This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"It serves me right, for putting all my eggs in one bastard." - Dorothy Parker, born Dorothy Rothschild
"A right mind finds it easier to yield to perversity than to guide it." - François de La Rochefoucauld, François VI, Duc de La Rochefoucauld, Prince de Marcillac, Francois A. F. Rochefoucauld-Liancourt
"No man can always be right. So the struggle is to do one’s best; to keep the brain and conscience clear; never to be swayed by unworthy motives or inconsequential reasons, but to strive to unearth the basic factors involved and then do one’s duty." - Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower
"Modern man worships at the temple of science, yet science tells him only what is possible, not what is right." - Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower
"Government is a contrivance of human wisdom to provide for human wants. Men have a right that these wants should be provided for, (including) the want of sufficient restraint upon their passions." - Edmund Burke
"Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing upon others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combination of skill and force, can do in his favor." - Edmund Burke
"Fools measure actions after they are done by the event; wise men beforehand, by the rules of reason and right. The former look to the end to judge of the act. Let me look to the act, and leave the end to God." - Edward Everett Hale
"It is easier to accept the message of the stars than the message of the salt desert. The stars speak of man's insignificance in the long eternity of time; the desert speaks of his insignificance right now." - Edwin Way Teale
"Be yourself and think for yourself; and while your conclusions may not be infallible they will be nearer right than the conclusions forced upon you by those who have a personal interest in keeping you in ignorance." - Elbert Green Hubbard
"Let to get in touch with silence within yourself and know that everything in this life has a purpose... There is no need to go to India or anywhere else to find peace. You will find that deep place of silence right in your room, your garden, or even your bathtub." - Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
"Our minds, our hearts, and our souls have been fully coded for happiness; all the wiring is built-in. Everyone is capable of finding happiness. All he or she has to do is look for it in the right places… In reality, happy people are the least self-absorbed and self-centered among us… True happiness is not the result of an event, it does not depend on circumstance. You, not what’s going on around you, determine your happiness." - Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
"Our power comes from knowing that everything is all right and everyone is unfolding exactly as they are supposed to." - Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
"We eventually lose everything we have, yet what ultimately matters can never be lost. Our houses, cars, jobs, and money, our youth and even our loved ones, are just on loan to us… If life is a school, loss is a major part of the curriculum… Our reality here is not permanent; neither is our ownership of anything. Everything is temporary. Trying to find permanence is impossible, and we ultimately learn that there is no safety in trying to “keep” everything. And there is no safety in trying to prevent loss… Loss is often an initiation into adulthood… Loss is a right of passage." - Elisabeth Kübler-Ross
"No question is ever settled until it is settled right." - Ella Wheeler Wilcox
"The ultimate end of all revolutionary social change is to establish the sanctity of human life, the dignity of man, the right of every human being to liberty and well-being." - Emma Goldman
"A good man does nothing for the sake of appearance, but for the sake of doing right." - Epictetus "the Stoic" NULL
"When great changes occur in history, when great principles are involved. As a rule the majority are wrong, the minority is usually right." - Eugene V. Debs, fully Eugene Victor Debs
"Wisdom consists in the highest use of the intellect for the discernment of the largest moral interest of humanity. It is the most perfect willingness to do the right combined with the utmost attainable knowledge of what is right… Wisdom consists in working for the better from the love of the best." - Felix Adler
"Nobody will every deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves - and the only way they could do that is by not voting." - Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR
"Life as a sum of ends has a right against abstract right. If for example it is only by stealing bread that the wolf can be kept from the door, the action is of course an encroachment on someone’s property, but it would be wrong to treat this action as an ordinary theft. To refuse to allow a man in jeopardy of his life to take such steps for self-preservation would be to stigmatize him as without rights, and since he would be deprived of his life, his freedom would be annulled altogether. Many diverse details have a bearing on the preservation of life, and when we have our eyes on the future we have to engage ourselves in these details. But the only thing that is necessary is to live now, the future is not absolute but ever exposed to accident. Hence it is only the necessity of the immediate present which can justify a wrong action, because not to do the action would in turn be to cause not to do the action would in turn be to commit an offense, indeed the most wrong of all offenses, namely the complete destruction of the embodiment of freedom." - Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
"To adhere to man’s absolute freedom - one aspect of the matter - is eo ipso to condemn slavery. Yet if a man is a slave, his own will is responsible for his slavery, just as it is its will which is responsible if a people is subjugated. Hence the wrong of slavery lies at the door not simply of enslavers or conquerors but of the slaves and the conquered themselves. Slavery occurs in man’s transition from the state of nature to genuinely ethical conditions; it occurs in a world where a wrong is still right. At that stage wrong has validity and so is necessarily in place." - Georg Hegel, fully Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
"An honest man feels that he must pay heaven for every hour of happiness with a good spell of hard unselfish work to make others happy. We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it." - George Bernard Shaw
"The minority is sometimes right; the majority always wrong." - George Bernard Shaw
"The right to know is like the right to live. If is fundamental and unconditional in its assumption knowledge, like life, is a desirable thing." - George Bernard Shaw
"There is no divine right of property. Nothing is so completely a man’s own that he may do what he likes with it... Nevertheless, as it is obviously well that each man should labor without fear of being deprived of the use and enjoyment of the product of their labor - as in the nature of things he would not labor at all without some such incentive, it may be said that a man has natural right to own the product of his labor... By this natural right of the individual is still subject to all the limitations imposed by the rights of his fellows." - George Bernard Shaw
"We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it." - George Bernard Shaw
"In its deepest sense, the truth is a condition of heart, soul, mind and strength towards God and towards our fellow – not an utterance, not even a right form of words; and therefore such truth coming forth in words is, in a sense, the person that speaks." - George MacDonald
"The basis of our political systems is the right of the people to make and to alter their constitutions of government. But the constitution which at any time exists, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people, is sacredly obligatory upon all. The very idea of the power and the right of the people to establish government presupposes the duty of every individual to obey the established government." - George Washington
"Everyone will experience the consequences of his own acts. If his acts are right, he will get good consequences; if they are not, he will suffer for it." - Harry Browne, fully Harry Edson Browne
"Democracy is based on the conviction that people have the moral and intellectual capacity, as well as the inalienable right to govern themselves with reason and justice." - Harry S. Truman
"Democracy is based on the conviction that man has the moral and intellectual capacity, as well as the inalienable right, to govern himself with reason and justice." - Harry S. Truman
"Eternal life is not a life for the future. By charity we start eternity right here below." - Henri de Lubac
"The great tragedies of history occur not when right confronts wrong, but when two rights confront each other." - Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger
"All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
"Action from principle, the perception and performance of right, changes things and relations; it is essentially revolutionary, and does not consist wholly with anything which was. It not only divides states and churches, it divides families; ay, it divides the individual, separating the diabolical in him from the divine." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
"An artist earns the right to call himself a creator only when he admits to himself that he is but an instrument." - Henry Miller, aka Henry Valentine Miller
"The doctrine that Universal Happiness is the ultimate standard must not be understood to imply that Universal Benevolence is the only right or always best motive of action... it is not necessary that the end which gives the criterion of rightness should always be the end at which we consciously aim; and if experience shows that the general happiness will be more satisfactorily attained if men frequently act from other motives than pure universal philanthropy, it is obvious that these other motives are reasonably to be preferred on Utilitarian principles." - Henry Sidgwick
"It takes less time to do a thing right than it does to explain why you did it wrong." - Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
"A man’s religion is himself. If he is right-minded toward God, he is religious." - Henry Ward Beecher
"Greatness lies, not in being strong, but in the right using of strength." - Henry Ward Beecher
"The whole of life and experience goes to show, that right or wrong doing, whether as to the physical or the spiritual nature, is sure in the end to meet its appropriate reward or punishment. Penalties may be delayed but they are sure to come." - Henry Ward Beecher
"A law is valuable not because it is a law, but because there is right in it." - Henry Ward Beecher
"The fear of doing right is the grand treason in times of danger." - Henry Ward Beecher
"Greatness lies not in being strong, but in the right use of strength; and strength is not used rightly when it only serves to carry a man above his fellows for his own solitary glory. He is greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own." - Henry Ward Beecher