This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Theodore H. White, fully Theodore Harold White
Generally students are the best vehicles for passing on ideas, for their thoughts are plastic and can be molded and they can adjust the ideas of old men to the shape of reality as they find it in villages and hills of China or in ghettos and suburbs of America.
Individual | Past |
What is the lesson to us to-day? Are we to go the way of the older civilizations? The immense increase in the area of civilized activity to-day, so that it is nearly coterminous with the world's surface; the immense increase in the multitudinous variety of its activities; the immense increase in the velocity of the world movement—are all these to mean merely that the crash will be all the more complete and terrible when it comes? We can not be certain that the answer will be in the negative; but of this we can be certain, that we shall not go down in ruin unless we deserve and earn our end. There is no necessity for us to fall; we can hew out our destiny for ourselves, if only we have the wit and the courage and the honesty.
Civilization | Debt | Family | Folly | Good | Heart | Husband | Important | Intolerance | Man | Men | Mother | Need | Past | Philosophy | Power | Present | Qualities | Science | Spirit | Will | Woman | Work |
There are many kinds of success in life worth having. It is exceedingly interesting and attractive to be a successful business man, or railroad man, or farmer, or a successful lawyer or doctor; or a writer, or a President, or a ranchman, or the colonel of a fighting regiment, or to kill grizzly bears and lions. But for unflagging interest and enjoyment, a household of children, if things go reasonably well, certainly makes all other forms of success and achievement lose their importance by comparison. It may be true that he travels farthest who travels alone; but the goal thus reached is not worth reaching. And as for a life deliberately devoted to pleasure as an end — why, the greatest happiness is the happiness that comes as a by-product of striving to do what must be done, even though sorrow is met in the doing. There is a bit of homely philosophy, quoted by Squire Bill Widener, of Widener's Valley, Virginia, which sums up one's duty in life: Do what you can, with what you've got, where you are.
Freedom | Good | Government | Nothing | Past | People | Principles | Reward | Theories | Government | Think |
Political parties exist to secure responsible government and to execute the will of the people. From these great tasks both of the old parties have turned aside. Instead of instruments to promote the general welfare they have become the tools of corrupt interests, which use them impartially to serve their selfish purposes. Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people.To destroy this invisible government, to dissolve the unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics, is the first task of the statesmanship of the day.
Ability | Better | Business | Civilization | Cost | Deeds | Dreams | Efficiency | Future | Glory | Heart | Past | Will | Deeds | Business | Intellect | Think |
The first essential in determining how to deal with the great industrial combinations is knowledge of the facts—publicity. In the interest of the public, the Government should have the right to inspect and examine the workings of the great corporations engaged in interstate business. Publicity is the only sure remedy which we can now invoke. What further remedies are needed in the way of governmental regulation, or taxation, can only be determined after publicity has been obtained, by process of law, and in the course of administration. The first requisite is knowledge, full and complete—knowledge which may be made public to the world. Artificial bodies, such as corporations and joint stock or other associations, depending upon any statutory law for their existence or privileges, should be subject to proper governmental supervision, and full and accurate information as to their operations should be made public regularly at reasonable intervals.
Failure | Government | Life | Life | Man | Past | Public | Rest | Government | Failure | Old |
Children understand very well that in each woman, in each man, in each child, there is capacity of waking up, of understanding, and of loving. Many children have told me that they cannot show me anyone who does not have this capacity. Some people allow it to develop, and some do not, but everyone has it. This capacity of waking up, of being aware of what is going on in your feelings, in your body, in your perceptions, in the world, is called Buddha nature, the capacity of understanding and loving. Smiling is very important. If we are not able to smile, then the world will not have peace. It is not by going out for a demonstration against nuclear missiles that we can bring about peace. It is with our capacity of smiling, breathing, and being peace that we can make peace.
Better | Past | Present | Understand |
We grudge no man a fortune which represents his own power and sagacity, when exercised with entire regard to the welfare of his fellows. Again, comrades over there, take the lesson from your own experience. Not only did you not grudge, but you gloried in the promotion of the great generals who gained their promotion by leading their army to victory. So it is with us. We grudge no man a fortune in civil life if it is honorably obtained and well used. It is not even enough that it should have been gained without doing damage to the community. We should permit it to be gained only so long as the gaining represents benefit to the community.
No man can be a good citizen unless he has a wage more than sufficient to cover the bare cost of living, and hours of labor short enough so after his day’s work is done he will have time and energy to bear his share in the management of the community, to help in carrying the general load.
Change | Conscience | Cunning | Fear | Future | Individual | Labor | Man | Past | Right | Rule | System | Will | Old |
In new and wild communities where there is violence, an honest man must protect himself; and until other means of securing his safety are devised, it is both foolish and wicked to persuade him to surrender his arms while the men who are dangerous to the community retain theirs. He should not renounce the right to protect himself by his own efforts until the community is so organized that it can effectively relieve the individual of the duty of putting down violence. So it is with nations. Each nation must keep well prepared to defend itself until the establishment of some form of international police power, competent and willing to prevent violence as between nations. As things are now, such power to command peace throughout the world could best be assured by some combination between those great nations which sincerely desire peace and have no thought themselves of committing aggressions. The combination might at first be only to secure peace within certain definite limits and on certain definite conditions; but the ruler or statesman who should bring about such a combination would have earned his place in history for all time and his title to the gratitude of all mankind.
Care | Deeds | Enough | Life | Life | Man | Men | Nothing | Past | Praise | Promise | Public | Words | Worth | Deeds |
The present moment is filled with joy and happiness. If you are attentive, you will see it.
The practice of a healer, therapist, teacher, or any helping professional should be directed toward his or herself first, because if the helper is unhappy, he or she cannot help many people.
To a large extent our difficulties are a difficulty of language. People fail to realize that language is multivalent and also, particularly, that when a person uses a word like ‘rights’, for the non-human world, they think ‘rights’ is a single continuum… ‘Rights’ is an analogous term. It is an analogous term. It is alike and different. Like a person says – “A tree has rights” – the tree doesn’t have human rights because human rights would be no good for a tree. A tree needs tree rights. Birds need bird rights. Plants need plant rights. This whole question of law and rights needs to recognize what we call the diversity within the continuity. It is a difference of quality, not of quantity. So, it is not that the humans have more or less. Humans don’t have more rights than birds do. They have different rights. So that it’s this capacity to recognize difference that pervades just an enormous amount of human affairs.
Attention | Life | Life | Little | Mission | Past | Reconciliation | Redemption | Relationship | Time |
To live in the present moment is a miracle. The miracle is not to walk on water. The miracle is to walk on the green Earth in the present moment, to appreciate the peace and beauty that are available now.
Life has left her footprints on my forehead. But I have become a child again this morning. The smile, seen through leaves and flowers, is back to smooth away the wrinkles, as the rains wipe away footprints on the beach. Again a cycle of birth and death begins.
I think of those weavers working through the damp Christmas months to get the tapestry done in six months per the contract in Florence, and clinging to every minute of daylight. Probably they had the artist breathing down their neck.
Authors are the vanguard in the march of mind, the intellectual backwoodsmen, reclaiming from the idle wilderness new territories for the thought and activity of their happier brethren.
Past |
The true Sovereign of the world, who molds the world like soft wax, according to his pleasure, is he who lovingly sees into the world.
The wise man is but a clever infant, spelling letters from a hieroglyphical prophetic book, the lexicon of which lies in eternity.
Past |