This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Clive Barnes, fully Clive Alexander Barnes
Television is the first truly democratic culture - the first culture available to everyone and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want.
Culture | People | Television | Wisdom |
Tolerance of opinions which are thought to be innocuous is as easy, as acts of charity that entail no sacrifice. But the test of a free society is its tolerance of what is deplored or despised by a majority of its members. The argument for such tolerance must be made on the ground that it is useful to the society... that free societies are better fitted to survive than closed societies.
Argument | Better | Charity | Majority | Sacrifice | Society | Thought | Wisdom | Society | Thought |
Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton, fully Edward George Earle Lytton Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton
Power is so characteristically calm that calmness in itself has the aspect of power, and forbearance implies strength. The orator who is known to have at his command all the weapons of invective is most formidable when most courteous.
Calmness | Forbearance | Power | Strength | Weapons | Wisdom |
Partial culture runs to the ornate; extreme culture to simplicity.
Culture | Extreme | Simplicity | Wisdom |
Midge Decter, fully Midge Rosenthal Decter
The hatred of the youth culture for adult society is not a disinterested judgment but a terror-ridden refusal to be hooked into the... ecological chain of birthing, growing and dying. It is the demand, in other words, to remain children.
Children | Culture | Judgment | Society | Terror | Wisdom | Words | Youth | Society | Youth |
The most important kind of tolerance is tolerance of the individual by society and the state.
Important | Individual | Society | Wisdom | Society |
Pity and forbearance should characterize all acts of justice.
Forbearance | Justice | Pity | Wisdom |
We live in a spelling bee culture where the demand is factual accuracy and everybody overlooks the absence of art or meaning in what's said. Too many people sent letters to Nero telling him he was fingering his fiddle wrong. This passion for data is a way of avoiding coming to terms with things.
Absence | Accuracy | Art | Culture | Meaning | Passion | People | Wisdom | Wrong | Art |
Some people speak as if hypocrites were confined to religion; but they are everywhere; people pretending to wealth when they have not a sixpence, assuming knowledge of which they are ignorant; shamming a culture they are far removed from adopting opinions they don't hold.
The steady pressure to consume, absorb, participate, receive, by eye, ear, mouth and mail involves a cruelty to intestines, blood pressure, and psyche unparalleled in history. We are being killed with kindness. We are being stifled with culture and material joys.
Cruelty | Culture | History | Kindness | Receive | Wisdom | Cruelty |
Central to the notion of masculinity is its rejection of everything that is defined by a culture as feminine and its legitimated control of whatever counts as the feminine... Gender is an asymmetrical category of human thought, social organization, and individual identity and behavior.
Behavior | Control | Culture | Individual | Organization | Thought | Wisdom |
S. I. Hayakawa, fully Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa
If you see in any given situation only what everybody else can see, you can be said to be so much a representative of your culture than you are a victim of it.
The patriotism of antiquity becomes in modern societies a caricature. In antiquity, it developed naturally from the whole condition of a people, its youth, its situation, its culture - with us it is an awkward imitation. Our life demands, not separation from other nations, but constant intercourse; our city life is not that of the ancient city-state.
Antiquity | Culture | Imitation | Life | Life | Nations | Patriotism | People | Wisdom | Youth |
George Mogridge, aka "Old Humphrey"
How can man be intelligent, happy, or useful, without the culture and discipline of education? It is this that unlocks the prison-house of his mind, and releases the captive.
Culture | Discipline | Education | Happy | Man | Mind | Prison | Wisdom |
Whatever therefore is consequent to a tie of war, where every man is enemy to every man; the same is consequent to the time, wherein men live without other security, than what their own strength, and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such a condition, there is no place for industry; because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving, and removing, such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.
Culture | Danger | Death | Earth | Enemy | Fear | Force | Industry | Invention | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Men | Security | Society | Strength | Time | War | Wisdom | Danger |
It is possible... for a culture to be overwhelmed physically but not culturally.