This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
I recognize, as the all-comprehensive, and only right and proper end of Government, the greatest happiness of the members of the community in question: the greatest happiness - of all of them, without exception , in so far as possible.: the greatest happiness of the greatest number of them...
Government | Question | Right | Happiness |
Ofttimes nothing profits more than self-esteem, grounded on just and right well managed.
Esteem | Nothing | Right | Self | Self-esteem |
Extremity of right is wrong... extremity of law is extremity of wrong.
John Rawls, fully John Bordley Rawls
Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by many. Therefore in a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests.
Citizenship | Freedom | Good | Justice | Reason | Right | Rights | Society | Thought | Truth | Virtue | Virtue | Society | Loss |
John Foster, fully John Watson Foster
The bigot sees religion, not as a sphere, but a line; and it is the line in which he is moving. He is like as African buffalo - sees right forward, but nothing on the right or the left. He would not perceive a legion of angels or devils at the distance of ten yards, on the one side or the other.
John Kenneth Galbraith, aka "Ken"
In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone.
Majority | Organization | Right | Wrong |
The creed which accepts as the foundation of morals, utility, or the Great Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness... Pleasure and freedom from pain, are the only things desirable as ends.
Creed | Ends | Freedom | Pain | Pleasure | Right | Wrong | Happiness |
Actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness.
As unity demanded for its expression what at first might have seemed its opposite - variety; so repose demands for its expression the implied capability of its opposite - energy. It is not the most unfailing test of beauty; nothing can be ignoble that possesses it, nothing right that has it not.
Beauty | Capability | Energy | Nothing | Repose | Right | Unity |
Some glances of real beauty may be seen in their faces who dwell in true meekness. There is a harmony in the sound of that voice to which divine love gives utterance, and some appearance of right order in their temper and conduct whose passions are regulated.
Appearance | Beauty | Conduct | Harmony | Love | Meekness | Order | Right | Sound | Temper | Beauty |
A man of a right spirit is not a man of narrow and private views, but is greatly interested and concerned for the good of the community to which he belongs, and particularly of the city or village in which he resides, and for the true welfare of the society of which he is a member.
Whatever crushes individuality is despotism... I am not aware that any community has a right to force another to be civilized.
Force | Individuality | Right |
Customs are made for customary circumstances; even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they live in crowds: they exercise choice only among things commonly done: peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes: until by dint of not following their own nature they have not nature to follow. Whatever crushes individuality is despotism. [And] I am not aware that any community has a right to force another to be civilized.
Choice | Circumstances | Conduct | Conformity | Eccentricity | Force | Individuality | Nature | Peculiarity | People | Pleasure | Right | Taste | Thought | Following | Thought |
The entire object of true education is to make people not merely do the right thing, but enjoy the right things; not merely industrious, but to love industry; not merely learned, but to love knowledge; not merely pure, but to love purity; not merely just, but to hunger and thirst after justice.
Education | Hunger | Industry | Justice | Knowledge | Love | Object | People | Purity | Right |
Unlike Hinduism and most Western ethics, Buddhism is nonhierarchical, emphasizing oneness and the interrelatedness and moral value of all living beings. Right living, therefore, includes compassion and an attitude of nonviolence toward all of nature.