This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
In the so-called Western secular democracy… a divorce has been effected between politics and religion, and as a result of this secularization, the society and particularly its politically active elements have ceased to attach much or any importance to morality or ethics.
Democracy | Ethics | Morality | Politics | Religion | Society | Society |
Military action without politics is like a tree without a root.
Mario Vargas Llosa, fully Jorge Mario Pedro Vargas Llosa, 1st Marquis of Vargas Llosa
No democracy is born perfect, and none ever gets to be perfect. Yet democracy is superior to authoritarian and totalitarian regimes because, unlike them, democracy is perfectible.
How are we to bring children to the spirit of citizenship and humanity which is postulated by democratic societies? By the actual practice of democracy at school. It is unbelievable that at a time when democratic ideas enter into every phase of life, they should have been so little utilized as instruments of education.
Children | Citizenship | Democracy | Education | Humanity | Ideas | Life | Life | Little | Practice | Spirit | Time |
Robert Edward Rubin, aka Eddy Rubin
Relying on politics for your sense of who you are greatly impedes your ability to remain true to yourself, your views, and your values.
Oswald Spengler, fully Oswald Manuel Arnold Gottfried Spengler
Renunciation of world politics offers no protection from its consequences.
Consequences | Politics | World |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
Apparently, a democracy is a place where numerous elections are held at great cost without issues and with interchangeable candidates.
National leaders who find themselves wilting under the withering criticisms by members of the media, would do well not to take such criticism personally but to regard the media as their allies in keeping the government clean and honest, its services efficient and timely, and its commitment to democracy strong and unwavering.
Commitment | Criticism | Democracy | Government | Regard | Government |
All human societies supplement politics with ethics; all of them to some degree are ordered by a moral code, if only honor among thieves.
Al Gore, Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr.,
What makes the United States special in the history of nations is our commitment to the rule of law and our carefully constructed system of checks and balances. Our national distrust of concentrated power and our devotion to openness and democracy are what have led us as a people to consistently choose good over evil in our collective aspirations.
Commitment | Democracy | Devotion | Distrust | Evil | Good | History | Law | Nations | Openness | People | Power | Rule | System |
Americans often pride themselves on being members of the largest, most enduring, and most successful democracy in the world. Yet their lives, to a great degree, are channeled, shaped, and determined by the decisions of a very few people sitting in the board rooms and executive suites of the giant corporations, over whom they exercise little control.
I recognize no moral law in politics. Politics is a game, in which every sort of trick is permissible, and in which the rules are constantly being changed by the players to suit themselves.