This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"So I say, ‘Oh, I am sorry but soon you will see the bright sunrise every morning and beautiful sunset in the evening, every evening, but right now perhaps you…under your situation it may be impossible to see the beautiful sunset or bright sunrise, or beautiful flower in your garden, and it is impossible to take care of your garden, but soon you will see the beauty of the flowers and you will cut some flowers for your room.’ When you start to do this kind of thing you are alright. Don’t worry a bit. It means when you become you, yourself, and when you see things as they are, and when you become at one with your surroundings, in its true sense, there is true self." - Shunryu Suzuki, also Daisetsu Teitaro or D.T. Suzuki or Suzuki-Roshi
"In horror, in terror, she accepted the metamorphosis — gnat, foam, ant, until death. And it's only the beginning, she thought. She stood motionless, as if it were possible to play tricks with time, possible to stop it from following its course. But her hands stiffened against her quivering lips. When the bells began to sound the hour she let out the first scream." - Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir
"What the proprietorship of these papers is aiming at is power, and power without responsibility — the prerogative of the harlot through the ages." - Stanley Baldwin, 1st Earl of Bewdley
"All daring and courage, all iron endurance of misfortune-make for a finer, nobler type of manhood." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"I abhor unjust war. I abhor injustice and bullying by the strong at the expense of the weak, whether among nations or individuals. I abhor violence and bloodshed. I believe that war should never be resorted to when, or so long as, it is honorably possible to avoid it. I respect all men and women who from high motives and with sanity and self-respect do all they can to avert war. I advocate preparation for war in order to avert war; and I should never advocate war unless it were the only alternative to dishonor." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die; and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life. Both life and death are parts of the same Great Adventure." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"There are no words that can tell the hidden spirit of the wilderness, that can reveal its mystery, its melancholy and its charm." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"Viewed purely in the abstract, I think there can be no question that women should have equal rights with men....Especially as regards the laws relating to marriage there should be the most absolute equality between the two sexes. I do not think the woman should assume the man's name." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"We concur in considering the government of England as totally without morality, insolent beyond bearing, inflated with vanity and ambition, aiming at the exclusive dominion of the sea, lost in corruption, of deep-rooted hatred towards us, hostile to liberty wherever it endeavors to show its head, and the eternal disturber of the peace of the world. In our estimate of Bonaparte, I suspect we differ… Our form of government is odious to him, as a standing contrast between republican and despotic rule; and as much from that hatred, as from ignorance in political economy, he had excluded intercourse between us and his people, by prohibiting the only articles they wanted from us, that is, cotton and tobacco. Whether the war we have had with England, and the achievements of that war, and the hope that we may become his instruments and partisans against that enemy, may induce him, in future, to tolerate our commercial intercourse with his people, is still to be seen. For my part, I wish that all nations may recover and retain their independence; that those which are overgrown may not advance beyond safe measures of power, that a salutary balance may be ever maintained among nations, and that our peace, commerce, and friendship, may be sought and cultivated by all. It is our business to manufacture for ourselves whatever we can, to keep our markets open for what we can spare or want; and the less we have to do with the amities or enmities of Europe, the better. Not in our day, but at no distant one, we may shake a rod over the heads of all, which may make the stoutest of them tremble. But I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power, the greater it will be." - Thomas Jefferson
"A member of the human race! To think that such a commonplace realization should suddenly seem like news that one holds the winning ticket in a cosmic sweepstake." - Thomas Merton
"Am I not arrogant too? Am I not unreasonable, unfair, demanding, suspicious and often quite arbitrary in my dealings with others? The point is not just “who is right” but “judge not” and “forgive one another” and “bear one another’s burdens”. This by no means implies passive obsequiousness and blind obedience, but a willingness to listen, to be patient. This is our task." - Thomas Merton
"Concentrate on the love that is in you, that is in us all." - Thomas Merton
"He who follows words is destroyed." - Thomas Merton
"Unless political decisions rest on a foundation of something better and higher than politics, they can never do any real good for men." - Thomas Merton
"In conclusion, I have endeavored, with what success has been already determined by the voice of my own country, to give a panorama of Irish life among the people … and in doing this, I can say with solemn truth that I painted them honestly and without reference to the existence of any particular creed or party." - William Carleton
"Says Spinoza: When it seems to us anything in the nature funny or silly, obscure or evil it is because we do not have only little knowledge of things, and we are ignorant system of nature and cohesion as a whole, and we want to hold things according to our thinking and our opinions, even though what he sees as our mind bad or evil is not evil or bad for the system and the laws of nature comprehensive college. But in relation to the laws of our own nature separate. As for the word of good and evil, it does not indicate something positive in itself, because the one thing the same may be simultaneously good or evil, or neither such as music, for example, it is better for Almnaqbd self evil for Alnaúh sad and lost people seemed to be his. It is not good or evil for the Dead" - Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant
"There is nothing in Socialism that a little age or a little money will not cure." - Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant
"A lobbyist is a person that is supposed to help a politician make up his mind—not only help him but pay him." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
"Now these fellows in Washington wouldn't be so serious and particular if they only had to vote on what they thought was good for the majority of the people in the U.S. That would be a cinch. But what makes it hard for them is every time a bill comes up they have things to decide that have nothing to do with the merit of the bill. The principal thing is of course: What will this do for me personally back home?" - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
"There is only one redeeming thing about this whole election. It will be over at sundown, and let everybody pray that it's not a tie, for we couldn't go through with this thing again." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
"Government is a necessary evil, like other go-carts and crutches. Our need of it shows exactly how far we are still children. All governing over much kills the self-help and energy of the governed." - Wendell Phillips
"Law is nothing unless close behind it stands a warm, living public opinion." - Wendell Phillips
"Full sexual consciousness and a natural regulation of sexual life mean the end of mystical feelings of any kind, that, in other words, natural sexuality is the deadly enemy of mystical religion. The church, by making the fight over sexuality the center of its dogmas and of its influence over the masses, confirms this concept." - Wilhelm Reich
"If "freedom" means, first of all, the responsibility of every individual for the rational determination of his own personal, professional and social existence, then there is no greater fear than that of the establishment of general freedom. Without a thoroughgoing solution of this problem there never will be a peace lasting longer than one or two generations. To solve this problem on a social scale, it will take more thinking, more honesty and decency, more conscientiousness, more economic, social and educational changes in social mass living than all the efforts made in previous and future wars and post-war reconstruction programs taken together." - Wilhelm Reich
"Saw a film on cancer yesterday, shown by the English delegation. No doubt about it. I'm right. Migratory cancer cells are amoebic formations. They are produced from disintegrating tissue and thus demonstrate the law of tension and charge in its purest form - as does the orgastic convulsion. Now money is a must - cancer the main issue - in every respect, even political. It was a staggering experience. My intuition is good. I depend on it. Was absolutely driven to buy a microscope. The sight of the cancer cells was exactly as I had previously imagined it, had almost physically felt it would be. Cancer is an autoinfection of the body, of an organ. And researchers have no idea of what, hor, or where!!" - Wilhelm Reich
"Our leading men are not of much account and never have been, but the average of the people is immense, beyond all history. Sometimes I think in all departments, literature and art included, that will be the way our superiority will exhibit itself. We will not have great individuals or great leaders, but a great average bulk, unprecedentedly great." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
"We could say that the human race is a great co-authorship in which we are collaborating with God and nature in the making of ourselves and one another. From this there is no escape. We may collaborate either well or poorly or we may refuse to collaborate, but even to refuse to collaborate is to exert an influence and to affect the quality of the product. This is only a way of saying that by ourselves we have no meaning and no dignity; by ourselves we are outside the human definition, outside our identity." - Wendell Berry
"We have forgotten that Vietnam, and Iraq resent being invaded and know the ground better than we do." - Wendell Berry
"Socialists must explain to the masses that they have no other road of salvation except the revolutionary overthrow of “their” governments, and that advantage must be taken of these governments’ embarrassments in the present war precisely for this purpose." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
"The passions are the winds that fill the sails of the vessel. - They sink it at times; but without them it would be impossible to make way. - Many things that are dangerous here below, are still necessary." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
"At one time, the earth was supposed to be flat. Well, so it is, even today, from Paris to Asnieres. But that fact doesn't prevent science from proving that the earth as a whole is spherical. No one nowadays denies it. Well... we are still at the stage of believing that life itself is flat, the distance from birth to death. Yet the probability is that life, too, is spherical and much more extensive and capacious than the hemisphere we know." - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh
"Close friends are truly life's treasures. Sometimes they know us better than we know ourselves. With gentle honesty, they are there to guide and support us, to share our laughter and our tears. Their presence reminds us that we are never really alone." - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh
"Whoever lives sincerely and encounters much trouble and disappointment without being bowed down is worth more than one who has always sailed before the wind and has only known prosperity." - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh
"If you stand a lantern under a tree every insect in the forest creeps up to it—a curious assembly, since though they scramble and swing and knock their heads against the glass, they seem to have no purpose—something senseless inspires them. One gets tired of watching them, as they amble round the lantern and blindly tap as if for admittance, one large toad being the most besotted of any and shouldering his way through the rest. Ah, but what's that? A terrifying volley of pistol-shots rings out—cracks sharply; ripples spread— silence laps smooth over sound. A tree—a tree has fallen, a sort of death in the forest. After that, the wind in the trees sounds melancholy." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
"The extraordinary woman depends on the ordinary woman. It is only when we know what were the conditions of the average woman's life ... it is only when we can measure the way of life and the experience of life made possible to the ordinary woman that we can account for the success or failure of the extraordinary woman as a writer." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
"I wondered if he was looking up at that same moon, far away, and thinking of me as I was thinking of him." - Vera Mary Brittain
"The way in which a man accepts his fate and all the suffering it entails, the way in which he takes up his cross, gives him ample opportunity--even under the most difficult circumstances--to add a deeper meaning to his life. It may remain brave, dignified and unselfish. Or in the bitter fight for self-preservation he may forget his human dignity and become no more than an animal. Here lies the chance for a man either to make use of or to forgo the opportunities of attaining the moral values that a difficult situation may afford him. And this decides whether he is worthy of his sufferings or not." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
"Belief in heaven and hell is a big deal in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and some forms of doctrinaire Buddhism. For the rest of us it's simply meaningless. We don't live in order to die, we live in order to live." - Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
"The first rule of holes is when you’re in one, stop digging. When you’re in three, bring a lot of shovels." - Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
"Big business is not dangerous today because it is big, but because its bigness is an unwholesome inflation created by privileges and exemptions which it ought not to enjoy." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
"I fancy that it is just as hard to do your duty when men are sneering at you as when they are shooting at you." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
"Abstinence from all injustice to other first-rate powers is a greater tower of strength than anything that can be gained by the sacrifice of permanent tranquility for an apparent temporary advantage." - Thucydides NULL
"The Spartans meanwhile, man to man, and with their war songs in the ranks, exhorted each brave comrade to remember what he had learned before; well aware that the long training of action was of more use for saving lives than any brief verbal exhortation, though ever so well delivered." - Thucydides NULL
"The strength of an Army lies in strict discipline and undeviating obedience to its officers." - Thucydides NULL
"Only necessity understood, and bondage to the highest is identical with true freedom." - William James
"We keep unaltered as much of our old knowledge, as many of our old prejudices and beliefs, as we can." - William James
"We must make automatic and habitual, as early as possible, as many useful actions as we can… in the acquisition of a new habit, we must take car to launch ourselves with as strong and decided initiative as possible. Never suffer an exception to occur till the new habit is securely rooted in your life… The more of the details of our daily life we can hand over to the effortless custody of automatism, the more our higher powers of mind will be set free for their own proper work." - William James
"No nation now sets forth to despoil another upon the avowed ground that it desires the spoils." - Elihu Root