This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The press has its own version of Gresham’s Law: the tendency, in the competition for readers, to let the scandalous and sensational drive out serious news.
Competition | Law | News |
What's madness but nobility of soul at odds with circumstance? The day's on fire! I know the purity of pure despair, my shadow pinned against a sweating wall, that place among the rocks--is it a cave, or winding path? The edge is what I have.
When the print press examines a politician’s performance, very few voters are interested in detail. The essence of the modern campaign is personality politics: the direct impressions that viewers form from thirty-second daily blips on the Boss Tube, preaching homilies and honing bumpers-sticker themes to stick in voter’s memories.
Personality | Politics |
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.
I will not let past failures haunt me. Even though my life is scarred with mistakes, I refuse to rummage through my trash heap of failures. I will admit them. I will correct them. I will press on. Victoriously. No failure is fatal. It's OK to stumble...I will get up. It's OK to fail...I will rise again. Today I will make a difference.
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
The press is not only free; it is powerful. That power is ours. It is the proudest that man can enjoy. It was not granted by monarchs, it was not gained for us by aristocracies; but it sprang from the people, and, with an immortal instinct, it has always worked for people.
Daniel Boorstin, fully Daniel Joseph Boorstin
Formerly, a public man needed a private secretary for a barrier between himself and the public. Nowadays he has a press secretary, to keep him properly in the public eye.
Bashfulness is a great hindrance to a man, both in uttering his sentiments and in understanding what is proposed to him; it is therefore good to press forward with discretion, both in discourse and company of the better sort.
Better | Discretion | Good | Man | Understanding |
Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR
Freedom of conscience, of education, of speech, of assembly are among the very fundamentals of democracy and all of them would be nullified should freedom of the press ever be successfully challenged.
Conscience | Democracy | Education | Freedom of conscience | Freedom | Speech |
Who are the really disloyal? Those who inflame racial hatreds, who sow religious and class dissensions. those who subvert the Constitution by violating the freedom of the ballot box. Those who make a mockery of majority rule by the use of the filibuster. Those who impair democracy by denying equal educational facilities. Those who frustrate justice by lynch law or by making a farce of jury trials. Those who deny freedom of speech and of the press and of assembly. Those who demand special favors against the interest of the commonwealth. Those who regard public office as a source of private gain. Those who exalt the military over the civil. Those who for selfish and private purposes stir up national antagonisms and expose the world to the ruin of war.
Democracy | Freedom of speech | Freedom | Justice | Law | Majority | Mockery | Office | Public | Regard | Rule | Speech | Trials | War | World |
Mankind [is] naturally divided into three sorts; one third of them are animated at the first appearance of danger, and will press forward to meet and examine it; another third are alarmed by it, but will neither advance nor retreat, till they know the nature of it, but stand to meet it. The remaining third will run or fly upon the first thought of it.
Appearance | Danger | Mankind | Nature | Thought | Will | Thought |
Lillian Hellman, fully Lillian Florience "Lily" Hellman
God helps all the children as they move into a time of life they do not understand and must struggle through with precepts they have picked from the garbage can of older people, clinging with the passion of the lost to odds and ends that will mess them up for all time, or hating the trash so much they will waste their future on the hatred.
Children | Ends | Future | God | Life | Life | Passion | People | Struggle | Time | Waste | Will | Understand |
Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
Is not this steadfastness to mark, to make, the character of our lives? Is it not God’s will that we should press steadily on to our goal in obedience to Him, in channels of His choosing, whether in sunshine or shadow, in the cheer of spring or in the chill of winter, neither detained by pleasure nor deterred by pain?
If each of us can believe that he is working so that the Universe may be raised, in him and through him, to a higher level, then a new spring of energy will well forth in the heart of Earth's workers. The whole organism, overcoming a momentary hesitation, will draw its breath and press on with strength renewed.
The pulpit and the press have many commonplaces denouncing the thirst for wealth, but if men should takes these moralists at their word, and leave off aiming to be rich, the moralists would rush to rekindle at all hazards this love or power in the people, lest civilization should be undone.