This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Common sense is that collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen.
Age | Common Sense | Sense |
The seduction of war is insidious because so much of what we are told about it is true; It does create a sense of comradeship, which obliterates our alienation and makes us, for perhaps the only time of our life, feel we belong. War allows us to rise above our small stations in life. We find nobility in a cause and feelings of selflessness and even bliss. And at a time of soaring deficits and financial scandals and the very deterioration of our domestic fabric, war is a fine diversion. War, for those who enter into combat, has a dark beauty, filled with the monstrous and the grotesque. The Bible calls it the "lust of the eye" and warns believers against it. War gives us a distorted sense of self; it gives us meaning.
Alienation | Beauty | Bible | Cause | Diversion | Feelings | Life | Life | Lust | Meaning | Nobility | Self | Sense | Time | War | Bible |
[Plato's ideal society] guarantees to all people the right to an education that diagnoses and perfects their unique talents, plus a work role that conveys a sense of self-esteem, saving them from the neuroses of megalomania and the lust for power. It forbids privilege and sexism and all other criteria irrelevant to merit. It eliminates conflict of interest from those who hold office and gives the masses a potent checklist they can use to hold their rulers to account. Best of all, it eliminates all traces of "might makes right" and serves as a pattern laid up in heaven to rank actual societies in terms of what corrupts them. Society becomes more corrupt as the struggle for power becomes more brutal.
Education | Esteem | Heaven | Lust | Merit | Office | People | Power | Rank | Right | Self | Self-esteem | Sense | Society | Struggle | Unique | Work | Society | Privilege |
Robert Jarvik, fully Robert Koffler Jarvik, M.D.
Leaders are visionaries with a poorly developed sense of fear and no concept of the odds against them. They make the impossible happen.
Harold Kushner, fully Harold Samuel Kushner
Our souls are not hungry for fame, comfort, wealth, or power. Our souls are hungry for meaning, for the sense that we have figured out how to live so that our lives matter, so that the world will be at least a little bit different for our having passed through it.
Comfort | Fame | Little | Meaning | Power | Sense | Wealth | Will | World |
Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
It gives me a deep, comforting sense that "things seen are temporal and things unseen are eternal."
In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law ... that would lead to anarchy. An individual who breaks a law that his conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.
Anarchy | Conscience | Individual | Injustice | Injustice | Law | Order | Reality | Respect | Sense | Respect |
Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
Until the great mass of the people shall be filled with the sense of responsibility for each other's welfare, social justice can never be attained.
Justice | People | Responsibility | Sense |
A sense of humor can help you overlook the unattractive, tolerate the unpleasant, cope with the unexpected, and smile through the unbearable.
We should each ask ourselves: what place does ethics have in my daily life? In thinking about this question, ask yourself: what do I think of as a good life, in the fullest sense of that term? This is an ultimate question. To ask it is to ask: what kind of a life do I truly admire, and what kind of life do I hope to be able to look back on, when I am older and reflect on how I have lived? Will it be enough to say: "It was fun"?
Enough | Ethics | Fun | Good | Hope | Life | Life | Question | Sense | Thinking | Will | Think |
In youth, everything seems possible; but we reach a point in the middle years when we realize that we are never going to reach all the shining goals we had set for ourselves. And in the end, most of us reconcile ourselves, with what grace we can, to living with our ulcers and arthritis, our sense of partial failure, our less-than-ideal families - and even our politicians!
Let's face it. Let's talk sense to the American people. Let's tell them the truth, that there are no gains without pains, that we are now on the eve of great decisions, not easy decisions, like resistance when you're attacked, but along, patient, costly struggle which alone can assure triumph over the great enemies of man - war, poverty and tyranny - and the assaults upon human dignity which are the most grievous consequences of each.
Consequences | Dignity | Man | People | Poverty | Sense | Struggle | Truth | Tyranny | War |
Adrienne Rich, fully Adrienne Cecil Rich
[Responsibility to yourself] means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short, simply to avoid conflict and confrontation. And this, in turn, means resisting the forces in society which say that women should be nice, play safe, have low professional expectations, drown in love and forget about work, live through others, and stay in places assigned to us. It means that we insist on a life of meaningful work, insist that work be as meaningful as love and friendship in our lives. It means, therefore, the courage to be “different”; not to be continuously available to others when we need time for ourselves and our work; to be able to demand of others – parents, friends, roommates, teachers, lovers, husbands, children – that they respect our sense of purpose and our integrity as persons.
Children | Courage | Integrity | Life | Life | Love | Means | Need | Parents | Play | Purpose | Purpose | Respect | Responsibility | Safe | Sense | Society | Time | Work | Friendship | Society | Respect |