This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"In taking revenge a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior." - Thomas Fuller
"Anger is a sworn Enemy. Anger is the Fever and Frenzy of the Soul. Anger makes a rich Man hated, and a poor Man scorned. Anger may glance into the Breast of wise Man, but rests only in the Bosom of Fools." - Thomas Fuller
"Suspicion is as great an enemy to wisdom as too much credulity." - Thomas Fuller
"Care of the soul is a fundamentally different way of regarding daily life and the quest for happiness. The emphasis may not be on problems at all... Care of the soul is a continuous process that concerns itself not so much with "fixing" a central flaw as with attending to the small details of everyday life, as well as to major decisions and changes... Our souls are inseparable from the world's soul... "Soul" is not a thing, but a quality or a dimension of experiencing life and ourselves... Observance is homeopathic in its workings rather than allopathic, in the paradoxical way that it befriends a problem rather than making an enemy of it... All work on the soul takes the form of a circle." - Thomas Moore
"The innocent and the beautiful have no enemy but time." - William Butler Yeats
"Fate is the friend of the good, the guide of the wise, the tyrant of the foolish, the enemy of the bad." - William Rounseville Alger
"It is always easier to locate an external enemy than grapple with an internal condition." - C. Wright Mills, fully Charles Wright Mills
"We know that the white man does not understand our ways. One portion of the land is the same to him as the next, for he is a stranger who comes in the night and takes from the land whatever he needs. The earth is not his brother, but his enemy - and when he has conquered it, he moves on. He leaves his fathers’ graves, and his children’s birthright is forgotten. " - Chief Seattle, also spelled Seathl
"Such a weapon goes far beyond any military objective and enters the range of very great natural catastrophes. By its very nature it cannot be confined to a military objective but becomes a weapon which in practical effect is almost one of genocide. It is clear that the use of such a weapon cannot be justified on any ethical ground which gives a human being a certain individuality and dignity even if he happens to be a resident of an enemy country... The fact that no limits exist to the destructiveness of this weapon makes its very existence and the knowledge of its construction a danger to humanity as a whole. It is necessarily an evil thing considered in any light." - Enrico Fermi
"The lack of objectivity, as far as foreign nations are concerned, is notorious. From one day to another, another nation is made out to be utterly depraved and fiendish, while one’s own nation stands for everything that is good and noble. Every action of the enemy is judged by one standard — every action of oneself by another. Even good deeds by the enemy are considered a sign of particular devilishness, meant to deceive us and the world, while our bad deeds are necessary and justified by our noble goals which they serve." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"All naturalism in morality, that is all healthy morality, is dominated by an instinct of life - some commandment of life is fulfilled through a certain canon of ‘shall’ and ‘shall not’, some hindrance and hostile element on life’s road is thereby removed. Anti-natural morality, that is virtually every morality that has hitherto been taught, reverenced and preached, turns on the contrary precisely against the instincts of life - it is a now secret, now loud and impudent condemnation of these instincts. By saying ‘God sees into the heart’ it denies the deepest and the highest desires of life and takes God for the enemy of life. " - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
"He who lives by fighting with an enemy has an interest in preservation of the enemy's life. " - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
"Everyone needs a warm personal enemy or two to keep him free from rust in the movable parts of his mind. " - Gene Fowler, born Eugene Devlan
"One enemy is too much." - George Herbert
"The chief enemy of creativity is "good" sense." - George Lois
"Fraternity has no worse enemy than equality." - Gustave Thibon
"War itself is the enemy of the human race. " - Howard Zinn
"Ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have. " - James Baldwin, fully James Arthur Baldwin
"Nothing is as dangerous as an ignorant friend; a wise enemy is to be preferred. " - Jean de La Fontaine
"Nothing is more dangerous than a friend without discretion; even a prudent enemy is preferable. " - Jean de La Fontaine
"The right of conquest has no foundation other than the right of the strongest. If war does not give the conqueror the right to massacre the conquered peoples, the right to enslave them cannot be based upon a right which does not exist. No one has a right to kill an enemy except when he cannot make him a slave, and the right to enslave him cannot therefore be derived from the right to kill him. It is accordingly an unfair exchange to make him buy at the price of his liberty his life, over which the victor holds no right. Is it not clear that there is a vicious circle in founding the right of life and death on the right of slavery, and the right of slavery on the right of life and death?" -
"We learn our virtues from our friends who love us; our faults from the enemy who hates us. We cannot easily discover our real character from a friend. He is a mirror, on which the warmth of our breath impedes the clearness of the reflection." - Jean Paul, born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, aka Jean Paul Richter
"The right of conquest has no foundation other than the right of the strongest. If war does not give the conqueror the right to massacre the conquered peoples, the right to enslave them cannot be based upon a right which does not exist. No one has a right to kill an enemy except when he cannot make him a slave, and the right to enslave him cannot therefore be derived from the right to kill him. It is accordingly an unfair exchange to make him buy at the price of his liberty his life, over which the victor holds no right. Is it not clear that there is a vicious circle in founding the right of life and death on the right of slavery, and the right of slavery on the right of life and death? " - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"All beings, including each one of us, enemy and friend alike, exists in patterns of mutuality, inter-connectedness, co-responsibility and ultimately in unity." - Joan Halifax, fully Roshi Joan Jiko Halifax
"Shun, as a contagious pestilence, ... those especially whom you perceive to be infected with the principles of infidelity or enemies to the power of religion. Whoever is an avowed enemy of God, I scruple not to call him an enemy to his country." - John Witherspoon
"We cannot expect that all nations will adopt like systems, for conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth. " - John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
"The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie — deliberate, contrived and dishonest — but the myth — persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic." - John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
"We should ever conduct ourselves towards our enemy as if he were one day to be our friend." - John Henry Newman, aka Cardinal Newman and Blessed John Henry Newman
"The enemy of the conventional wisdom is not ideas but the march of events. " - John Kenneth Galbraith, aka "Ken"
"Habit creates the appearance of justice: progress has no greater enemy than habit." - José Martí, fully José Julián Martí Pérez
"Suspicion is not less an enemy to virtue than to happiness; he that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly be corrupt. " - Joseph Addison
"True happiness is of a retired nature, and an enemy to pomp and noise; it arises, in the first place, from the enjoyment of one's self, and in the next from the friendship and conversation of a few select companions. " - Joseph Addison
"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State." - Joseph Goebbels, fully Paul Joseph Goebbels
"A good man is kinder to his enemy than bad men are to their friends." - Joseph Hall
"For me, atheism’s roots are in a sober and modest assessment of where reason and evidence lead us. That means the real enemy is not religion as such, but any kind of system of belief that does not respect these limits on our thinking. For that reason, I want to engage with thoughtful, intelligent believers, and isolate extremists. But if we demonise all religion, such coalitions of the reasonable are not possible. Instead, we are likely to see moderate religious believers join ranks with fundamentalists, the enemies of their enemy, to resist what they see as an attempt to wipe out all forms of religious belief." - Julian Baggini
"It is a simple truth that the human mind can face better the most oppressive government, the most rigid restrictions, than the awful prospect of a lawless, frontierless world. Freedom is a dangerous intoxicant and very few people can tolerate it in any quantity; it brings out the old raiding, oppressing, murderous instincts; the rage for revenge, for power, the lust for bloodshed. The longing for freedom takes the form of crushing the enemy- there is always the enemy!- into the earth; and where and who is the enemy if there is no visible establishment to attack, to destroy with blood and fire? Remember all that oratory when freedom is threatened again. Freedom, remember, is not the same as liberty." - Katherine Anne Porter, born Callie Russell Porter
"A thousand friends are too few; one enemy is one too many." - Kurdish Proverbs
"To get rid of an enemy one must love him. " - Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
"Modern warfare, we discovered, was to a far greater extent than ever before a conflict of chemists and manufacturers. Manpower, it is true, was indispensable, and generalship will always, whatever the conditions, have a vital part to play. But troops, however brave and well led, were powerless under modern conditions unless equipped with adequate and up-to-date artillery (with masses of explosive shell), machine-guns, aircraft and other supplies. Against enemy machine-gun posts and wire entanglements the most gallant and best-led men could only throw away their precious lives in successive waves of heroic martyrdom. Their costly sacrifice could avail nothing for the winning of victory." - Lloyd George, fully David Lloyd George, 1st Earl Lloyd-George of Dwyfor
"The best thing to give your enemy is forgiveness; to an opponent, tolerance; to a friend, your heart; to your child, a good example; to a father, deference; to your mother, conduct that will make her proud of you; to yourself, respect; to all men, charity." - Arthur Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, fully Arthur James Balfour, aka Lord Balfour
"Forgiveness is the most necessary and proper work of every man; for, though, when I do not a just thing, or a charitable, or a wise, another man may do it for me, yet no man can forgive my enemy but myself." - Edward Herbert, aka Lord Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of Chirbury or Cherbury
"You have not converted a man, because you have silenced him... The small reform may become the enemy of the great one... The most frightful idea that has ever corroded human nature-the idea of eternal punishment." - John Morley, 1st Viscount Morely of Blackburn, Lord Morley
"The small reform may become the enemy of the great one. " - John Morley, 1st Viscount Morely of Blackburn, Lord Morley
"Very often we are our own worst enemy as we foolishly build stumbling blocks on the path that leads to success and happiness." - Louis Binstock
"It is easier to forgive an enemy than a friend." - Madame Deluzy, Luzy Dorothee