This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
As industrial technology advances and enlarges, and in the process assumes greater social, economic, and political force, it carries people away from where they belong by history, culture, deeds, association and affection.
Property | Work | Think | Understand |
In a time of disorder [Laertes] has returned to the care of the earth, the foundation of life and hope. And Odysseus finds him in an act emblematic of the best and most responsible kind of agriculture: an old man caring for a young tree.
Citizenship | Commerce | Enemy | Family | Freedom | Health | Individual | Life | Life | Majority | Mind | People | Power | Property | Society | Truth | Wealth | Will | Society | Commerce | Learn | Value |
Monsanto doesn't care about feeding the world. We have to think about the wage slavery of migrant workers and salary slavery of those who are desperately unhappy.
Ability | Diversion | Energy | Heart | Marriage | Nothing | Rights | System | Television | Wife | Will | Work | Negotiation | Understand |
History overflows time. Love overflows the allowance of the world. All the vessels overflow, and no end or limit stays put. Every shakable thing has got to be shaken. In a sense, nothing that was ever lost in Port William ever has been replaced. In another sense, nothing is ever lost, and we are compacted together forever, even by our failures, our regrets, and our longings.
We're living, it seems, in the culmination of a long warfare — warfare against human beings, other creatures and the Earth itself.
Civilization | Enough | Forgiveness | Good | Imagination | Need | Question | Sympathy | Forgiveness | Think | Understand |
You can describe the predicament that we're in as an emergency and your trial is to learn to be patient in an emergency.
When the possessions and households of citizens are no longer honored by the acts, as well as the principles, of their government, then the concentration camp ceases to be one of the possibilities of human nature and becomes one of its likelihoods.
W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy
Birth is an initiation into the ability to carry pain. We resist pain, but it has a transcendental nature.
Consequences | Learn |
W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
It was a bright September afternoon, and the streets of New York were brilliant with moving men.... He was pushed toward the ticket-office with the others, and felt in his pocket for the new five-dollar bill he had hoarded.... When at last he realized that he had paid five dollars to enter he knew not what, he stood stock-still amazed.... John... sat in a half-maze minding the scene about him; the delicate beauty of the hall, the faint perfume, the moving myriad of men, the rich clothing and low hum of talking seemed all a part of a world so different from his, so strangely more beautiful than anything he had known, that he sat in dreamland, and started when, after a hush, rose high and clear the music of Lohengrin's swan. The infinite beauty of the wail lingered and swept through every muscle of his frame, and put it all a-tune. He closed his eyes and grasped the elbows of the chair, touching unwittingly the lady's arm. And the lady drew away. A deep longing swelled in all his heart to rise with that clear music out of the dirt and dust of that low life that held him prisoned and befouled. If he could only live up in the free air where birds sang and setting suns had no touch of blood! Who had called him to be the slave and butt of all?... If he but had some master-work, some life-service, hard, aye, bitter hard, but without the cringing and sickening servility.... When at last a soft sorrow crept across the violins, there came to him the vision of a far-off home — the great eyes of his sister, and the dark drawn face of his mother.... It left John sitting so silent and rapt that he did not for some time notice the usher tapping him lightly on the shoulder and saying politely, 'will you step this way please sir?'... The manager was sorry, very very sorry — but he explained that some mistake had been made in selling the gentleman a seat already disposed of; he would refund the money, of course... before he had finished John was gone, walking hurriedly across the square... and as he passed the park he buttoned his coat and said, 'John Jones you're a natural-born fool.' Then he went to his lodgings and wrote a letter, and tore it up; he wrote another, and threw it in the fire....
Civilization | Competition | Future | Greed | Men | Survival |
W. Brugh Joy, fully William Brugh Joy
We are so involved in masks, and intensities, and inflations we can’t see the authentic in us. The primitive drives are Transcendental and you undergo a sacrifice by no longer identifying them as yours. Then, there’s a most amazing experience that takes place: your natural power comes through. When the ego surrenders wrapping itself around something, you realize you are imbued by something else, and have been all along, and your task is to find the simplicity mystery in relationship to that, so that when it is operating you recognize it is operating through you, but you don’t identify with it either consciously or unconsciously. You offer yourself as a Vehicle – it’s a mystery of relationship to the larger forces.
Consequences | Learning |
W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
Herein lie buried many things which if read with patience may show the strange meaning of being black here in the dawning of the Twentieth Century. This meaning is not without interest to you, Gentle Reader; for the problem of the Twentieth Century is the problem of the color-line.
Chance | Civilization | Culture | Devotion | Humanity | Ignorance | Men | Will | World |
W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, — a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness, — an American, a Negro; two warring souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
Pascal told only half the story. He said man was a thinking reed. What man is, is a thinking reed and a walking genital.
Character | Civilization | History | Mediocrity | People | Sentiment | Time |
W. Winwood Reade, fully William Winwood Reade
It may safely be asserted that the art of war will soon be reduced to a simple question of expenditure and credit, and that the largest purse will be the strongest arm.
It is better that, as scholars, they should think hard in the dark cuffs of voluminous cloaks, and shave their heads and bodies.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Modern natural scientists (if they know how to seek, and if we learn to help them) will find in the Hegelian dialectics, materialistically interpreted, a series of answers to the philosophical problems which are being raised by the revolution in natural science.
Capitalism | Inevitable | Means | Property |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Comrade Stalin, having become Secretary-General, has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution.
Equality | Experience | Nations | Right | Rights | Teach | Unity |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
We need the real, nation-wide terror which reinvigorates the country and through which the Great French Revolution achieved glory.
Better | Bourgeoisie | Brutality | Church | Gold | Government | Haste | Lesson | Means | Order | People | Principles | Property | Sense | Struggle | Sympathy | Wealth | Will | Work | Government | Think |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Discrimination among citizens on account of their religious convictions is wholly intolerable. Even the bare mention of a citizen's religion in official documents should unquestionably be eliminated.
Age | Civilization | Little | Means | Power | Proletariat | Revolution | Will |