speak of moral thought as rational (to universalize is to give the reason); and their prescriptivity is very intimately connected with our freedom to form our own moral opinions (only those free to think and act need a prescriptive language).
Character | Freedom | Language | Need | Reason | Thought | Think | Thought |
Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare
A mother should give her children a superabundance of enthusiasm; that after they have lost all they are sure to lose on mixing with the world, enough may still remain to prompt and support them through great actions.
Character | Children | Enough | Enthusiasm | Mother | World |
Herbert Hoover, fully Herbert Clark Hoover
The moral and spiritual forces of our country do not lose ground in the hours we are busy on our jobs; their battle is the leisure time. We are organizing the production of leisure. We need better organization of its consumption.
Battle | Better | Character | Leisure | Need | Organization | Time |
In civilized life... it has at last become possible for large numbers of people to pass from the cradle to the grave without ever having had a pang of genuine fear. Man of us need an attack of mental disease to teach us the meaning of the word. Hence the possibility of so much blindly optimistic philosophy and religion.
Character | Disease | Fear | Grave | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Need | People | Philosophy | Religion | Teach |
The chief and most confounding objection to excessive skepticism, that no durable good can ever result from it; while it remains in its full force and vigor. We need only ask such a skeptic, what his meaning is? And what he proposes by all these curious researches? He is immediately at a loss, and knows not what to answer.
It may well be that the greatest tragedy of this period of social transition is not the glaring noisiness of the so-called bad people, but the appalling silence of the so-called good people. It may be that our generation will have to repent not only for the diabolical actions and vitriolic words of the children of darkness, but also for the crippling fears and tragic apathy of the children of light.
Apathy | Character | Children | Darkness | Good | Light | People | Silence | Tragedy | Will | Words |
Jaron Lanier, fully Jaron Zepel Lanier
Life is based on limitation and compromise. The fact that we forget the meaning of life is the meaning of life. Being in a state of partial awareness allows experience and life to progress. God, as an omniscient being, is not an “experiencing being” because his or her experience is not new. If You were going to start a universe, what would Your options be? You could choose to remain totally stagnant, but that wouldn’t amount to a true universe. You’d need entities that experience it, entities that are fragile and temporary and not omniscient. That’s who we are and why we’re here.
Awareness | Character | Experience | God | Life | Life | Meaning | Need | Progress | Universe | Awareness |
Relationship based on mutual need brings only conflict. However interdependent we are on each other, we are using each other for a purpose, for an end. With an end in view, relationship is not.
Character | Interdependent | Need | Purpose | Purpose | Relationship |
Garrison Keillor, fully Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor
Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. The fearful are caught as often as the bold. Faith alone defends.
Character | Children | Danger | Experience | Faith | Men | Nature | Security | Superstition | Danger |
In the last twenty years we have developed this treadmill mentality. We think that by always reaching higher, accomplishing more - more money, a better body, the perfect mate - that we will automatically be happy. That’s an illusion. All this reaching is just making us crazy. We need to rest.
Better | Body | Character | Happy | Illusion | Money | Need | Rest | Will | Think |