This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
US multilateral corporations (along with the firms of other advanced capitalistic nations) control most of the wealth, labor, and markets of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. This control does much to maldevelop the weaker nations in ways that are severely detrimental to the life chances of the common people of the Third World. The existing class structure of the Third World, so suitable to capital accumulation, must be protected from popular resistance. Through the generous application of force and terror and by cultural and political domination, the imperialist nation directly -- or through a client-state apparatus -- maintains "stability" and prevents changes in the class structure of other nations.
If one looks into the genealogies of many 'old families,' one discovers episodes of slave trafficking, bootlegging, gun running, opium trading, falsified land claims, violent acquisition of water and mineral rights, the extermination of indigenous peoples, sales of shoddy and unsafe goods, public funds used for private speculations, crooked deals in government bonds and vouchers, and payoffs for political favors. One finds fortunes built on slave labor, indentured labor, prison labor, immigrant labor, female labor, child labor, and scab labor -- backed by the lethal force of gun thugs and militia. 'Old money' is often little more than dirty money laundered by several generations of possession.
Dirty | Force | Government | Labor | Land | Little | Looks | Money | Prison | Public | Government | Child |
Michelangelo, aka Michaelangelo Buonarroti, fully Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni NULL
O night, O sweetest time, though black of hue, with peace you force all the restless work to end; those who exalt you see and understand, and he is sound of mind who honours you. You cut the thread of tired thoughts, for so you offer calm in your moist shade; you send to this low sphere the dreams where we ascend up to the highest, where I long to go. Shadow of death that brings to quiet close all miseries that plague the heart and soul, for those in pain the last and best of cures; you heal the flesh of its infirmities, dry and our tears and shut away our toil, and free the good from wrath and fretting cares.
Death | Dreams | Force | Good | Heart | Mind | Pain | Peace | Quiet | Sound | Tears | Work |
Among those points of self-education which take up the form of mental discipline, there is one of great importance, and, moreover, difficult to deal with, because it involves an internal conflict, and equally touches our vanity and our ease. It consists in the tendency to deceive ourselves regarding all we wish for, and the necessity of resistance to these desires. It is impossible for any one who has not been constrained, by the course of his occupation and thoughts, to a habit of continual self-correction, to be aware of the amount of error in relation to judgment arising from this tendency. The force of the temptation which urges us to seek for such evidence and appearances as are in favour of our desires, and to disregard those which oppose them, is wonderfully great. In this respect we are all, more or less, active promoters of error. In place of practising wholesome self-abnegation, we ever make the wish the father to the thought: we receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us; whereas the very reverse is required by every dictate of common sense.
Error | Evidence | Father | Force | Habit | Judgment | Necessity | Occupation | Receive | Respect | Temptation | Respect | Temptation |
The problem of Islam as a political force is an essential problem for our time and for the years to come. The first condition in approaching it with anything resembling intelligence is to not to start with hatred.
Force | Intelligence | Time |
Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa
Tis said of love that it sometimes goes, sometimes flies runs with one, walks gravely with another turns a third into ice, and sets a fourth in a flame it wounds one, another it kills like lightning it begins and ends in the same moment it makes that fort yield at night which it besieged but in the morning for there is no force able to resist it.
Albert Einstein when asked what he considered to be the most powerful force in the universe answered: Compound interest! What you have become is the price you paid to get what you used to want.
By power… I do not understand a general system of domination exercised by one element or one group over another, whose effects… traverse the entire body social… It seems to me that first what needs to be understood is the multiplicity of relations of force that are immanent to the domain wherein they are exercised, and that are constitutive of its organization; the game that through incessant struggle and confrontation transforms them, reinforces them, inverts them; the supports these relations of force find in each other, so as to form a chain or system, or, on the other hand, the gaps, the contradictions that isolate them from each other; in the end, the strategies in which they take effect, and whose general pattern or institutional crystallization is embodied in the mechanisms of the state, in the formulation of the law, in social hegemonies. The condition of possibility of power… should not be sought in the primary existence of a central point, in a unique space of sovereignty whence would radiate derivative and descendent forms; it is the moving base of relations of force that incessantly induce, by their inequality, states of power, but always local and unstable. Omnipresence of power: not at all because it regroups everything under its invincible unity, but because it is produced at every instant, at every point, or moreover in every relation between one point and another. Power is everywhere: not that it engulfs everything, but that it comes from everywhere.
Body | Existence | Force | Omnipresence | Power | Space | Struggle | System | Unique | Understand |
Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman
The president of the National Education Association was once asked when his union was going to do something about students. He replied that when the students became members of the union, the union would take care of them. And that was a correct answer. Why? His responsibility as president of the NEA was to serve the members of his union, not to serve public purposes. I give him credit: The trade union has been very effective in serving its members. However, in the process, they've destroyed American education. But you see, education isn't the union's function. It's our fault for allowing the union to pursue its agenda. Consider this fact: There are two areas in the United States that suffer from the same disease—education is one and health care is the other. They both suffer from the disease that takes a system that should be bottom-up and converts it into a system that is top-down. Education is a simple case. It isn't the public purpose to build brick schools and have students taught there. The public purpose is to provide education. Think of it this way: If you want to subsidize the production of a product, there are two ways you can do it. You can subsidize the producer or you can subsidize the consumer. In education, we subsidize the producer—the school. If you subsidize the student instead—the consumer—you will have competition. The student could choose the school he attends and that would force schools to improve and to meet the demands of their students.
Association | Care | Disease | Education | Fault | Force | Health | Public | Purpose | Purpose | Responsibility | System | Will | Association | Fault | Think |
Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman
A society that puts equality - in the sense of equality of outcome - ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality or freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom. On the other hand, a society that puts freedom first will, as a happy by-product, end up with both greater freedom and greater equality. Freedom means diversity but also mobility. It preserves the opportunity for today's less well off to become tomorrow's rich, and in the process, enables almost everyone, from top to bottom, to enjoy a richer and fuller life.
Destroy | Diversity | Equality | Force | Freedom | Happy | Means | Opportunity | Sense | Society | Will | Society |
Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman
Why has there been so great a shift in the attitudes of the public [toward accepting free market ideas]? I’m sorry to confess that I do not believe it occurred because of the persuasive power of such books as Friedrich Hayek’s Road to Serfdom or Ayn Rand’s Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged or our own Capitalism and Freedom. Such books certainly played a role, but I believe the major reason for the change is the extraordinary force of factual evidence.…The great hopes that had been placed in Russia and China by the collectivists and socialists turned into ashes.…Similarly, the hopes that were placed in Fabian socialism and the welfare state in Britain or the New Deal in the United States were disappointed. One major government program after another started with the very best aims and with noble objectives and turned out not to deliver the goods.…Ideas played their part. But they played their part not by producing a reaction against the spread of government but by determining the form that that reaction took. The role we play as intellectuals is not to persuade anybody but to keep options open and to provide alternative policies that can be adopted when people decide they have to make a change.
Aims | Books | Capitalism | Change | Force | Government | Objectives | People | Play | Power | Public | Reason | Government |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
Had we adopted non-violence as the weapon of the strong, because we realised that it was more effective than any other weapon, in fact the mightiest force in the world, we would have made use of its full potency and not have discarded it as soon as the fight against the British was over or we were in a position to wield conventional weapons. But as I have already said, we adopted it out of our helplessness. If we had the atom bomb, we would have used it against the British.
Budo is not a means of felling the opponent by force or by lethal weapons. Neither is it intended to lead the world to destruction by arms and other illegitimate means. True Budo calls for bringing the inner energy of the universe in order, protecting the peace of the world , as well as preserving, everything in nature in its right form. If your opponent tries to pull you, let him pull. Don't pull against him; pull in unison with him. Aikido does not rely on weapons or brute force to succeed; instead we put ourselves in tune with the universe, maintain peace in our own realms, nurture life, and prevent death and destruction. The true meaning of the term "samurai" is one who serves and adheres to the power of love.
Death | Energy | Force | Meaning | Means | Nature | Peace | Power | Right | Universe | Weapons | World |
The Art of Peace functions everywhere on earth, in realms ranging from the vastness of space down to the tiniest plants and animals. The life force is all-pervasive and its strength boundless. The Art of Peace allows us to perceive and tap into that tremendous reserve of universal energy.
Art | Force | Life | Life | Peace | Reserve | Space | Strength | Art |
Opponents confront us continually, but actually there is no opponent there. Enter deeply into an attack and neutralize it as you draw that misdirected force into your own sphere.
Force |
Along the Syria border there were no farms and no refugee camps — there was only the Syrian army... The kibbutzim saw the good agricultural land ... and they dreamed about it... They didn't even try to hide their greed for the land... We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was...The Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us.
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
To see the universal and all-pervading Spirit of Truth face to face one must be able to love the meanest of creation as oneself. And a man who aspires after that cannot afford to keep out of any field of life. That is why my devotion to Truth has drawn me into the field of politics; and I can say without the slightest hesitation, and yet in all humility, that those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means. Identification with everything that lives is impossible without self-purification; without self-purification the observance of the law of Ahimsa must remain an empty dream; God can never be realized by one who is not pure of heart. Self-purification therefore must mean purification in all the walks of life. And purification being highly infectious, purification of oneself necessarily leads to the purification of one's surroundings. But the path of self-purification is hard and steep. To attain to perfect purity one has to become absolutely passion-free in thought, speech and action; to rise above the opposing currents of love and hatred, attachment and repulsion. I know that I have not in me as yet that triple purity, in spite of constant ceaseless striving for it. That is why the world's praise fails to move me, indeed it very often stings me. To conquer the subtle passions seems to me to be harder far than the physical conquest of the world by the force of arms. Ever since my return to India I have had experiences of the dormant passions lying hidden within me. The knowledge of them has made me feel humiliated though not defeated. The experiences and experiments have sustained me and given me great joy. But I know that I have still before me a difficult path to traverse. I must reduce myself to zero. So long as a man does not of his own free will put himself last among his fellow creatures, there is no salvation for him. Ahimsa is the farthest limit of humility.
Conquest | Devotion | Force | Free will | God | Knowledge | Law | Love | Lying | Man | Nothing | Politics | Praise | Purity | Religion | Salvation | Speech | Spirit | Truth | Will | World | God |
Moshe Chayim Luzzatto, also Moses Hayyim Luzzato, known by Hebrew acronym RaMCHal
When a man sleeps, his faculties rest, his senses are quiet, and his mind is relaxed and hushed. The only thing that continues to function is his imagination (dream center), and this conceives and envisions various images. Some of these images arise from the individual's experiences while awake. Others may be the result of substances that rise to the brain, either from the body's own hormones, or from the food that one eats. These images are the dreams that all people experience. G-d has also decreed that the bond between the body and the divine soul should be somewhat loosened while man sleeps. The portions of the soul from Ruach (Spirit) and above then rise and sever themselves from the body. Only one portion, the Nefesh (Soul), remains with the lower [animal] soul. The freed portions of the soul can then move about in the spiritual realm wherever they are allowed. They can interact and associate with such spiritual beings as the angels who oversee natural phenomena, the angels associated with prophecy, and Shedim (demons). Whatever they experience will depend on a variety of factors. When these higher levels of the soul perceive something, they can sometimes transmit it step by step, until it reaches the animal soul. The imagination is then stimulated and forms images in its normal manner. [A person can then see this as a dream.]... Dreams in general can therefore arise either from the imagination itself or as a result of the stimulation of the Soul (Neshamah) according to what it perceives. In the latter case, the initiating agent is always one of the spiritual Forces which make something known to the Soul (Neshamah). The soul then transmits this to the imagination. If that spiritual Force is one of G-d's holy servants, then the information that the soul receives will be true. If it comes from the opposing Forces, on the other hand, then it will be false. Our sages thus teach us that a true dream originates through an angel, while a false one originates through a Shed (demon).
Angels | Body | Dreams | Experience | Force | Imagination | Man | Mind | People | Soul | Teach | Will |