This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The passions of mankind are partly protective, partly beneficent, like the chaff and grain of the corn, but none without their use, none without nobleness when seen in balanced unity with the rest of the spirit which they are charged to defend." - John Ruskin
"Boredom is ... a vital problem for the moralist, since half the sins of mankind are caused by the fear of it." - John Ruskin
"As soon as mankind have unanimously accepted a truth, does the truth perish within them? The highest aim and best result of improved intelligence, is has hitherto been thought, is to unite mankind more and more in the acknowledgment of all important truths; and does the intelligence only last as long as it has not achieved its object? Do the fruits of conquest perish by the very completeness of the victory?" - John Stuart Mill
"If all mankind minus one were of one opinion, and only one person were of the contrary opinion, mankind would be no more justified in silencing that one person, than he, if he had the power, would be justified in silencing mankind." - John Stuart Mill
"The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection... The only purpose of which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." - John Stuart Mill
"Hitherto it is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day’s toil of any human being. They have enabled a greater population to live the same life of drudgery and imprisonment, and an increased number of manufacturers and others to make fortunes. They have increased the comforts of the middle classes. But they have not yet begun to effect those great changes in human destiny, which it is in their nature and in their futurity to accomplish. Only when, in addition to just institutions, the increase of mankind shall be under the deliberate guidance of judicious foresight, and the conquests made form the powers of nature by the intellect and energy of scientific discoverers, become the common property of the species, and the means of improving and elevating the universal lot." - John Stuart Mill
"Those only are happy who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others; on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means but as itself an ideal end. Aiming this at something else, they find happiness by the way... Ask yourself whether you are happy, and you cease to be so. The only chance is to treat, not happiness, but some end external to it, as the purpose of life." - John Stuart Mill
"When the “sacredness of property” is talked of, it should always be remembered, that any such sacredness does not belong in the same degree to landed property. No man made the land. It is the original inheritance of the whole species. Its appropriation is wholly a question of general expediency. When private property in land is not expedient, it is unjust. It is no hardship to any one, to be excluded from what others have produced: they were not bound to produce it for his use, and he loses nothing by not sharing in what otherwise would not have existed at all. But it is some hardship to be born into a world and to find all nature’s gifts previously engrossed, and no place left for the new-comer. To reconcile people to this, after they have once admitted into their minds the idea that any moral rights belong to them as human beings, it will always be necessary to convince them that the exclusive appropriation is good for mankind as a whole, themselves included. But this is what no sane human being could be persuaded of." - John Stuart Mill
"Happiness is the test of al rules of conduct and the end of life. But… this end was only to be attained by not making it the direct end. Those only are happy, I thought, who have their minds fixed on some object other than their own happiness; on the happiness of others, on the improvement of mankind, even on some art or pursuit, followed not as a means, but as itself an ideal end. Aiming thus at something else, they find happiness by the way." - John Stuart Mill
"No great improvements in the lot of mankind are possible, until a great change takes place in the fundamental constitution of their modes of thought." - John Stuart Mill
"So natural to mankind is intolerance in whatever they really care bout, that religious freedom has hardly anywhere been practically realized, except where religious indifference, which dislikes to have its peace disturbed by theological quarrels, has added its weight to the scale." - John Stuart Mill
"The convictions of the mass of mankind run hand in hand with their interests or with their class feelings." - John Stuart Mill
"The effect of custom, in preventing any misgiving respecting the rules of conduct which mankind impose on one another, is all the more complete because the subject is one on which it is not generally considered necessary that reasons should be given, either by one person to others or by each to himself." - John Stuart Mill
"The progressive principle is antagonistic to the sway of custom. The contest between these two principles, custom and progress, constitutes the chief interest of the history of mankind." - John Stuart Mill
"A contemplation of God's works, a generous concern for the good of mankind, and the unfeigned exercise of humility - these only, denominate men great and glorious." - Joseph Addison
"Mankind are more indebted to industry than ingenuity; the gods set up their favors at a price, and industry is the purchaser." - Joseph Addison
"Music is the only sensual gratification which mankind may; indulge in to excess without injury to their moral or religious feelings." - Joseph Addison
"Prejudice and self-sufficiency, naturally proceed from inexperience of the world, and ignorance of mankind." - Joseph Addison
"When I look upon the tombs of the great, every motion of envy dies... I reflect with sorrow and astonishment on the frivolous competitions, factions, and debates of mankind." - Joseph Addison
"A person may be qualified to do greater good to mankind, and become more beneficial to the world, by morality without faith than by faith without morality." - Joseph Addison
"Books are the legacies that a great genius leaves to mankind, which are delivered down from generation to generation, as presents to the posterity of those who are yet unborn." - Joseph Addison
"Man's nature... is not corrupt. The idea of God is innate in man's mind from the beginning; so that by reason alone man has arrived, everywhere, at a recognition of God which is sufficient. Religious intolerance is blasphemy, since in their primal ground and ultimate sense, all religions are one, as is mankind." - Joseph Campbell
"Without meaning to belittle the wonders of science, I do not think they can absolve mankind of suffering, desire, madness, and death." - Lewis H. Lapham
"If anything could testify to the magical powers of the priesthood of science and their technical acolytes, or declare unto mankind the supreme qualifications for absolute rulership held by the Divine Computer, this new invention alone should suffice. So the final purpose of life in terms of the megamachine at last becomes clear: it is to furnish and process an endless quantity of data, in order to expand the role and ensure the domination of the power system." - Lewis Mumford
"The political unification of mankind cannot be realistically conceived except as part of [the] effort at self-transformation." - Lewis Mumford
"It is difficult to persuade mankind that the love of virtue is the love of themselves." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"War is the greatest plague that can afflict mankind... Any scourge is preferable to it." - Martin Luther
"The future of poetry is immense, because in poetry, where it is worthy of its high destinies, our race, as time goes on, will find an ever surer and surer stay. There is not a creed which is not shaken, not an accredited dogma which is not shown to be questionable, not a received tradition which does not threaten to dissolve. Our religion has materialized itself in the fact, in the supposed fact; it has attached its emotion to the fact, and now the fact is failing it. But for poetry the idea is everything; the rest is a world of illusion, of divine illusion. Poetry attaches its emotion to the idea; the idea is the fact. The strongest part of our religion today is its unconscious poetry... More and more mankind will discover that we have to turn to poetry to interpret life for us, to console us, to sustain us. Without poetry, our science will appear incomplete; and most of what now passes with us for religion and philosophy will be replaced by poetry." - Matthew Arnold
"All temporal or human authority stems directly from spiritual and/or divine authority. But authority is the negation of freedom. God, or rather the fiction of God, is the consecration and the intellectual and moral source of all slavery on earth, and the freedom of mankind will never be complete until the disastrous and insidious fiction of a heavenly master is annihilated." - Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
"Knowledge, wisdom, erudition, arts, and elegance, what are they, but the mere trappings of the mind, if they do not serve to increase the happiness of the possessor? A mind rightly instituted in the school of philosophy, acquires at once the stability of the oak, and the flexibility of the osier. Philosophy can add to our happiness in no other manner but by diminishing our misery; it should not pretend to increase our present stock, but make us economists of what we are possessed of. Happy were we all born philosophers; all born with a talent of thus dissipating our own cares by spreading them upon all mankind." - Oliver Goldsmith
"Mankind must realize that the basic nature of the soul is spiritual. For man and woman to look upon each other only as a means to satisfy lust is to court the destruction of happiness. Slowly, bit by bit, peace of mind will go." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
"The true source of cheerfulness is benevolence. The pursuits of mankind are commonly frigid and contemptible, and the mistake comes, at last, to be detected. But virtue is a charm that never fades. The soul that perceptually overflows with kindness and sympathy will always be cheerful." - Parke Godwin
"Love and hell are alike in that respect; they are what you bring to them. The script is yours; only the props are furnished." - Parke Godwin
"Of all the virtues, is not wisdom the one which the mass of mankind are always claiming, and which most arrouses in them a spirit of contention and lying conceit of wisdom?" - Plato NULL
"The world is God's epistle to mankind - his thoughts are flashing upon us from every direction." - Plato NULL
"Law, the despot of mankind, often compels us to do many things which are against nature." - Plato NULL
"Mankind will never see an end of trouble until... lovers of wisdom come to hold political power, or the holders of power... become lovers of wisdom." - Plato NULL
"The belief in immortality depends finally upon the belief in God. If there exists a good and wise God, then there also exists a progress of mankind toward perfection; and if there be no progress of men towards perfection, then there cannot be a good and wise God. We cannot suppose that God’s moral government, the beginnings of which we see in the world and in ourselves, will cease when we leave this life." - Plato NULL
"The greater part of mankind are more sensitive to contemptuous language, than to unjust acts; they can less easily bear insult than wrong." - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
"A good thing perpetually postponed is only a negation. Universal happiness, or the welfare of mankind, includes the present as well as the future." - Ralph Barton Perry
"All mankind love a lover." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Beware when the great God lets loose a thinker on this planet. Then all things are at risk. The very hope of man. The thoughts of his heart, the religion of nations, the manners and morals of mankind are all at the mercy of a new generalization." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Conversation is an art in which a man has all mankind for competitors." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Heroism works in contradiction to the voice of mankind, and in contradiction, for a time, to the voice of the great and good. Heroism is an obedience to a secret impulse of an individual’s character." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"One man's justice is another's injustice; one man's beauty another's ugliness; one man's wisdom, another's folly as one beholds the same objects from a higher point. One man thinks justice consists in paying debts, and has no measure in his abhorrence of another who is very remiss in his duty and makes the creditor wait tediously. But that second man has his own way of looking at things; asks himself, which debt must I pay first, the debt to the rich, or the debt to the poor? The debt of money or the debt of thought to mankind, of genius to nature?" - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"If a nation of men is exalted to that height of morals as to refuse to fight and choose rather to suffer loss of goods and loss of life than to use violence, they must be not helpless but most effective and great men; they would overawe their invader, and make him ridiculous; they would communicate the contagion of their virtue and inoculate all mankind." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The history of mankind is the history of arrested growth." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Things are in the saddle and ride mankind." - Ralph Waldo Emerson