This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
And what is the education of mankind if not the passage from faith in authority to personal conviction and to the sustained practice of the intellectual duty to consent to no idea except by virtue of its recognized truth, to accept no fact until its reality has been, in one way or another, established.
Authority | Duty | Education | Faith | Mankind | Practice | Reality | Truth | Virtue | Virtue |
Vivekananda, fully Sri or Swami Vivekananda, born Narendra Nath Datta NULL
Duty becomes a disease with us; it drags us ever forward... This duty, this idea of duty is the midday summer sun which scorches the innermost soul of mankind... The only true duty is to be unattached and to work as free beings, to give up all work unto God.
A sense of duty pursues us ever. It is omnipresent, like the Deity.
When occasions present themselves, in which the interests of the people are at variance with their inclinations, it is the duty of the persons whom they have appointed to be the guardians of those interests, to withstand the temporary delusion, in order to give them time and opportunity for more cool and sedate reflection.
Delusion | Duty | Opportunity | Order | People | Present | Reflection | Time |
Virtue consists in doing our duty in the several relations we sustain in respect to ourselves, to our fellow-men, and to God, as known from reason, conscience and revelation.
Conscience | Duty | God | Men | Reason | Respect | Revelation | Virtue | Virtue | Respect |
Bhagavad Gītā, simply known as Gita NULL
There is more joy in doing one’s own duty badly than in doing another man’s duty well.
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
A sense of duty is useful in work, but offensive in personal relations. People wish to be liked, not endured with patient resignation.
Duty | People | Resignation | Sense | Work |
Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
Can true love be anything but exacting? How can our sense of duty allow us to abstain from admonition?
You have to turn might into duty and right into obligation. In effect, societies are ruled either by coercion or manipulation, by deceit, cheating, ideology, or by power. How do you get to normative order that avoids the excesses of things? That is the basic problem.
Coercion | Deceit | Duty | Obligation | Order | Power | Right |
A task becomes a duty from the moment you suspect it to be an essential part of that integrity which alone entitles a man to assume responsibility.
Duty | Integrity | Man | Responsibility |