This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Peter Senge, fully Peter Michael Senge
Problems of any nature only get solved when people are willing to tell the truth about their systemic nature. There are times when the truth is temporarily shielded from our view, but too often we would rather not deal the real issues because of social, political or economic self-interest or pressure. Telling the truth and being open to the real truth requires courage, and sometimes risk, but is always empowering and more often than not, very rewarding. Eventually the truth will not be denied, so why not start dealing with the systemic truths of your business today? Have courage and believe in yourself!
Business | Courage | Nature | People | Self-interest | Truth | Will | Business | Truths |
Pitirim A. Sorokin, fully Pitirim Alexandrovich (Alexander) Sorokin
The main uniform effect of calamities upon the political and social structure of society is an expansion of governmental regulation, regimentation, and control of social relationships and a decrease in the regulation and management of social relationships by individuals and private groups. The expansion of governmental control and regulation assumes a variety of forms, embracing socialistic or communistic totalitarianism, fascist totalitarianism, monarchial autocracy, and theocracy. Now it is effected by a revolutionary regime, now by a counterrevolutionary regime; now by a military dictatorship, now by a dictatorship, now by a dictatorial bureaucracy. From both the quantitative and the qualitative point of view, such an expansion of governmental control means a decrease of freedom, a curtailment of the autonomy of individuals and private groups in the regulation and management of their individual behavior and their social relationships, the decline of constitutional and democratic institutions.
Behavior | Control | Individual | Means | Regulation | Society | Society |
Petra Kelly, fully Petra Karin Kelley
The suffering people of this world must come together to take control of their lives, to wrest political power from their present masters pushing them towards destruction. The Earth has been mistreated and only by restoring a balance, only by living with the Earth, only by emphasizsing knowledge and expertise towards soft energies and soft technology for people and for life, can we overcome the patriarchal ego.
Control | Earth | Knowledge | People | Power | Present | Suffering | Technology | World |
Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
There is not a more prudent maxim, than to live with one's enemies as if they may one day become one's friends; as it commonly happens, sooner or later, in the vicissitudes of political affairs.
Day | Vicissitudes |
I hate the miser, whose unsocial breast Locks from the world his useless stores. Wealth by the bounteous only is enjoyed, whose treasures, in diffusive good employed, the rich return of fame and friends procure, and ‘gainst a sad reverse a safe retreat secure.
I keep my friends as misers do their treasure, because, of all the things granted us by wisdom, none is greater or better than friendship.
From the point of view of political economy these propositions are irrefutable; and Malthus, who has formulated them with such alarming exactness, is secure against all reproach. From the point of view of the conditions of social science, these same propositions are radically false, and even contradictory.
Philonides, aka Philonides of Laodicea NULL
Because I hold the laws in due respect, and fear to be unjust, am I a coward? Meek let me be to all the friends of truth, and only terrible amongst its foes.
The advice of friends must be received with a judicious reserve: we must not give ourselves up to it and follow it blindly, whether right or wrong.
I have made every effort to obtain exact information, comparing doctrines, replying to objections, continually constructing equations and reductions from arguments, and weighing thousands of syllogisms in the scales of the most rigorous logic. In this laborious work, I have collected many interesting facts which I shall share with my friends and the public as soon as I have leisure. But I must say that I recognized at once that we had never understood the meaning of these words, so common and yet so sacred: Justice, equity, liberty; that concerning each of these principles our ideas have been utterly obscure; and, in fact, that this ignorance was the sole cause, both of the poverty that devours us, and of all the calamities that have ever afflicted the human race.
Effort | Ideas | Ignorance | Meaning | Poverty | Principles | Public | Friends |
When in our days Religion is made a political engine, she exposes herself to having her sacred character forgotten. The most tolerant become intolerant towards her. Believers, who believe something else besides what she teaches, retaliate by attacking her in the very sanctuary itself.
All my economic ideas as developed over twenty-five years can be summed up in the words: agricultural-industrial federation. All my political ideas boil down to a similar formula: political federation or decentralization.
Ideas |
Power, instrument of the collective force, created in society to serve as mediator between capital and labor, has become inescapably enchained to capital and directed against the proletariat. No political reform can resolve this contradiction, since, according to the avowal of politicians themselves, such a reform could only end by giving more energy and expansion to power, and until it had overthrown the hierarchy and dissolved society, power would not be able to attack the prerogatives of monopoly. The problem consists, then, for the working classes, not in capturing, but in defeating both power and monopoly, which would mean to make rise from the bowels of the people, from the depths of labor, a power greater, an action more powerful which would envelop capital and the State and subjugate them.
Action | Energy | Giving | Power | Reform | Society | Society |
Phyllis Schlafly, fully Phyllis McAlpin Stewart Schlafly
National Standards was not a narrative of past events but was leftwing revisionism and Political Correctness.
Many men are loved by their enemies, and hated by their friends, and are the friends of their enemies, and the enemies of their friends.
Inayat Khan, aka Hazrat Inayat Khan, fully Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan
In the inner life the greatest principle that one should observe is to beunassuming, quiet, without any show of wisdom, without any manifestation of learning, without any desire to let anyone know how farone has advanced, not even letting oneself know how far one has gone. The task to be accomplished is the entire forgetting of oneself andharmonizing with one’s fellowman; acting in agreement with all, meeting everyone on his own plane, speaking to everyone in his own tongue,answering the laughter of one’s friends with a smile, and the pain of another with tears, standing by one’s friends in their joy and their sorrow, whatever be one’s own grade of evolution.
Pirke Avot, "Verses of the Fathers" or "Ethics of the Fathers" NULL
Rabban Gamaliel the son of Rabbi Judah the Prince said: “Great is study of the Torah when combined with a worldly occupation, for toil in them both puts sin out of mind. All study of the Torah which is not supplemented by work is destined to prove futile and causes sin. Let all who occupy themselves with communal affairs do so for Heaven's sake, for then the merit of their fathers sustains them and their righteousness endures forever. And as for you, G-d will then say: I count you worthy of great reward as if you had done it all yourselves. Be careful in your relations with the government; for they draw no man close to themselves except for their own interests. They appear as friends when it is to their advantage, but they do not stand by a man in his time of stress… Do His will as if it was your will that He may do your will as if it was His will. Make your will of no effect before His will that He may make the will of others of no effect before your will.”
Man | Merit | Reward | Righteousness | Sin | Study | Time | Will | Work | Torah | Friends |
Pitirim A. Sorokin, fully Pitirim Alexandrovich (Alexander) Sorokin
Only the power of unbounded love practiced in regard to all human beings can defeat the forces of interhuman strife, and can prevent the pending extermination of man by man on this planet. Without love, no armament, no war, no diplomatic machinations, no coercive police force, no school education, no economic or political measures, not even hydrogen bombs can prevent the pending catastrophe
Engage in adolescent philosophy and education as boys and young men, and give special attention to their bodies as they grow up, to acquire a helper for philosophy. As the soul begins to mature with the passing years, tighten up its exercise, and when their strength declines and exempts them from military and political duties, then be turned out to pasture to do nothing - except as a sideline - but practice philosophy, if they're to live happily here and crown their lives when they die with their fitting portion over there.
Attention | Boys | Education | Nothing | Philosophy | Practice | Soul | Strength |