This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
If you go to the city of Washington, you will find that almost all of those corporation lawyers and cowardly politicians, members of congress, and mis-representatives of the masses claim, in glowing terms, that they have risen from the ranks to places of eminence and distinction. I am very glad that I cannot make that claim for myself. I would be ashamed to admit that I had risen from the ranks. When I rise it will be with the ranks, and not from the ranks.
Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
I am opposing a social order in which it is possible for one man who does absolutely nothing that is useful to amass a fortune of hundreds of millions of dollars, while millions of men and women who work all the days of their lives secure barely enough for a wretched existence.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
An eagle, looking for a hard surface on which to break up the turtle that he held in his claws, mistook the bald head of Aeschylus, the author of The Persians, for a rock and let slip the turtle, with fatal accuracy.
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 |
And so we take a holiday, a vacation, to gain release from this bondage for a space, to stand back from the rush of things and breathe again. But a holiday is a respite, not a cure. The more we need holidays, the more certain it is that the disease has conquered us and not we it. More and more holidays just to get away from it all is a sure sign of a decaying civilization; it was one of the most obvious marks of the breakdown of the Roman empire. It is a symptom that we haven't learned how to live so as to re-create ourselves in our work instead of being sapped by it. A car should always be charging its battery as it runs. If it simply uses up without putting back, it has to go into dock to be recharged. It is not a sign that we are running particularly well if we are constantly needing to go into dock.
Evil | Extreme | Love | Object | Time | Truth | Vision | World |
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
Lord Copper quite often gave banquets; it would be an understatement to say that no one enjoyed them more than the host, for no one else enjoyed them at all, while Lord Copper positively exulted in every minute.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
Downstairs Peter Beste-Chetwynde mixed himself another brandy and soda and turned a page in Havelock Ellis, which, next to The Wind in the Willows, was his favourite book.
Church | Faith | Father | Hunger | People | Religion | Right | Words | Worth | Think |
And so this great nation has come into being under the inspiration of the Almighty to accomplish his purposes. Through modern revelation we have had made very plain to us something of the mission of America and the establishment of our national Constitution.
Blessings | Free enterprise | Men | Mind | People | Right | System | Time |
I feel good the file is closed... There are things here and there which I will note.
Right |
In my relations with my father, which are difficult and where I'm often met by coolness and indifference, I am constantly tempted to be cold and indifferent. Yet I know that this is a test if I could take it rightly.
Forgiveness | Nothing | Present | Right | Forgiveness |
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
He wasn't a complete human being at all. He was a tiny bit of one, unnaturally developed; something in a bottle, an organ kept alive in a laboratory. I thought he was a sort of primitive savage, but he was something absolutely modern and up-to-date that only this ghastly age could produce. A tiny bit of a man pretending to be whole.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
Literature is the right use of language irrespective of the subject or reason of utterance.
Absurd | Distinction | Effort | Excitement | Growth | Ideas | Inevitable | Life | Life | Men | Organic | People | Right | Think |