This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
You show people what you're willing to fight for when you fight your friends.
People |
Jean Paul, born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, aka Jean Paul Richter
If men had only temptations to great sins, they would always be good; but the daily fight with little ones accustoms them to defeat.
When rich people fight wars with one another, poor people are the ones to die.
People |
John Steinbeck, fully John Ernst Steinbeck
And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.
Freedom | Government | Individual | Mind | Government |
John Wooden, fully John Robert Wooden
Players with fight never lose a game, they just run out of time.
John Steinbeck, fully John Ernst Steinbeck
Now, there are many millions in their sects and churches who feel the order, 'Do thou,' and throw their weight into obedience. And there are millions more who feel predestination in 'Thou shalt.' Nothing they may do can interfere with what will be. But 'Thou mayest'! Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win.
Man | Murder | Nothing | Predestination | Weakness | Will | Murder |
John Wooden, fully John Robert Wooden
Make no mistake, I always want to win, but I never fight with an opponent. My fight is within me — it is the struggle to be the best I can be at whatever I do.
Struggle |
Karl Popper, fully Sir Karl Raimund Popper
Philosophers should consider the fact that the greatest happiness principle can easily be made an excuse for a benevolent dictatorship. We should replace it by a more modest and more realistic principle — the principle that the fight against avoidable misery should be a recognized aim of public policy, while the increase of happiness should be left, in the main, to private initiative.
The hardest battle you are ever going to have to fight is the battle to be just you.
Battle |
Leonard W. Doob, fully Leonard William Doob
The propagandist is most effective…when his words make us create devils to fight or gods to adore.
Words |
Leon Trotsky, born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein
As long as I breathe I hope. As long as I breathe I shall fight for the future, that radiant future, in which man, strong and beautiful, will become master of the drifting stream of his history and will direct it towards the boundless horizons of beauty, joy and happiness!
Louis-Ferdinand Céline, pen name Louis-Ferdinand Destouches
The religion of the flag promptly replaced the cult of heaven, an old cloud which had already been deflated by the Reformation and reduced to a network of episcopal money boxes. In olden times the fanatical fashion was: 'Long live Jesus! Burn the heretics!' . . . But heretics, after all, were few and voluntary . . . Whereas today vast hordes of men are fired with aim and purpose by cries of ‘Hang the limp turnips! The juiceless lemons! The innocent readers! By the millions, eyes right!’ If anybody doesn’t want to fight or murder, grab ‘em, tear ‘em to pieces! Kill them in thirteen juicy ways. For a starter, to teach them how to live, rip their guts out of their bodies, their eyes out of their sockets, and the years out of their filthy slobbering lives!
Cult | Kill | Men | Money | Purpose | Purpose | Religion | Teach | Old |
Ludwig von Mises, fully Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises
The essential characteristic of Western civilization that distinguishes it from the arrested and petrified civilizations of the East was and is its concern for freedom from the state. The history of the West, from the age of the Greek polis down to the present-day resistance to socialism, is essentially the history of the fight for liberty against the encroachments of the officeholders.
Age | Civilization | Freedom | History | Liberty |
Although I went to college as a youth, I never considered it necessary to steep oneself in academic learning, in order to learn how to think. I welcome a fair and square, open and above-board fight on any subject, including this, but I despise a man who sneaks around under a cloak or cover of any society or clique to strike his blows.
It is right noble to fight with wickedness and wrong; the mistake is in supposing that spiritual evil can be overcome by physical means.
Evil | Mistake | Right | Wickedness |
Margaret Thatcher, fully Margaret Hilda Thatcher, Baroness Thatcher, née Roberts
I should therefore prefer to restrict my guidelines to the following: Don't believe that military interventions, no matter how morally justified, can succeed without clear military goals. Don't fall into the trap of imagining that the West can remake societies. Don't take public opinion for granted -- but don't either underrate the degree to which good people will endure sacrifices for a worthwhile cause. Don't allow tyrants and aggressors to get away with it. And when you fight -- fight to win.
Don’t be deceived when they tell you things are better now. Even if there’s no poverty to be seen because the poverty’s been hidden. Even if you ever got more wages and could afford to buy more of these new and useless goods which industries foist on you and even if it seems to you that you never had so much, that is only the slogan of those who still have much more than you. Don’t be taken in when they paternally pat you on the shoulder and say that there’s no inequality worth speaking of and no more reason to fight because if you believe them they will be completely in charge in their marble homes and granite banks from which they rob the people of the world under the pretence of bringing them culture. Watch out, for as soon as it pleases them they’ll send you out to protect their gold in wars whose weapons, rapidly developed by servile scientists, will become more and more deadly until they can with a flick of the finger tear a million of you to pieces.
Better | Gold | Inequality | People | Poverty | Reason | Will | World | Worth |