This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The best way to define a man's character would be to seek out the particular mental or moral attitude in which, when it came upon him, he felt himself most deeply and intensely active and alive. At such moments there is a voice inside which speaks and says: 'This is the real me!'
There is a sanctity in suffering when meekly born. Our duty, though set about by thorns, may still be made a staff, supporting even while it tortures. Cast it away, and, like the prophet's rod, it changes to a snake.
Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince: And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest! Hamlet, Act v, Scene 2
Once again I do receive thee honest. Who by repentance is not satisfied is nor of heaven nor earth.
The methods of peace propaganda which aim at establishing peace doctrine by argument and by creating a feeling favorable to peace in general seem to fall short of reaching the springs of human action and of dealing with the causes of the conduct which they seek to modify.
I have my own set of survival techniques. I am patient. I know how to pack light. But my one might travel talent is that I can make friends with anybody. I can make friends with the dead. If there isn’t anyone else around to talk to, I could probably make friends with a four-foot-tall pile of sheetrock. That is why I’m not afraid to travel to the most remote places in the world, not if there are human beings there to meet. People asked me before I left, do you have friends [there]?’ and I would just shake my head no, thinking to myself, But I will.
Argument | God | Good | Man | Peace | People | Religion | God |
Wanting to get married, for me, is all about a desire to feel chosen. She went on to write that while the concept of building a life together with another adult was appealing, what really pulled at her heart was the desire for a wedding, a public event that will unequivocally prove to everyone, especially to myself, that I am precious enough to have been selected by somebody forever.
Argument | Convention | Enough | Existence | Life | Life | Nothing | Tradition | Will |
The six elements of her Fail Proof Broken-Heart Curing Treatment: 'Vitamin E, get much sleep, drink much water, travel to a place far away from the person you loved, meditate and teach your heart that this is destiny.
Because man and woman are the complement of one another, we need woman's thought in national affairs to make a safe and stable government.
Action | Argument | Association | Church | Consideration | Convention | God | Hope | Nature | Will | Woman | Association | God |
The State is the altar of political freedom and, like the religious altar, it is maintained for the purpose of human sacrifice.
Argument | Experience | Nature | Revolution |
How does one transcend himself; how does he open himself to new possibility? By realizing the truth of his situation, by dispelling the lie of his character, by breaking his spirit out of its conditioned prison. The enemy, for Kierkegaard as for Freud, is the Oedipus complex. The child has built up strategies and techniques for keepÂing his self-esteem in the face of the terror of his situation. These techniques become an armor that hold the person prisoner. The very defenses that he needs in order to move about with self-conÂfidence and self-esteem become his life-long trap. In order to transcend himself he must break down that which he needs in order to live. Like Lear he must throw off all his "cultural lendings" and stand naked in the storm of life. Kierkegaard had no illusions about man's urge to freedom. He knew how comfortable people were inÂside the prison of their character defenses. Like many prisoners they are comfortable in their limited and protected routines, and the idea of a parole into the wide world of chance, accident, and choice terrifies them. We have only to glance back at Kierkegaard's conÂfession in the epigraph to this chapter to see why. In the prison of one's character one can pretend and feel that he is somebody, that the world is manageable, that there is a reason for one's life, a ready justification for one's action. To live automatically and unÂcritically is to be assured of at least a minimum share of the proÂgrammed cultural heroics—what we might call "prison heroism": the smugness of the insiders who "know."
Anxiety | Anxiety | Argument | Character | Faith | Means | Understand |
Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger
Every complete set of chromosomes contains the full code; so there are, as a rule, two copies of the latter in the fertilized egg cell, which forms the earliest stage of the future individual. In calling the structure of the chromosome fibres a code-script we mean that the all-penetrating mind, once conceived by Laplace, to which every causal connection lay immediately open, could tell from their structure whether the egg would develop, under suitable conditions, into a black cock or into a speckled hen, into a fly or a maize plant, a rhododendron, a beetle, a mouse or a woman. To which we may add, that the appearances of the egg cells are very often remarkably similar; and even when they are not, as in the case of the comparatively gigantic eggs of birds and reptiles, the difference is not so much in the relevant structures as in the nutritive material which in these cases is added for obvious reasons. But the term code-script is, of course, too narrow. The chromosome structures are at the same time instrumental in bringing about the development they foreshadow. They are law-code and executive power, or, to use another simile, they are architect's plan and builder's craft-in one.
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
There exists a modern trend towards total quantification at the expense of the appreciation of qualitative differences; for private enterprise is not concerned with what it produces but only with what it gains from production.
Argument | Distinguish | Ends | Important | Society | Society |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
I'm not sentimental about anything. Life flows by, and you flow with it or you don't. Move on and move out.
Argument | Pleasure | Relationship |
When you have gained a victory, do not push it too far; 'tis sufficient to let the company and your adversary see 'tis in your power but that you are too generous to make use of it.
A child needs a mother more than all the things money can buy. Spending time with your children is the greatest gift of all.
Argument | Authority | Danger | Force | Good | Government | Grave | Growth | History | Hope | Individual | Little | People | Power | Right | Time | Will | Government | Danger |