This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Government exists to protect the rights of minorities. The loved and the rich need no protection - they have many friends and few enemies.
Government | Need | Rights | Friends |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
There is a wide difference between speaking to deceive, and being silent to be impenetrable.
W. Clement Stone, fully William Clement Stone
Be careful the environment you choose for it will shape you; be careful the friends you choose for you will become like them.
However we may flatter ourselves to the contrary, our friends think no higher of us than the world do. They see us with the jaundiced or distrustful eyes of others. They may know better, but their feelings are governed by popular prejudice. Nay, they are more shy of us (when under a cloud) than even strangers; for we involve them in a common disgrace, or compel them to embroil themselves in continual quarrels and disputes in our defense.
Better | Defense | Disgrace | Feelings | Prejudice | World | Friends | Think |
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
You cannot be friends upon any other terms than upon the terms of equality.
He will never have true friends who is afraid of making enemies.
The spiritual life is nothing else but the working of the Spirit of God within us, and therefore our own silence must be a great part of our preparation for it, and much speaking or delight in it will often no small hindrance of that good which we can only have from hearing what the Spirit and voice of God speaketh within us.
God | Good | Life | Life | Nothing | Silence | Spirit | Will | God |
W. Somerset Maugham, fully William Somerset Maugham
Social distinctions in the final analysis depend upon money. The great English lords of the eighteenth century were not treated by their inferiors with the obsequiousness which not turns our stomachs because of their titles, but because of their wealth, which, with the influence it gave them, enabled them to grant favors to their friends and dependents.
From Wakan Tanka, the Great Spirit, there came a great unifying life force that flowed in and through all things - the flowers of the plains, blowing winds, rocks, trees, birds, animals - and was the same force that had been breathed into the first man. Thus all things were kindred, and were brought together by the same Great Mystery. Kinship with all creatures of the earth, sky, and water was a real and active principle. In the animal and bird world there existed a brotherly feeling that kept the Lakota safe among them. And so close did some of the Lakotas come to their feathered and furred friends that in true brotherhood they spoke a common tongue. The animals had rights - the right of man’s protection, the right to live, the right to multiply, and the right to freedom, and the right to man’s indebtedness - and in recognition of these rights the Lakota never enslaved an animal, and spared all life that was not needed for food and clothing. This concept of life and its relations was humanizing, and gave to the Lakota an abiding love. It filled his being with the joy and mystery of living; it gave him reverence for all life; it made a place for all things in the scheme of existence with equal importance to all. The Lakota could despise no creature, for all were of one blood, made by the same hand, and filled with the essence of the Great Mystery. In spirit, the Lakota were humble and meek. “Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth” - this was true for the Lakota, and from the earth they inherited secrets long since forgotten. Their religion was sane, natural, and human.
Brotherhood | Despise | Earth | Existence | Force | Freedom | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Man | Mystery | Religion | Reverence | Right | Rights | Safe | Spirit | World | Friends |
W. Somerset Maugham, fully William Somerset Maugham
The prestige you acquire by being able to tell your friends that you know famous men proves only that you are yourself of small account.
E. W. Howe, fully Edgar Watson Howe
Instead of loving your enemies, treat your friends a little better.
Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, sometimes known as Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam
I have no patience with the stupidity of the average teacher of grammar who wastes precious years in hammering rules into children's heads. For it is not by learning rules that we acquire the powers of speaking a language, but by daily intercourse with those accustomed to express themselves with exactness and refinement and by copious reading of the best authors.
Children | Language | Learning | Patience | Reading | Refinement | Stupidity | Teacher |
Dmitri Shostakovich, fully Dmitri Dmitrievich Shostakovich
There can be no music without ideology. The old composers, whether they knew it or not, were upholding a political theory. Most of them, of course, were bolstering the rule of the upper classes. Only Beethoven was a forerunner of the revolutionary movement. If you read his letters, you will see how often he wrote to his friends that he wished to give new ideas to the public and rouse it to revolt against its masters.
Let us examine more closely the significance of this vague word, reality. It may have several meanings, according to the different points of view which one takes. We may regard it as embodied in the physical world, the world of land and sea, of sky and trees, of sunshine and of storm. The real therefore will be to us that which we can touch and see, smell and taste, as one will say, "I know that is real for I can see it with my eyes." Seeing is believing, and the testimony of the senses is the superior court of appeal in controverted questions. But the world of reality may be regarded from quite a different point of view, as the world of consciousness, the mind of man, the experiences of the inner self, the Ego. Here is a world of phenomena interrelated and reciprocally dependent. It is a realm of ideas, of memory images, of fancy, of will, and of desire. The verities in this world cannot be seen, or measured, or weighed, and yet we do not hesitate to speak of them as realities; they are real as the love of friends is real, or the anger of a foe. The passion of a Romeo, the will of a Napoleon, the genius of a Goethe ... these are realities.
Anger | Consciousness | Desire | Ego | Genius | Ideas | Land | Love | Man | Memory | Mind | Passion | Phenomena | Reality | Regard | Self | Taste | Will | World | Friends |
I think the collective unconscious is actually becoming the Collective Consciousness. With the mass media, every time we watch some event, whether it's a mass sporting event or it's the president speaking about one thing or another, we are tuning in with our collective consciousness to a happening in the world. In the past, we didn't have that ability. And so in a way, we have been awakening a capacity for reflective consciousness at a social level unbeknownst to humanity. It's an almost invisible process of bio-osmosis; we are developing a new capacity for witnessing, for being an observing species, and this is transformative.
Ability | Awakening | Capacity | Consciousness | Humanity | Past | Time | World | Think |
To sum up, what has been our policy? We looked for and found friends all throughout the world.
Friends |
We do not so much need the help of our friends as the confidence of their help in need.
Confidence | Need | Friends |