This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson
We do not need to project out own ideas into the economy of nature; they belong there in their own right. Our own ideas are in the economy of nature because we ourselves are in it. Any and every one of the things which a man does intelligently is done with a purpose and to a certain end which is the final cause why he does itÂ… Through man, who is part and parcel of nature, purposiveness most certainly is part and parcel of nature. In what sense is it arbitrary, knowing from within that where there is organization there always is a purpose, to conclude that there is a purpose wherever there is organization?
Absolute | Ego | Existence | People | Question | Revelation |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
At least when the Emperor Justinian, a sky-god man, decided to outlaw sodomy, he had to come up with a good practical reason, which he did. It is well known, Justinian declared, that buggery is a principal cause of earthquakes, and so must be prohibited. But our sky-godders, always eager to hate, still quote Leviticus, as if that looney text had anything useful to say about anything except, perhaps, the inadvisability of eating shellfish in the Jerusalem area.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
The first TV babies are now writing with a TV mind that has no attention span at all.
Objectivity | Opinion | World |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
What other culture could have produced someone like Hemmingway and not seen the joke?
Question |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
Patriotism is as sickening today as it has ever been. I was watching the news before you came and there was a lot of coverage of Kosovo and the problems there. They showed footage of people burning an American flag. And the newscaster got all broken up and teary-eyed. He says, "I guess [sob] I just feel something here, folks, when I see the American flag being burned." And I said, You fucking asshole. Whatever happened to the news?
Price | Proletariat | Question | Right | System |
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
Of course, Socialism is violently denounced by the capitalist press and by all the brood of subsidized contributors to magazine literature, but this only confirms the view that the advance of Socialism is very properly recognized by the capitalist class as the one cloud upon the horizon which portends an end to the system in which they have waxed fat, insolent and despotic through the exploitation of their countless wage-working slaves.
Business | Care | Earth | Knowing | Men | Question | Society | System | Society | Business | Old |
Time will explain it all. He is a talker, and needs no questioning before he speaks.
Do not mistake the rule of force for true power. Men are not shaped by force.
During the civil wars there appeared one, which makes too great a figure in story to be passed over in silence; I mean that of the redoubted Hudibras, an account of which Butler has transmitted to posterity in the following lines:
Everett Dirksen, fully Everett McKinley Dirksen
I am a man of fixed and unbending principles, the first of which is to be flexible at all times.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
I'm one of the blind alleys off the main road of procreation.
Conversation | Opinion |
The offertory is the first essential action of the Liturgy, because in it we make the costly and solemn oblation, under tokens, of our very selves and all our substance; that they may be transformed, quickened, and devoted to the interests of God.
The divine in man is our sole ground for believing that there is anything divine in the universe outside of man. Man is the revealer of the divine. At bottom, the world is to be interpreted in terms of joy, but of a joy that includes all the pain, includes it and transforms it and transcends it. The Light of the World is a light that is saturated with the darkness which it has overcome and transfigured.
The sad and shocking story of what has happened in America in recent years must be told. Our people must have the facts. There is safety in an informed public. There is real danger in a complacent, uninformed citizenry. This is our real danger today. Yes, the truth must be told even at the risk of destroying, in large measure, the influence of men who are widely respected and loved by the American people. The stakes are high. Freedom and survival is the issue.
God help us to be grateful for our blessings, never to be guilty of the sin of ingratitude, and to instill this same gratitude into the lives of our children. Someone has said that an ungrateful man is like a hog under a tree eating apples and never looking up to see where they come from.
Church | Comfort | God | Government | Humility | Man | Men | Need | Peace | Prayer | Question | Will | Government | God |
The radiant future stretches forth its arms toward us, and binds us to be willing servants to its work, willingly to accept those limitations of the individual will which are indispensable in the service of a far-off cause, a service which at the same time disciplines and ennobles the individual himself.
Appearance | Capacity | Danger | Important | Question | Danger |