This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Pierre-Jules Hetzel, wrote under pen name P. J. Stahl
There is no permanent love but that which has duty for its eldest brother; so that if one sleeps the other watches, and honor is safe.
Paul Dirac, fully Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac
I cannot understand why we idle discussing religion. If we are honest – and as scientists honesty is our precise duty – we cannot help but admit that any religion is a pack of false statements, deprived of any real foundation. The very idea of God is a product of human imagination. I do not recognize any religious myth, at least because they contradict one another.
Paul Dirac, fully Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac
If we are honest — and scientists have to be — we must admit that religion is a jumble of false assertions, with no basis in reality. The very idea of God is a product of the human imagination. It is quite understandable why primitive people, who were so much more exposed to the overpowering forces of nature than we are today, should have personified these forces in fear and trembling. But nowadays, when we understand so many natural processes, we have no need for such solutions. I can't for the life of me see how the postulate of an Almighty God helps us in any way. What I do see is that this assumption leads to such unproductive questions as why God allows so much misery and injustice, the exploitation of the poor by the rich and all the other horrors He might have prevented. If religion is still being taught, it is by no means because its ideas still convince us, but simply because some of us want to keep the lower classes quiet. Quiet people are much easier to govern than clamorous and dissatisfied ones. They are also much easier to exploit. Religion is a kind of opium that allows a nation to lull itself into wishful dreams and so forget the injustices that are being perpetrated against the people. Hence the close alliance between those two great political forces, the State and the Church. Both need the illusion that a kindly God rewards — in heaven if not on earth — all those who have not risen up against injustice, who have done their duty quietly and uncomplainingly. That is precisely why the honest assertion that God is a mere product of the human imagination is branded as the worst of all mortal sins.
Assertion | Dreams | Duty | Earth | Fear | God | Heaven | Ideas | Illusion | Imagination | Life | Life | Means | Mortal | Nature | Need | People | Quiet | Religion | God | Govern | Understand |
Paul Gaugin, fully Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin
The critics can say stupid things and we can enjoy them, if we have the legitimate feeling of superiority — the satisfaction of a duty accomplished.
Duty | Superiority |
Every man, in proportion to his virtue, considers himself, with respect to the great community of mankind, as the steward and guardian of their interests in the property which he chances to possess. Every man, in proportion to his wisdom, sees the manner in which it is his duty to employ the resources which the consent of mankind has entrusted to his discretion.
Mankind, transmitting from generation to generation the legacy of accumulated vengeances, and pursuing with the feelings of duty the misery of their fellow-beings, have not failed to attribute to the Universal Cause a character analogous with their own. The image of this invisible, mysterious Being is more or less excellent and perfect — resembles more or less its original — in proportion to the perfection of the mind on which it is impressed.
Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin
He made an elaborate plan of his treatise, and, with much erudition, discussed both coercive factors which are used to maintain society: wagedom and the different forms of coercion which are sanctioned by law. At the end of his work he reserved two paragraphs only to mention the two non-coercive factors — the feeling of duty and the feeling of mutual sympathy — to which he attached little importance, as might be expected from a writer in law.
Peter Ustinov, fully Sir Peter Alexander Ustinov
Since we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our minds, our one duty is to furnish it well.
Peter Ustinov, fully Sir Peter Alexander Ustinov
Once we are destined to live out our lives in the prison of our mind, our one duty is to furnish it well.
Self-confidence is either a petty pride in our own narrowness or the realization of our duty and privilege as God's children.
It is our duty as men and women to behave as though limits to our ability do not exist. We are collaborators in creation of the Universe.
Communism is the exploitation of the strong by the weak. In property, inequality of conditions is the result of force, under whatever name it be disguised: physical and mental force; force of events, chance, fortune; force of accumulated property… In communism, inequality springs from placing mediocrity on a level with excellence. This damaging equation is repellent to the conscience, and causes merit to complain; for, although it may be the duty of the strong to aid the weak, they prefer to do it out of generosity, — they never will endure a comparison. Give them equal opportunities of labor, and equal wages, but never allow their jealousy to be awakened by mutual suspicion of unfaithfulness in the performance of the common task.
Aid | Duty | Force | Inequality | Jealousy | Mediocrity | Merit | Suspicion | Unfaithfulness | Will |
It is our duty to select the best and most dependable theory that human intelligence can supply, and use it as a raft to ride the seas of life.
Duty | Intelligence |
And if the truth of all things that are is always in our soul, then the soul must be immortal, so you should take courage and whatever you do not happen to know, that is to remember, at present, you must endeavor to discover and recollect... I cannot swear to everything I have said in this argument – but one thing I am ready to fight for in word and deed, that we shall be better, braver and more active men if we believe it right to look for what we do not know, than if we think we cannot discover it and have no duty to seek it.
Argument | Courage | Duty | Men | Right | Soul | Truth | Think |
Pirke Avot, "Verses of the Fathers" or "Ethics of the Fathers" NULL
Ben Azzai said: “Be eager to fulfill the smallest duty and flee from transgression; for one duty induces another and one transgression induces another transgression. The reward of a duty is a duty, the reward of one transgression is another transgression… Despise no man and deem nothing impossible; for there is no man who does not have his day and there is no thing that does not have its place.”
Pope Pius X, aka Saint Pope Pius X and Pope of the Eucharist, born Giuseppe Melchiorre Sarto NULL
Thus is it to be seen that anyone revolting against the Church's authority under the unjust pretext that it is encroaching on the State's domain, is indeed thereby imposing limits to the Truth. He who holds it [i.e., the Church's authority] to be a stranger in a nation is also declaring that Truth must also be held to be something foreign in that nation. Those who fear that it will weaken the freedom and greatness of a people, are also obliged to admit that a people can be great and free without Truth. No, such a State, such a government or whatever other name may be given to it, cannot lay claim to its citizens' affection, because in waging war against Truth, it gravely strikes at that which is found to be most sacred in man. Such a government will be able to sustain itself through material and brute force; it will make itself feared through the sword; people will, through hypocrisy, self-interest or sheer slavishness: the people will obey because religion preaches and ennobles submission to the human powers that be, as long as they do not require that which is contrary to the holy laws of God. But if the fulfillment of these duties towards human authorities, in that which is compatible with the people's duty to God, renders their obedience more meritorious, it will not, for all that, become more tender, nor more joyful nor more spontaneous: never will it even deserve to be considered as venerable nor affectionate.
Authority | Duty | Fear | Freedom | Fulfillment | Government | Greatness | Obedience | People | Religion | Sacred | Self-interest | Submission | Truth | War | Will | Government |