This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger
Empires have no interest in operating within an international system; they aspire to be the international system.
System |
The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government.
Duty | Government | Individual | People | Power | Right | Time | Government |
To persevere in one's duty and be silent is the best answer to calumny.
Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger
The statesman’s duty is to bridge the gap between his nation’s experience and his vision.
Duty | Experience | Vision |
Human happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected.
Henry Miller, aka Henry Valentine Miller
Develop an interest in life as you see it - the people, things, literature, music. The world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls, and interesting people. Forget yourself.
Henry Miller, aka Henry Valentine Miller
Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.
Who are the really disloyal? Those who inflame racial hatreds, who sow religious and class dissensions. those who subvert the Constitution by violating the freedom of the ballot box. Those who make a mockery of majority rule by the use of the filibuster. Those who impair democracy by denying equal educational facilities. Those who frustrate justice by lynch law or by making a farce of jury trials. Those who deny freedom of speech and of the press and of assembly. Those who demand special favors against the interest of the commonwealth. Those who regard public office as a source of private gain. Those who exalt the military over the civil. Those who for selfish and private purposes stir up national antagonisms and expose the world to the ruin of war.
Democracy | Freedom of speech | Freedom | Justice | Law | Majority | Mockery | Office | Public | Regard | Rule | Speech | Trials | War | World |
If we attend to the experience of men’s conduct, we meet frequent and, as we ourselves allow, just complaints that one cannot find a single certain example of the disposition to act from pure duty. Although many things are done in conformity with what duty prescribes, it is nevertheless always doubtful whether they are done strictly from duty, so as to have moral worth.
Conduct | Conformity | Duty | Example | Experience | Men | Worth |
Love is a matter of feeling, not of will or volition and I cannot love because I will to do so, still less because I ought (I cannot be necessitated to love); hence there is no such thing as a duty to love... What is done from constraint is not done from love.
Constraint | Duty | Love | Will |
With the sharpest self-examination we can find nothing beside the moral principle of duty which could have been powerful enough to move us to this or that action and to so great a sacrifice; yet we cannot from this infer with certainty; that it was not really some secret impulse of self-love, under the false appearance of duty, that was the actual determining cause of the will. We like them to flatter ourselves by falsely taking credit for a more noble motive; whereas in fact we can never, even with the strictest examination, get completely behind the secret springs of action.
Action | Appearance | Cause | Credit | Duty | Enough | Impulse | Love | Nothing | Sacrifice | Self | Self-love | Will |
Conscience is not a thing to be acquired, and it is not a duty to acquire it; but every man, as a moral being, has it originally within him.
Conscience | Duty | Man |
An action done from duty derives its moral worth, not from the purpose which is to be attained by it, but from the maxim by which it is to be determined, and therefore does not depend on the realization of the object of the actions, but merely on the principle of volition by which the action has taken place, without regard to any object of desire.
Action | Desire | Duty | Object | Purpose | Purpose | Regard | Worth |
The beautiful is what pleases in the mere judgment (and therefore not by the medium of sensation in accordance with a concept of the understanding). It follows at once from this that it must please apart from all interest. The sublime is what pleases immediately through its opposition to the interest of sense.
Judgment | Opposition | Sense | Understanding |