This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Wilhelm von Humboldt, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt
The sorrow which calls for help and comfort is not the greatest, nor does it come from the depths of the heart.
Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
Get this one: There was a time a few years back when a dig at the lawyers at the Bijou Theater was a sure fire laugh, but now the so-called humorists have sensed the distastes in the mouths of the public for such efforts of humor.
The market economy must find its place in a higher order of things which is not ruled by supply and demand, free prices, and competition. It must be firmly contained within an all-embracing order of society in which the imperfections and harshness of economic freedom are corrected by law and in which man is not denied conditions of life appropriate to his nature.
Freedom | Law | Life | Life | Man | Order | Society | Society |
Today we are aware of the high price that had to be paid for it [material progress] and that we will continue to have to pay, and we are by no means still certain that the price is not too high. We distrust the optimistic assertion that technology and the machine are completely innocent of all this and that the blame rests squarely on man alone who is using them in the wrong way and will just have to learn the right one...The problem of the machine - which happens to be something else than just a highly developed tool - is not merely one of its use, but also one of the machine itself, which, following its own laws and imposing them on man, extracts its tribute from him.
Only too often do we thoughtlessly follow a fashion which favors mass produced commodities, and only slowly do we come to realize that these also have great disadvantages.
Character | Competition | Harmony | Important | Order | Principles | Society | Society |
With this the [genuine] leader will cause many to turn against him. He will have robbed these many of an object to hold on to, like a bean stalk would feel robbed of comfort if you took away the supporting stick of wood.
Capacity | Criticism | Education | Enough | Future | Humanity | Ideas | Life | Life | Play | Sense | Sound | Thinking | Work | Think |
There is no denying it: the collectivist state is rooted in the masses (to which professors can belong as well as workers) and it can only exist under conditions which, sociologically speaking, we term spiritual collectivization, that is, conditions of society for which precisely the extreme democratic development is an excellent preparation but which is the direct opposite of the liberal as well as the conservative-aristocratic ideal.
Freedom | Law | Life | Life | Man | Order | Society | Society |
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
I too but signify at the utmost a little wash'd-up drift, a few sands and dead leaves to gather, gather, and merge myself as part of the sands and drift.
Sound |
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
Now understand me well. Out of every fruition of success, no matter what, comes forth something to make a new effort necessary.
We need to ask not whether it is realistic or practical or viable but whether it is imaginable. We need to ask if our consciousness and imagination have been so assaulted and co-opted by the royal consciousness that we have been robbed of the courage or power to think an alternative thought.
It is better to catch the idol-maker than to smash each idol.
You may say you are already doing this; you see and hear nothing of worldly ways, you do not employ your bodily senses more than is necessary. If indeed you are doing this you have closed a large window in this image, but you are not yet safe, because you have not closed the hidden openings of your imagination. So if you deliberately allow yourself to consider the vanities of this world, or to think of comfort and ease, then, although your soul may remain in you as far as the bodily senses are concerned, it is in fact being lured away by these vain fancies.
God | Little | Love | Perception | Reason | Soul | Sound | God |
No serious historian of politics would imagine that he had accounted for the protective tariff of the system of bounties or subsidies, for the monetary and banking laws, for the state of law in regard to corporate privileges and immunities, for the actual status of property rights, for agricultural or for labor policies, until he had gone behind the general claims and the abstract justifications and had identified the specifically interested groups which promoted the specific law.
Walter Gropius, fully Walter Adolph Georg Gropius
Let us therefore create a new guild of craftsmen without the class-distinctions that raise an arrogant barrier between craftsmen and artists! Let us desire, conceive, and create the new building of the future together. It will combine architecture, sculpture, and painting in a single form, and will one day rise towards the heavens from the hands of a million workers as the crystalline symbol of a new and coming faith.
Education | Effort | Experience | Important | Integration | Knowledge | Method | Right | Sense | Will |
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
What blurt is this about virtue and about vice? Evil propels me and reform of evil propels me, I stand indifferent, my gait is no fault-finder's or rejecter's gait, I moisten the roots of all that has grown.
Sound |
That, however, does not render the poetry as a failure or as an irrelevance. It only affirms that alternatives to the lethal reductionism of empire require imagination and courage and staying power. In that ancient world, it was required that old Jerusalem be relinquished and new Jerusalem be undertaken. It is no less required now that there be relinquishing and undertaking. Those who act in this way will do so at the behest of the poets who may eventually be seen as Spirit led.
Old age think good quiet. Everything not concern heart. Self attend without great plan. Empty know return old forest. Pine wind blow undo belt. Hill moon light pluck qin. Gentleman ask end open reason. Fisherman song enter riverbank deep. Now in old age, I know the value of silence, the world's affairs no longer stir my heart. Turning to myself, I have no greater plan, all I can do is return to the forest of old. Wind from the pine trees blows my sash undone, the moon shines through the hills; I pluck the qin. You ask me why the world must rise and fall, fishermen sing on the steep banks of the river.
Control | Man | Meditation | Peace | Sound |