This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
As one whose husband and mother-in-law have both died the victims of murder assassination, I stand firmly and unequivocally opposed to the death penalty for those convicted of capital offenses. An evil deed is not redeemed by an evil deed of retaliation. Justice is never advanced in the taking of a human life. Morality is never upheld by legalized murder.
Death | Evil | Husband | Justice | Law | Life | Life | Morality | Mother | Murder | Retaliation | Murder |
Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower
A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.
People | Principles |
Our laws make law impossible; our liberties destroy all freedom; our property is organized robbery; our morality an impudent hypocrisy; our wisdom is administered by inexperienced or mal-experienced dupes; our power wielded by cowards and weaklings; and our honor false in all its points. I am an enemy of the existing order for good reasons.
Destroy | Enemy | Freedom | Good | Honor | Hypocrisy | Law | Morality | Order | Power | Property | Wisdom |
“Self-government” is primarily a personal morality in America, not a political philosophy... Thus does our individualism reduce social problems, always, to the level of private morality, to things outside the scope of legislation.
Government | Morality | Philosophy | Problems | Self |
Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Passions, private aims, and the satisfaction of selfish desires, are… most effective springs of action. Their power lies in the fact that they would respect none of the limitations which justice and morality would impose on them; and [they] have a more direct influence over man than the artificial and tedious discipline that tends to order and self-restraint, law and morality.
Action | Aims | Discipline | Influence | Justice | Law | Man | Morality | Order | Power | Respect | Restraint | Self | Respect |
Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger
The average person thinks that morality can be applied as directly to the conduct of states to each other as it can to human relations. That is not always the case, because sometimes statesmen have to choose among evils.
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
What is morality but immemorial custom? Conscience is the chief of conservatives.
Conscience | Custom | Morality |
Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith.
So sharply and clearly marked are the boundaries of morality and self-love that even the commonest eye cannot fail to distinguish whether a thing belongs to the one or the other.
Distinguish | Love | Morality | Self | Self-love |
James Froude, fully James Anthony Froude
To deny the freedom of the will is to make morality impossible.
Morality... must have the more power over the human heart the more purely it is exhibited. Whence it follows that, if the law of morality and the image of holiness and virtue are to exercise any influence at all on our souls, they can do so only so far as they are laid to heart in their purity as motives, unmixed with any view to prosperity, for it is in suffering that they display themselves most nobly.
Display | Heart | Influence | Law | Morality | Motives | Power | Prosperity | Purity | Suffering | Virtue | Virtue |
Realizing that no simple formulas apply to everyone, we develop the courage to live a unique spiritual life, in our own idiosyncratic way. While archetypal patterns exist to guide seekers, in the West individuals can find their won way within these deeper patterns by honoring their unique backgrounds, temperaments, values and creative capacities... We commit ourselves to passionate action in the world, without becoming overly attached to the success or failure of our endeavors... In spiritual maturity, recognizing that such an attitude of indifference stems from a fear of life, we commit to our spouses, professions, and social action, developing compassion and equanimity through a balanced engagement with life.
Action | Compassion | Courage | Equanimity | Failure | Fear | Indifference | Life | Life | Success | Unique | World | Engagement | Failure |
Isaac Asimov, born Isaak Yudovich Ozimov
Humanists recognize that it is only when people feel free to think for themselves, using reason as their guide, that they are best capable of developing values that succeed in satisfying human needs and serving human interests.
Indira Gandhi, fully Indirā Priyadarśinī Gāndhī
Without courage, you cannot practice any other virtue. You have to have courage – courage of different kinds: first, intellectual courage, to sort out different values and make up your mind about which is the one which is right for you to follow. You have to have moral courage to stick up to that – no matter what comes in your way, no matter what the obstacle and the opposition is.
Courage | Mind | Opposition | Practice | Right | Virtue | Virtue | Obstacle |
We should remember that the social utility of free speech is in giving us the informational base from which we can then make social choices. To refrain from making social choices is to say that beyond the issue of free speech we have no substantive values which we will express in action. If we do not discriminate in the actions we support or oppose, we cannot rectify the terrible injustices of the present world.
Action | Free speech | Giving | Present | Speech | Will | World |
Discourses on morality and reflection on human nature are the best means we can make use of to improve our minds, gain a true knowledge of ourselves, and recover our souls out of the vice, ignorance, and prejudice which naturally cleave to them.
Human nature | Ignorance | Knowledge | Means | Morality | Nature | Prejudice | Reflection |