This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
William Temple, fully Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet
Temperance, that virtue without pride, and fortune without envy, that gives indolence of body with an equality of mind; the best guardian of youth and support of old age; the precept of reason as well as religion, and physician of the soul as well as the body; the tutelary goddess of health and universal medicine of life.
Age | Body | Envy | Equality | Fortune | Health | Indolence | Life | Life | Mind | Old age | Precept | Pride | Reason | Religion | Soul | Virtue | Virtue | Youth | Youth | Old |
Remember, no human condition is ever permanent. Then you will not be overjoyed in good fortune nor too scornful in misfortune.
Fortune | Good | Misfortune | Will |
Thomas Henry Huxley, aka T.H. Huxley and Darwin's Bulldog
Men are certainly not born free and equal in natural qualities; when they are born, the predicates “free” and “equal” I the political sense are not applicable to them; and as they develop year by year, the differences in the political potentialities with which they really are born, become more and more obviously converted into actual differences - the inequality of political faculty shows itself to be a necessary consequence of the inequality of natural faculty.
Inequality | Men | Qualities | Sense |
Those who have had no share in the good fortune of the mighty often have a share in their misfortune.
Fortune | Good | Misfortune |
Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
In democratic countries, however opulent a man is supposed to be, he is almost always discontented with his fortune because he finds that he is less rich than his father was, and he fears that his sons will be less rich than himself. Most rich men in democracies are therefore constantly haunted by the desire of obtaining wealth, and they naturally turn their attention to trade and manufactures, which appear to offer the readiest and most efficient means of success. In this respect they share the instincts of the poor without feeling the same necessities; say, rather, they feel the most imperious of all necessities, that of not sinking in the world.
Attention | Desire | Father | Fortune | Man | Means | Men | Respect | Success | Wealth | Will | World | Respect |
The Procrustean bed is not a symbol of equality. It is no less inequality to have equality among unequals.
Equality | Inequality |
It is a wise man who said that there is no greater inequality than the equal treatment of unequals.
Inequality | Man | Wise |
F. A. Hayek, fully Friedrich August Hayek or von Hayek
Even the striving for equality by means of a directed economy can result only in an officially enforced inequality - an authoritarian determination of the status of each individual in the new hierarchical order.
Determination | Equality | Individual | Inequality | Means |
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
The doctrine of equality!... But there exists no more poisonous poison: for it seems to be preached by justice itself, while it is the end of justice... ‘Equality for equals, inequality for unequals’ - that would be the true voice of justice: and, what follows from it, ‘Never make equal what is unequal’.
Doctrine | Inequality | Justice |
Giordano Bruno, born Filippo Bruno
Of the eternal corporeal substance (which is not producible ex nihilo, nor reducible ad nihilum, but rarefiable, condensable, formable, arrangeable, and "fashionable") the composition is dissolved, the complexion is changed, the figure is modified, the being is altered, the fortune is varied, only the elements remaining what they are in substance, that same principle persevering which was always the one material principle, which is the true substance of things, eternal, ingenerable and incorruptible.
I Ching, Book of Changes or Zhouyi NULL
Secret forces are bringing compatible spirits together. If the man permits himself to be led by this ineffable attraction, good fortune will come his way. When deep friendships exist, formalities and elaborate preparations are not necessary
Whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.
I have always believed, and I still believe, that whatever good or bad fortune may come our way we can always give it meaning and transform it into something of value.
How often are we forced to charge fortune with partiality towards the unjust!
Fortune | Partiality |
The extreme inequality of our ways of life, the excess of idleness among some and the excess of toil among others, the ease of stimulating and gratifying our appetites and our senses, the over-elaborate foods of the rich, which inflame and overwhelm them with indigestion, the bad food of the poor, which they often go without altogether, so that they over-eat greedily when they have the opportunity; those late nights, excesses of all kinds, immoderate transports of every passion, fatigue, exhaustion of mind, the innumerable sorrows and anxieties that people in all classes suffer, and by which the human soul is constantly tormented: these are the fatal proofs that most of our ills are of our own making, and that we might have avoided nearly all of them if only we had adhered to the simple, unchanging and solitary way of life that nature ordained for us.
Excess | Extreme | Idleness | Inequality | Life | Life | Nature | People | Soul |
Indeed, in a free government almost all other rights would become worthless if the government possessed power over the private fortune of every citizen.
Fortune | Government | Power | Rights | Government |