This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Max Lerner, fully Maxwell "Max" Alan Lerner, aka Mikhail Lerner
In our culture we make heroes of the men who sit on top of a heap of money, and we pay attention not only to what they say in their field of competence, but to their wisdom on every other question in the world.
Attention | Competence | Culture | Men | Money | Question | Wisdom | World |
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
Every product of technology takes up space in the mind, and requires some investment of attention that could have been used for some other purpose.
Max Lerner, fully Maxwell "Max" Alan Lerner, aka Mikhail Lerner
A world technology means either a world government or world suicide.
Government | Means | Suicide | Technology | World | Government |
Max Lerner, fully Maxwell "Max" Alan Lerner, aka Mikhail Lerner
We cannot live by power, and a culture that seeks to live by it becomes brutal and sterile. But we can die without it.
Michael Harrington, fully Edward Michael "Mike" Harrington
There are tens of millions of Americans who are beyond the welfare state. Taken as a whole there is a culture of poverty... bad health, poor housing, low levels of aspiration and high levels of mental distress. Twenty per cent of a nation, some 32,000,000.
Aspiration | Culture | Distress | Health | Poverty | Aspiration |
Noam Chomsky, fully Avram Noam Chomsky
Every aspect of the culture implicitly involves an expression of what a "proper" life and a "proper" set of values are, and that's all indoctrination.
Paul Tillich, fully Paul Johannes Tillich
Religion is the substance of culture, and culture the form of religion.
Education has two branches - one of gymnastic, which is concerned with the body, and the other of music, which is designed for the improvement of the soul. And gymnastic has also two branches - dancing and wrestling; and one sort of dancing imitates muscial recitation, and aims at preserving dignity and freedom, the other aims at producing health, agility, and beauty in the limbs and parts of the body, giving the proper flexion and extension to each of them, a harmonious motion being diffused everywhere, and forming suitabile accompaniment to the dance.
Aims | Beauty | Body | Dignity | Education | Freedom | Giving | Health | Improvement | Music | Soul | Beauty |
By the time you rise through the ranks, the culture of homogenization has bred the spirit and imagination out of you.
Culture | Imagination | Spirit | Time |
It is the property of the religious spirit to be the most refining of all influences. No external advantages, no culture of the tastes, no habit of command, no association with the elegant, or even depth of affection, can bestow that delicacy and that grandeur of bearing which belong only to the mind accustomed to celestial conversation, all else is but gilt and cosmetics, beside this, as expressed in every look and gesture.
Association | Conversation | Culture | Habit | Mind | Property | Spirit | Association |
Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of every one of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.
Better | Conformity | Conspiracy | Culture | Liberty | Self | Self-reliance | Society | Surrender | Virtue | Virtue | Society |
Ruth Benedict, born Ruth Fulton
There has never been a time when civilization stood more in need of individuals who are genuinely culture conscious, who can see objectively the social behaviors of other peoples without fear and recrimination.
Civilization | Culture | Fear | Need | Time |
Ruth Benedict, born Ruth Fulton
No individual can arrive even at the threshold of his potentialities without a culture in which he participates. Conversely, no civilization has in it any element which in the last analysis is not the contribution of an individual.
Civilization | Culture | Individual |
Thomas Henry Huxley, aka T.H. Huxley and Darwin's Bulldog
For the aims of my own career, I want to promote the increase of natural knowledge, and to forward the application of scientific methods of investigation to all the problems of life, in the conviction that there is no alleviation for the sufferings of mankind except veracity of thought and action, and the resolute facing of the world as it is, when the garment of make-believe is stripped off.
Action | Aims | Knowledge | Life | Life | Mankind | Problems | Thought | World | Thought |
Apparently, it is the nature of all human relationships to aspire to be permanent. To propose temporariness as a goal in such relationships is to bring them under the rule of aims and standards that prevent them form beginning. Neither marriage, nor kinship, nor friendship, nor neighborhood can exist with a life expectancy that is merely convenient.
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
The discovery of what is true and the practice of that which is good, are the two most important aims of philosophy.
Aims | Discovery | Good | Important | Philosophy | Practice | Discovery |