This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
There is no unmixed good in human affairs; the best principles, if pushed to excess, degenerate into fatal vices. Generosity is nearly allied to extravagance; charity itself may lead to ruin; the sternness of justice is but one step removed from the severity of oppression. It is the same in the political world; the tranquillity of despotism resembles the stagnation of the Dead Sea; the fever of innovation the tempests of the ocean It would seem as if, at particular periods, from causes inscrutable to human wisdom, a universal frenzy seizes mankind; reason, experience, prudence, are alike blinded; and the very classes who are to perish in the storm are the first to raise its fury.
Character | Charity | Excess | Experience | Extravagance | Fury | Generosity | Good | Innovation | Justice | Mankind | Oppression | Principles | Prudence | Prudence | Reason | Tranquility | Wisdom | World |
To achieve something great in the world you need Passion To fulfill vision, a great leader’s courage comes from Passion Whatever it may be, you must find your Passion If passion drives you, let reason hold the reins Follow your passion and success will follow you! Never underestimate the power of passion Without passion religion is spiritless Without Passion history is meaningless Without Passion art is useless Follow your passion and success will follow you! When you take up a mission with passion There are no dreams too large No innovation unimaginable No frontiers beyond reach Follow your passion and success will follow you! Our passions are the winds that propel our vessel Our reason is the pilot that steers her Without winds the vessel would not move Without a pilot she would be lost Follow your passion and success will follow you! There is no end and there is no beginning There is only the passion of life Passion is universal humanity Passion is the genesis of genius Follow your passion and success will follow you!
Art | Character | Courage | Dreams | History | Innovation | Mission | Need | Passion | Power | Reason | Religion | Success | Will | World | Art |
Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman
What kind of society isn't structured on greed? The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm; capitalism is that kind of a system.
Capitalism | Greed | Harm | Organization | Society | System | Will | Wisdom | Society |
When I began to examine just how wealth is created, it seemed to me plain that it arises not from taking, but from giving. People get rich by giving rather than by taking, and this seemed to me to be a very important perception, because the reason for the crisis in capitalism today, it seems to me, is not its practical achievements, but rather the perception of its moral character.
Capitalism | Character | Giving | Important | People | Perception | Reason | Wealth | Wisdom | Crisis |
Abbie Hoffman, fully Abbot Howard "Abbie" Hoffman
It’s universally wrong to steal from your neighbor, but once you get the one-to-one level, and pit the individual against the multinational conglomerate, the federal bureaucracy, the modern plantation of agro-business, or the utility company, it becomes strictly a value judgment to decide exactly who is stealing from whom. One person’s crime is another person’s profit. Capitalism is license to steal; the government simply regulates who steals and how much.
Business | Capitalism | Crime | Government | Individual | Judgment | Wisdom | Wrong | Government | Value |
The current cultural split lies not between scientists and everyone else but between those who innovate or create and those who do not. Innovators and the process of innovation must become the focus of study. Innovation is the lifeblood of cultural change.
Change | Focus | Innovation | Study | Wisdom |
Winston Churchill, fully Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill
The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery.
Blessings | Capitalism | Vice |
The five essential skills for success: Concentration, Discrimination, Organization, Innovation and Communication.
Innovation | Organization | Success |
As nearly as I can see, all the new isms – Socialism, Communism, Fascism, and especially the late but not lamented Technocracy – outdo even Capitalism itself in their preoccupation with one thing: The distribution of more machine-made commodities to more people. They all proceed on the theory that if we can all keep warm and full, and all own a Ford and a radio, the good life will follow. Their programs differ only in ways to mobilize machines to this end. Though they despise each other, they are all, respect of this objective, as identically alike as peas in a pod. They are competitive apostles of a single creed: salvation by machinery.
Capitalism | Creed | Despise | Good | Life | Life | Machines | People | Respect | Salvation | Will | Respect |
Learning to learn is to know how to navigate in a forest of facts, ideas and theories, a proliferation of constantly changing items of knowledge. Learning to learn is to know what to ignore but at the same time not rejecting innovation and research.
Ideas | Innovation | Knowledge | Learning | Research | Theories | Time | Learn |
The problem with capitalism is that it best rewards the worst part of us: the ruthless, competitive, cunning, opportunistic, acquisitive drives, giving little reward and often much punishment – or at least much handicap – to honesty, compassion, fair play, many forms of hard work, love of justice, and a concern for those in need.
Capitalism | Compassion | Cunning | Giving | Honesty | Justice | Little | Love | Need | Play | Punishment | Reward | Work |
As we have seen over and over again, whenever church and state enter into partnership, human freedom is restricted, intellectual growth is stifled, and education is formalized and routinized to exclude and smother innovation and creativity.
Church | Creativity | Education | Freedom | Growth | Innovation |
Ayn Rand, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum
If one wishes to advocate a free society - that is, capitalism - one must realize that its indispensable foundation is the principle of individual rights.
Capitalism | Indispensable | Individual | Rights | Society | Wishes | Society |
Under full developed Capitalism civilization is always on the verge of revolution. We live as in a villa on Vesuvius.
Capitalism | Civilization | Revolution |
The real struggle is not between East and West, or capitalism and communism, but between education and propaganda.
Capitalism | Education | Struggle |
Oystein Dahle, or Øystein Dahle
Socialism collapsed because it did not allow the market to tell the economic truth. Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow the market to tell the ecological truth.
Capitalism | Truth |