This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Beware of prejudices. They are like rats, and men's minds are like traps; prejudices get in easily, but it is doubtful if they ever get out... There is nothing respecting which a man must so long unconscious, as of the extent and strength of his prejudices... Opinions grounded [founded] on prejudice are always sustained with the greatest violence.
Garrison Keillor, fully Gary Edward "Garrison" Keillor
I look upon the world as my fatherland... I look upon true patriotism as the brotherhood of man and the service of all to all.
Brotherhood | Character | Man | Patriotism | Service | World |
Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
Experience, it is said, makes a man wise. that is very silly talk. If there were nothing beyond experience it would simply drive him mad.
Character | Experience | Man | Nothing | Wise |
Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
The God-relationship determines what love is between man and man, then love is kept from pausing in any self-deception or illusion, while certainly the demand for self-abnegation and sacrifice is again made more infinite. The love which does not lead to God, the love which does not have this as its sole goal, to lead the lovers to love God, stops at the purely human judgment as to what love and what love’s sacrifice and submission are; it stops and thereby escapes the possibility of the last and most terrifying horror of the collision: that in the love relationship there are infinite differences in the idea of what love is.
Character | God | Illusion | Judgment | Love | Man | Relationship | Sacrifice | Self | Self-deception | Submission |
Juvenal, fully Decimus Junius Juvenalis NULL
No guilty man is ever acquitted at the bar of his own conscience.
Character | Conscience | Man | Guilty |
Juvenal, fully Decimus Junius Juvenalis NULL
Poverty persuades a man to do and suffer everything that he may escape from it.
Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
A man could not have anything upon his conscience if God did not exist, for the relationship between the individual and God, the God-relationship, is the conscience, and that is why it is so terrible to have even the least thing upon one’s conscience, because one is immediately conscious of the infinite weight of God.
Character | Conscience | God | Individual | Man | Relationship | God |
Louis Kossuth, also Lajos Kossuth, fully Lajos Kossuth de Udvard et Kossuthfalva
No man can force the harp of his own individuality into the people’s heart; but every man may play upon the chords of the people’s heart, who draws his inspiration from the people’s instinct.
Character | Force | Heart | Individuality | Inspiration | Instinct | Man | People | Play |