This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
To think better, to think like the best humans, we are probably going to have to learn again to judge a person's intelligence, not by the ability to recite facts, but by the good order or harmoniousness of his or her surroundings. We must suspect that any statistical justification of ugliness and violence is a revelation of stupidity.
Beginning | Family | Global | Good | Knowledge | Patience | People | Politics | Principles |
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
As a rule it was the pleasure haters that became unjust.
W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
In my own country for nearly a century I have been nothing but a nigger.
Human nature | Mercy | Nature | Temptation | Will | Temptation |
W. Edwards Deming, fully William Edwards Deming
The prevailing style of management must undergo transformation. A system cannot understand itself. The transformation requires a view from outside. The aim of this chapter is to provide an outside view—a lens—that I call a system of profound knowledge. It provides a map of theory by which to understand the organizations that we work in. The first step is transformation of the individual. This transformation is discontinuous. It comes from understanding of the system of profound knowledge. The individual, transformed, will perceive new meaning to his life, to events, to numbers, to interactions between people. Once the individual understands the system of profound knowledge, he will apply its principles in every kind of relationship with other people. He will have a basis for judgment of his own decisions and for transformation of the organizations that he belongs to.
W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky
There have certainly been many periods in history when virtue was more rare than under the Caesars; but there has probably never been a period when vice was more extravagant or uncontrolled.
Doubt | Feelings | Ideas | Little | Order | Purity | World |
W. Edwards Deming, fully William Edwards Deming
Our customers should take joy in our products and services.
Organization | Loss | Understand |
W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky
The period of Catholic ascendancy was on the whole one of the most deplorable in the history of the human mind.... The spirit that shrinks from enquiry as sinful and deems a state of doubt a state of guilt, is the most enduring disease that can afflict the mind of man. Not till the education of Europe passed from the monasteries to the universities, not till Mohammedan science, and clasical free thought, and industrial independence broke the sceptre of the Church, did the intellectual revival of Europe begin.
Agitation | Authority | Change | Church | Conscience | Controversy | Doctrine | Enthusiasm | Force | Language | Light | Men | Method | Peace | Principles | Reason | Religion | Right | Sense | Spirit | Theology | Will |
W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky
Almost all Europe, for many centuries, was inundated with blood, which was shed at the direct instigation or with the full approval of the ecclesiastical authorities.
Life | Life | Opposition | Politics |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.
Abuse | Democracy | Power | Tyranny | Understand |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The crisis in Germany has only begun. It will inevitably end in the transfer of political power to the German proletariat. The Russian proletariat is following events with the keenest attention and enthusiasm. Now even the blindest workers in the various countries will see that the Bolsheviks were right in basing their whole tactics on the support of the world workers' revolution.
Aims | Ideas | Individual | Method | Organization | Present | Struggle | System | Work |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The Poor Peasants’ Committees are necessary to fight the kulaks, the rich, the exploiters, who shackle the working peasants. But between the kulaks, who are a small minority, and the poor or semi-proletarians there is the section of the middle peasants. The Soviet government has never declared or conducted any struggle against them. Any steps or measures to the contrary must be condemned most vigorously and stopped. The socialist government must pursue a policy of agreement with the middle peasants.
Meaning | Power | Revolution |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Without a revolutionary theory there cannot be a revolutionary movement.
Ideas | Literature | Power |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
When feudalism was overthrown and “free” capitalist society appeared in the world, it at once became apparent that this freedom meant a new system of oppression and exploitation of the working people.
Insecurity | Majority | Question | Sense | Old |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
No Bolshevik, no Communist, no intelligent socialist has ever entertained the idea of violence against the middle peasants. All socialists have always spoken of agreement with them and of their gradual and voluntary transition to socialism.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
But every little difference may become a big one if it is insisted on.
Absurd | Attention | Books | Earth | Evidence | Humanity | Important | Means | Oppression | Order | Paradise | Philosophy | Practice | Proletariat | Question | Reflection | Religion | Society | Struggle | Tomorrow | Unity | Will | Society | Old | Propaganda |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
If a definite level of culture is required for the building of socialism (although nobody can say just what that definite ‘level of culture’ is, for it differs in every Western European country), why cannot we began by first achieving the prerequisites for that definite level of culture in a revolutionary way, and then, with the aid of the workers’ and peasants’ government and Soviet system, proceed to overtake the other nations?
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Perhaps the profoundest cause of disagreement with the Narodniks is the difference in our fundamental views on social and economic processes. When studying the latter, the Narodnik usually draws conclusions that point to some moral; he does not regard the diverse groups of persons taking part in production as creators of various forms of life; he does not set out to present the sum-total of social and economic relationships as the result of the mutual relations between these groups, which have different interests and different historical roles.
Self-deception | Will |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Everyone is free to write and say whatever he likes, without any restrictions. But every voluntary association (including the party) is also free to expel members who use the name of the party to advocate anti-party views.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
From the standpoint of theory, this idea disregards the elementary propositions of Marxism concerning the inevitability of capitalist development where commodity production exists. Marxism teaches that a society which is based on commodity production, and which has commercial intercourse with civilised capitalist nations, at a certain stage of its development, itself, inevitably takes the road of capitalism.
Initiative | Present | Struggle |