This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
A year ago, we all were united in the joy over having broken free of totalitarianism. Today we all are made somewhat nervous by the burden of freedom. Our society is still in a state of shock. This shock could have been expected, but none of us expected it to be so profound. The old system collapsed, and a new one so far has not been built. Our social life is marked by a subliminal uncertainty over what kind of system we are going to build, how to build it, and whether we are able to build it at all.
Competition | Danger | People | Power | Public | Rights | Rule | Suppression | Will | Danger |
V. S. Pritchett, fully Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett
Some writers thrive on the contact with the commerce of success; others are corrupted by it. Perhaps, like losing one's virginity, it is not as bad (or as good) as one feared it was going to be.
Appearance | Giving | Piety | Public | Old |
V. S. Pritchett, fully Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett
The attitude to foreigners is like the attitude to dogs: Dogs are neither human nor British, but so long as you keep them under control, give them their exercise, feed them, pat them, you will find their wild emotions are amusing, and their characters interesting. [Of London]
Awakening | Care | Man | Men | Prison | Public | Training | War |
Drama assumes an order. If only so that it might have -- by disrupting that order -- a way of surprising.
Good | Instinct | Lying | People | Politics | Public | Temptation | Temptation |
Let your holidays be associated with great public events, and they may be the life of patriotism as well as a source of relaxation and personal employment.
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
Communism was a great system for making people equally poor - in fact, there was no better system in the world for that than communism. Capitalism made people unequally rich.
Effort | Government | Public | Sense | Will | Worth | Government | Think |
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
No, most of our political elite has not realized that the world is flat.
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
When you study history and look at every civilization that has grown up and died off, they all leave one remnant: a major sports coliseum at the heart of their capital. Our fate can be different; but only if we start doing things differently.
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
Conservatism is the policy of making no changes and consulting your grandmother when in doubt.
Public |
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
A great nation is not led by a man who simply repeats the talk of the street-corners or the opinions of the newspapers. A nation is led by a man who hears more than those things; or who, rather, hearing those things, understands them better, unites them, puts them into a common meaning; speaks, not the rumors of the street, but a new principle for a new age; a man in whose ears the voices of the nation do not sound like the accidental and discordant notes that come from the voice of a mob, but concurrent and concordant like the united voices of a chorus, whose many meanings, spoken by melodious tongues, unite in his understanding in a single meaning and reveal to him a single vision, so that he can speak what no man else knows, the common meaning of the common voice. Such is the man who leads a great, free, democratic nation.
Action | Credit | Destroy | Determination | Future | Growth | Men | Money | Public | Question | Reason | System |
Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. We do not copy our neighbors, but are an example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while the law secures equal justice to all alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit. Neither is poverty a bar, but a man may benefit his country whatever be the obscurity of his condition.
Control | Excellence | Justice | Opinion | Play | Public | Reason | Restraint | Spirit | Excellence | Talent |
Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
One of the dangers of the American artist is that he finds himself almost exclusively thrown in with persons more or less in the arts. He lives among them, eats among them, quarrels with them, marries them.
Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
The test of an adventure is that when you're in the middle of it, you say to yourself, 'Oh, now I've got myself into an awful mess; I wish I were sitting quietly at home.' And the sign that something's wrong with you is when you sit quietly at home wishing you were out having lots of adventure.
Public |
We hope that you, instead of thinking to influence us by saying that you did not join the Lacedaemonians, although their colonists, or that you have done us no wrong, will aim at what is feasible, holding in view the real sentiments of us both; since you know as well as we do that right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.