This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Lawrence Hyde, 1st Earl of Rochester
It is undeniable that a man needs to be provided with some sort of philosophical background for his existence. And still more... does he need to be provided with a proper system of transcendental cosmology. But it remains true that the primary concern of the seeker after spiritual fulfillment is not with philosophy, but with wisdom.
Existence | Fulfillment | Man | Need | Philosophy | System | Wisdom |
The most shocking fact about war is that its victims and its instruments are individual human beings, and that these individual beings are condemned by the monstrous convention of politics to murder or be murdered in quarrels not their own.
Convention | Individual | Murder | Politics | War | Wisdom | Murder |
If a child who wanted to be a teacher I would bid him Godspeed as if he were going to war. For indeed the war against prejudice, greed and ignorance is eternal, and those who dedicate themselves to it give their lives not less because they may live to see some faction of the battle won.
Battle | Eternal | Greed | Ignorance | Prejudice | War | Wisdom | Child | Teacher |
John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
No man who witnessed the tragedies of the last war, no man who can imagine the unimaginable possibilities of the next war can advocate war out of irritability or frustration or impatience.
Impatience | Man | War | Wisdom |
Lyndon Johnson, fully Lyndon Baines Johnson, aka LBJ
In this age when there can be no losers in peace and no victors in war - we must recognize the obligation to match national strength with national restraint.
Age | Obligation | Peace | Restraint | Strength | War | Wisdom |
Disease is not so much the effect of noxious, external forces - the 'bugs,' both literal and figurative in our lives - as it is the faulty effort of our minds and bodies to deal with them... already reside in our bodies. When our responses to problems in life are excessive or deficient, the central nervous system and hormones act on our immune defenses in such a way that the microbes aid and abet disease. The balance is upset between us and our resident pathogens.
Aid | Balance | Disease | Effort | Life | Life | Problems | System | Wisdom |
There is no such thing as an inevitable war. If war comes it will be from failure of human wisdom.
Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
Every one may begin a war at his pleasure, but cannot so finish it. A prince, therefore, before engaging in any enterprise, should well measure his strength, and govern himself accordingly.
The uprooting of human beings from the land, the concentration in cities, the breakdown of the authority of family, of tradition, and of moral conventions, the complexity and the novelty of modern life, and finally the economic insecurity of our industrial system have called into being the modern social worker. They perform a function in modern society which is not a luxury but an absolute necessity.
Absolute | Authority | Family | Insecurity | Land | Life | Life | Luxury | Necessity | Novelty | Society | System | Tradition | Wisdom | Society | Novelty |
The perfect condition of slavery... is nothing else but the state of war continued between a lawful conqueror and a captive, for if once compact enter between them, and make an agreement for a limited power on the one side, and obedience on the other, the state of war and slavery ceases as long as the compact endures; for, as has been said, no man can by agreement pass over to another that which hath not in himself - a power over his own life.
Life | Life | Man | Nothing | Obedience | Power | Slavery | War | Wisdom |
For as long as a time as we can see into the future, we shall be living between war and peace, between a war that cannot be fought and a peace that cannot be achieved. The great issues which divide the world cannot be decided by a war that could be won, and they cannot be settled by a treaty that can be negotiated... the power which used to deal with the division and conflicts of the past, namely, organized war, has become an impossible instrument to use.
Future | Past | Peace | Power | Time | War | Wisdom | World |
War’s very object is victory, not prolonged indecision. In war there is no substitute for victory.
Indecision | Object | War | Wisdom |
Karl Marx (1818-1883) German Philosopher, Socialist and Friedrich Engels
The distinguishing feature of Communism is not the abolition of property generally, but the abolition of bourgeois property. By modern bourgeois private property is the final and most complete expression of the system of producing and appropriating products that is based on class antagonisms, on the exploitation of the many by the few.