This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Even granting the author [Rutherford]... his main principle, ‘That every man’s own happiness is the ultimate end, which nature and reason teach him to pursue’, why may not nature and reason teach him, too, to have some desire to see others happy as well as himself, or give him some delight in doing what seems fit and right, if these things do not interfere with his own happiness?... Why may he not, with the pursuit of that end, join some other pursuits not inconsistent with it, instead of transforming every benevolent affection, every moral view, into self-interest? This surely neither does honour to religion, nor justice to human nature.
Character | Desire | Happy | Human nature | Justice | Man | Nature | Reason | Religion | Right | Self | Self-interest | Teach | Happiness |
Spiro T. Agnew, fully Spiro Theodore Agnew
Intellectual and spiritual leaders hailed the cause of civil rights and gave little thought to where the civil disobedience road might end. But defiance of the law, even for the best reasons, opens a tiny hole in the dike and soon a trickle becomes a flood... And while no thinking person denies that social injustice exits, no thinking person can condone any group, for any reason, taking justice into his own hands. Once this is permitted, democracy dies; for democracy is sustained through one great premise: the premise that civil rights are balanced by civil responsibilities.
Cause | Civil disobedience | Defiance | Democracy | Disobedience | Injustice | Injustice | Justice | Law | Little | Reason | Rights | Thinking | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |
Debt haunts the mind; a conversation about justice troubles it; the sight of a creditor fills it with confusion; even the sanctuary is not a place of refuge. The borrower is servant to the lender. Independence, so essential to the virtues and pleasures of a man, can only be maintained by setting bounds to our desires and owing no man anything.
Conversation | Debt | Justice | Man | Mind | Troubles | Wisdom |
The torture of a bad conscience is the hell of a living soul.
Conscience | Hell | Soul | Torture | Wisdom |
Richard Francis Burton, fully Sir Richard Francis Burton
Every other sin hath some pleasures annexed to it, or will admit of some excuse, but envy wants both. We should strive against it, for if indulged in it will be to us as a foretaste of hell upon earth.
Theodore Cuyler, fully Theodore Ledyard Cuyler
Tears never yet saved a soul. Hell is full of weepers weeping over lost opportunities, perhaps over the rejection of an offered Saviour. Your Bible does not say, “Weep, and be saved.” It says, “Believe, and be saved.” Faith is better than feeling.
Better | Bible | Faith | Hell | Soul | Tears | Wisdom | Bible |
Clarence Darrow, fully Clarence Seward Darrow
There is no such thing as justice - in or out of court.
Every kind of peaceful cooperation among men is primarily based on mutual trust and only secondarily on institutions such as courts of justice and police.
Cooperation | Justice | Men | Trust | Wisdom |
That person lives in hell who gets what he desires too soon. Whether he finds his happiness in wealth, power, fame or women, or in a combination of all, that happiness will be meaningless if it robs him of his desire. Heaven is a country through which we are permitted to search eagerly and with hope for what we want.
Desire | Fame | Heaven | Hell | Hope | Power | Search | Wealth | Will | Wisdom | Happiness |