This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The degradation of the sense of symbol in modern society is one of its many signs of spiritual decay.
Admiration | Secrecy |
Everything healthy, everything certain, everything holy, if we can find such things, they all need to be emphasized and articulated. For this it is necessary that there be communication between the hearts and minds of men, communication and not the noise of slogans or the repetition of clichés. Communication is becoming more and more difficult, and… speech is in danger of perishing or being perverted in the amplified noise of beasts…. There is, it seems to me, every reason why we should attempt to cry out to one another and comfort one another, in so far as this may be possible, with the truth of Christ and also with the truth of humanism and reason. For faith cannot not be preserved if … man is destroyed: that is to say if his humanity is utterly debased and mechanized, while he himself remains on earth as the instrument of enormous and unidentified forces like those which press us inexorably to the brink of cataclysms.
Contemplation | God | Good | Opposition | Self | God | Contemplation |
The reductionist program that dominates current work in the philosophy of mind is completely misguided, because it is based on a groundless assumption that a particular conception of objective reality is exhaustive of what there is. Eventually, I believe, current attempts to understand the mind by analogy with man-made computers that can perform superbly some of the same external tasks as conscious beings will be recognized as a gigantic waste of time. The true principles underlying the mind will be discovered, if at all, only by a more direct approach. But merely to deny the possibility of psychophysical reduction does not end the problem. There is still a question about how we are to conceive of the inclusion of subjective mental processes in the world as it really is. And there is the question of whether they can be in some other way objective understood. Physicalism, though unacceptable, has behind it a broader impulse to which it gives distorted and ultimately self-defeating expression. That is the impulse to find a way of thinking about the world as it is, so that everything in it, not just atoms and planets, can be regarded as real in the same way: not just an aspect of the world as it appears to us, but something that is really there. I think part of the explanation of the modern weakness for physicalist reduction is that a less impoverished and reductive idea of objectivity has not been available to fill out the project of constructing an overall picture of the world. The objectivity of physics was viable: it continued to yield progressively more understanding through successive application to those properties of the physical world that earlier applications had discovered.
Opposition | World |
To make sense of interpersonal compensation it is not necessary to invoke the silly idea of a social entity, thus establishing an analogy with intrapersonal compensation. All one needs is the belief, shared by most people, that it is better for each of 10 people to receive a benefit than for one person to receive it, worse for 10 people to be harmed than for one person to be similarly harmed, better for one person to benefit greatly than for another to benefit slightly, and so forth.
You don’t believe—I won’t attempt to make ye: You are asleep—I won’t attempt to wake ye. Sleep on! sleep on! while in your pleasant dreams Of Reason you may drink of Life’s clear streams. Reason and Newton, they are quite two things; For so the swallow and the sparrow sings. Reason says ‘Miracle’: Newton says ‘Doubt.’ Aye! that’s the way to make all Nature out. ‘Doubt, doubt, and don’t believe without experiment’: That is the very thing that Jesus meant, When He said ‘Only believe! believe and try! Try, try, and never mind the reason why!’
They said this mystery never shall cease: The priest promotes war, and the soldier peace.
Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers
A man is not primarily a witness against something. That is only incidental to the fact that he is a witness for something. A witness, in the sense that I am using the word, is a man whose life and faith are so completely one that when the challenge comes to step out and testify for his faith, he does so, disregarding all risks, accepting all consequences.
Devil | Hell | Opposition | Rest |
It was in the recognition that there is in each man a final essence, that is to say an immortal soul, which only God can judge, that a limit was set upon the dominion of men over men.
Administration | Government | Habit | Office | Opposition | Power | Stupidity | Government |
The smashing of idols is in itself such a preoccupation that it is almost impossible for the iconoclast to look clearly into a future when there will not be many idols left to smash.
Business | Opposition | People | Business |
It is an inevitable defect, that bureaucrats will care more for routine than for results.
Administration | Criticism | Government | Opposition | Government |
In a free society the state does not administer the affairs of men. It administers justice among men who conduct their own affairs.
We could lose, and I think we need to face that. I was speaking in Nebraska the other day and a very intelligent man came up afterward and said in a very kind and intelligent way, Of course you know you may be fighting a losing battle. And I answered, I’ve known for 30 years that I may be fighting a losing battle. The question to me is not whether I’m going to win or not, but whether I’m going to fight or not.
Capital punishment | Hypocrisy | Life | Life | Opposition | Public | Punishment | Society | Society | Think |
W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
The history of the American Negro is the history of this strife, -- this longing to attain self-conscious manhood, to merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost... He simply wishes to make it possible for a man to be both a Negro and an American...
Consideration | Death | Disagreement | Inevitable | Loyalty | Loyalty | Opposition | Patriotism | Position | Reconciliation | Right | Slavery | Spirit |
W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky
Almost all Europe, for many centuries, was inundated with blood, which was shed at the direct instigation or with the full approval of the ecclesiastical authorities.
Life | Life | Opposition | Politics |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The Bolshevik slogans and ideas on the whole have been confirmed by history; but concretely things have worked out differently; they are more original, more peculiar, more variated than anyone could have expected.
Control | Opposition |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
The human frame being what it is, heart, body and brain all mixed together, and not contained in separate compartments as they will be no doubt in another million years, a good dinner is of great importance to good talk. One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.
History | Opposition | Story |
Today's world, as we all know, is faced with multiple threats. From whichever angle I look at this menace, I always come to the conclusion that salvation can only come through a profound awakening of man to his own personal responsibility, which is at the same time a global responsibility. Thus, the only way to save our world, as I see it, lies in a democracy that recalls its ancient Greek roots: democracy based on an integral human personality personally answering for the fate of the community.
Authority | Awareness | Heart | Office | Opposition | Position | Understanding | Awareness |
If we make God's will our law, then God's promise shall be our support and comfort, and we shall find every burden light, and every duty a joy.
Means | Opposition | Will |
Strange that men, from age to age, should consent to hold their lives at the breath of another, merely that each in his turn may have a power of acting the tyrant according to the law! Oh, God! give me poverty! Shower upon me all the imaginary hardships of human life! I will receive them with all thankfulness. Turn me a prey to the wild beasts of the desert, so I be never again the victim of man, dressed in the gore-dripping robes of authority! Suffer me at least to call life, the pursuits of life, my own! Let me hold it at the mercy of the elements, of the hunger of the beasts, or the revenge of barbarians, but not of the cold-blooded prudence of monopolists and kings!
Danger | Firmness | Man | Nature | Opposition | Speech | Will | Danger | Circumstance | Truths |