This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
Man is originally characterized by his search for meaning rather than his search for himself. The more he forgets himself—giving himself to a cause or another person—the more human he is. And the more he is immersed and absorbed in something or someone other than himself the more he really becomes himself.
Change | Existence | Freedom | Future | Individual | Man | Will |
Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.
I discover that hardly a week passes that someone does not start a new cult, or revive an old one; if I had a hundred life-times I could not know all the creeds and ceremonies, the services and rituals, the litanies and liturgies, the hymns, anthems and offertories of Bootstrap-lifting.
Control | Freedom | Mind | Opinion | People | Present | Problems | Race |
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
Socrates said, “The misuse of language induces evil in the soul.” He wasn’t talking about grammar. To misuse language is to use it the way politicians and advertisers do, for profit, without taking responsibility for what the words mean. Language used as a means to get power or make money goes wrong: it lies. Language used as an end in itself, to sing a poem or tell a story, goes right, goes towards the truth.
Consciousness | Father | Freedom | Justify | Nothing | Solitude | Child |
I felt the need to stir things up... To confront others for a change and force them to deal with a situation that I myself had created.
Genuine politics -- even politics worthy of the name -- the only politics I am willing to devote myself to -- is simply a matter of serving those around us: serving the community and serving those who will come after us. Its deepest roots are moral because it is a responsibility expressed through action, to and for the whole.
Association | Freedom of speech | Freedom | Speech | Association |
When the internal crisis of the totalitarian system grows so deep that it becomes clear to everyone, and when more and more people learn to speak their own language and reject the hollow, mendacious language of the powers that be, it means that freedom is remarkably close, if not directly within reach
It is clearly necessary to invent organizational structures appropriate to the present multicultural age. But such efforts are doomed to failure if they do not grow out of something deeper, out of generally held values.
Freedom |
Why do I say this? It would be very unreasonable to understand the sad legacy of the last forty years as something alien, which some distant relative bequeathed to us. On the contrary, we have to accept this legacy as a sin we committed against ourselves. If we accept it as such, we will understand that it is up to us all, and up to us alone to do something about it. We cannot blame the previous rulers for everything, not only because it would be untrue, but also because it would blunt the duty that each of us faces today: namely, the obligation to act independently, freely, reasonably and quickly. Let us not be mistaken: the best government in the world, the best parliament and the best president, cannot achieve much on their own. And it would be wrong to expect a general remedy from them alone. Freedom and democracy include participation and therefore responsibility from us all.
Freedom | Language | Means | People | System | Crisis | Learn |
Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness a more humane society will not emerge.
Blame | Democracy | Duty | Freedom | Government | Obligation | Responsibility | Sin | Will | Wrong | Government | Understand |
Today I would like to thank from my heart all those of you who have trusted me, sympathized with me or in any way supported me. Without your understanding and goodwill I would not have been able to stay in office for even a few moments. I appreciate your support all the more for the fact that I did not try at all costs to obtain it. I frequently even took what was clearly a minority position and so reaped more opposition than recognition. Sometimes I may have been mistaken in this but I would like to assure you of one thing: I have always tried to abide by the dictates of the authority under which I took my oath of office — the dictates of the best of my awareness and conscience.
That the threat is now intense is not a reason to abandon our quest for knowledge. It is a reason to hold it more tightly, in spite of the need for action to preserve our freedom, in spite of the distractions of living in turmoil, that it may not be lost or brushed aside by the demands of the hour. We would not neglect our duty to our country and our fellows to strive mightily to preserve our ways and our lives. There is an added duty, not inconsistent, not less. It is the duty to so live that there may be a reason for living, beyond the mere mechanisms of life. It is the duty to carry on, under stress, the search for understanding.
Curiosity | Freedom | Government | Inquiry | Plan | Play | Progress | Government |
Tom Lehrer, fully Thomas Andrew Lehrer
All books can be indecent books, though recent books are bolder. For filth, I'm glad to say, is in the mind of the beholder. When correctly viewed, everything is lewd. I could tell you things about Peter Pan, and the Wizard of OZ, there's a dirty old man!
Freedom | Problems | Television |
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
When we were young kids growing up in America, we were told to eat our Vegetables at dinner and not leave them. Mothers said, think of the starving children in India and finish the dinner. And now I tell my children: Finish your homework. Think of the children in India Who would make you starve, if you don't.'?
Freedom of thought | Freedom | Inquiry | Openness | Thought | World | Thought |
Thomas Szasz, fully Thomas Stephen Szasz
[Growing up] is especially difficult to achieve for a child whose parents do not take him seriously; that is, who do not expect proper behavior from him, do not discipline him, and finally, do not respect him enough to tell him the truth.
Action | Freedom | Responsibility | Self |
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
I have always in my own thought summed up individual liberty, and business liberty, and every other kind of liberty, in the phrase that is common in the sporting world, "A free field and no favor."
Freedom of speech | Freedom | Man | Speech |
Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
He regarded love as a sort of cruel malady through which the elect are required to pass in their late youth and from which they emerge, pale and wrung, but ready for the business of living.
Aptitude | Conscience | Contempt | Conversation | Freedom | Memory | Talent |