This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The excellence of every government is its adaptation to the state of those to be governed by it.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable Rights; that among these, are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness; that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Whenever the General Government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force.
Ends | Government | People | Right | Government |
Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
For I must tell you that we artists cannot tread the path of Beauty without Eros keeping company with us and appointing himself as our guide.
Enthusiasm | Means | Politics | Reason |
Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
This is a choice that makes overwhelming sense.
Enthusiasm | Fanaticism | Humanity | Means | Politics | Reason | Salvation |
We in America do not have government by the majority. We have government by the majority who participate.
Government | Men | People | Right | Government | Truths |
To special legislation we are generally averse lest a principle of favoritism should creep in and pervert that of equal rights. It has, however, been done on some occasions where a special national advantage has been expected to overweigh that of adherence to the general rule.
Government | People | Right | Rights | Government |
You ask if I mean to publish anything on the subject of a letter of mine to my friend Charles Thompson? Certainly not. I write nothing for publication, and last of all things should it be on the subject of religion. On the dogmas of religion as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarrelling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind. Were I to enter on that arena, I should only add an unit to the number of Bedlamites.
Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
What I have done is nothing, not much — as good as nothing. I shall do better things, Lisaveta — this is a promise. While I am writing, the sea's roar is coming up to me, and I close my eyes. I am looking into an unborn and shapeless world that longs to be called to life and order, I am looking into a throng of phantoms of human forms which beckon me to conjure them and set them free: some of them tragic, some of them ridiculous, and some that are both at once — and to these I am very devoted. But my deepest and most secret love belongs to the blond and blue-eyed, the bright-spirited living ones, the happy, amiable, and commonplace.
Good | Opportunity | Politics |
It is useless to try to make peace with ourselves by being pleased with everything we have done. In order to settle down in the quiet of our own being we must learn to be detached from the results of our own activity. We must withdraw ourselves, to some extent, from the effects that are beyond our control and be content with the good will and the work that are the quiet expression of our inner life. We must be content to live without watching ourselves live, to work without expecting any immediate reward, to love without an instantaneous satisfaction, and to exist without any special recognition.
Better | Good | Love | Politics | Power | Problems | Rest | Strength | Understanding | War | Will | World |
The beginning of love is the will to let those we love be perfectly themselves, the resolution not to twist them to fit our own image. If in loving them we do not love what they are, but only their potential likeness to ourselves, then we do not love them: we only love the reflection of ourselves we find in them.
How do you expect to arrive at the end of your own journey if you take the road to another man's city?
God has left sin in the world in order that there may be forgiveness: not only the secret forgiveness by which He Himself cleanses our souls, but the manifest forgiveness by which we have mercy on one another and so give expression to the fact that He is living, by His mercy, in our own hearts.
Better | Choice | God | Good | Important | Law | Life | Life | Man | Perfection | Will | God |
Money, when considered as the fruit of many years' industry, as the reward of labor, sweat and toil, as the widow's dowry and children's portion, and as the means of procuring the necessaries and alleviating the afflictions of life, and making old age a scene of rest, has something in it sacred that is not to be sported with, or trusted to the airy bubble of paper currency.
Thomas Macaulay, fully Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
The smallest actual good is better than the most magnificent promise of impossibilities.
Politics |
Thomas Macaulay, fully Lord Thomas Babington Macaulay, 1st Baron Macaulay
In taste and imagination, in the graces of style, in the arts of persuasion, in the magnificence of public works, the ancients were at least our equals.
Poetry |
Man is homo religiosus, by 'nature' religious: as much as he needs food to eat or air to breathe, he needs a faith for living.
Ethics | Experience | Materialism | People | Politics | Will | Words | Wrong |