This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Business and human endeavors are systems… we tend to focus on snapshots of isolated parts of the system. And wonder why our deepest problems never get solved." - Peter Senge, fully Peter Michael Senge
"So long as such myths prevail, they reinforce a focus on short-term events and charismatic heroes rather than on systemic forces and collective learning. " - Peter Senge, fully Peter Michael Senge
"Thus, the focus on this main political goal must become more visible in EU politics and to achieve this, we need a political impulse. It must be clear what the priorities on the agenda are." - Angela Merkel, fully Angela Dorothea Merkel, née Kasner
"We (the left) have to be used to being a minority – a small minority- for some time to come. The odd thing is that the right even when it is in power, likes to think of itself as an embattled minority against this elite that somehow runs everything. Whereas the left, even when it has no power at all, likes to imagine it somehow represents the majority of people. These are mirror -image delusions. It is important to stick to principles, even when some of them may be unpopular now for one reason or another. For example, there has been a tendency for some progressives to look at the power of the right, and say, ‘Well, all we can focus on is economic justice issues, because other things, whether they are abortion rights or drug law reform, will be less popular and more divisive.’ And I think that is wrong approach. There are certain core things we stand for, and these include both economic justice and civil liberties, which you can’t back away from. " - Barbara Ehrenreich, born Barbara Alexander
"I don't see myself as an icon. I was very moved by the response to my book it brought me into relationship with many people whom I otherwise would not have met. I also discovered that in becoming a public figure, I became a focus for all kinds of projections that had little to do with me." - Carol Gilligan
"Some critics of public schools urge greater competition among schools as a way of returning control from bureaucrats to parents and teachers. I find their argument persuasive and I favor promoting choice among public schools, much as the President's Charter Schools Initiative encourages. Charter schools are public schools created and operated under a charter. They may be organized by parents, teachers, or others. The idea is that they should be freed from regulations that stifle innovation, so they can focus on getting results. By 1995, 19 states had enacted charter school laws about 200 schools have been granted charters. The Improving America's Schools Act, passed in October 1994 with the President's support, provided federal funds for a wide range of reforms, including launching charter schools. Federal funding is needed to break through bureaucratic attitudes that block change and frustrate students and parents, driving some to leave public schools." - Hillary Rodham Clinton
"Why extremists always focus on women remains a mystery to me. But they all seem to. It doesn’t matter what country they’re in or what religion they claim. They all want to control women. They want to control how we dress. They want to control how we act. They even want to control the decisions we make about our own health and our own bodies. Yes, it is hard to believe but even here at home we have to stand up for women’s rights and we have to reject efforts to marginalize any one of us, because America has to set an example for the entire world." - Hillary Rodham Clinton
"The future is God’s business, not ours. The Runes focus on the present, helping us to get our bearings and determine what is “right action” in any given situation. Which, it might be argued, leads to a good future." - Ralph Blum
"The yin is a way of seeing, a way of understanding the world, a way of formulating solutions, and a very powerful way of acting. Access to sacred experience requires us to reclaim our feminine capacity, to value the subjective, the intuitive, the qualitative, to not limit our focus to the surfaces of things. We all know the power of the masculine principle, especially in health care. There are many people who would have died long before today without the powerful, life-saving interventions of masculine-principle oriented medicine. I am one of them. So it is not about throwing away the masculine principle; it is about reclaiming wholeness, integrity." - Rachel Naomi Remen
"But what a feeling can come over a man just from seeing the things he believes in and hopes for symbolized in the concrete form of a man. In something that gives a focus to all the other things he knows to be real. Something that makes unseen things manifest and allows him to come to his hopes and dreams through his outer eye and through the touch and feel of his natural hand." - Ralph Ellison, fully Ralph Waldo Ellison
"If you know what's going on and know how society can be improved and happiness advanced, you tend to focus on how to get things done that will help health, safety, opportunity, justice, accountability of powerful institutions to the people they are supposed to serve." - Ralph Nader
"Apologise when you screw up and focus on other people, not on yourself." - Randy Pausch, fully Randolph Frederick "Randy" Pausch
"Often we allow ourselves to get all worked up about things that, upon closer examination, aren't really that big a deal. We focus on little problems and blow them out of proportion. ... Whether we had to wait in line, listen to unfair criticism, or do the lion's share of the work, it pays enormous dividends if we learn not to worry about little things. So many people spend so much of their life energy sweating the small stuff that they completely lose touch with the magic and beauty of life." - Richard Carlson
"Something wonderful begins to happen with the simple realization that life, like an automobile, is driven from the inside out, not the other way around. As you focus more on becoming more peaceful with where you are, rather than focusing on where you would rather be, you begin to find peace right now, in the present. Then, as you move around, try new things, and meet new people, you carry that sense of inner peace with you. It's absolutely true that, 'Wherever you go, there you are." - Richard Carlson
"We tend to focus on the annoying expectation." - Richard Carlson
"Could it be that interaction with any kind of a healer helps to focus our own immune systems?" - Richard Dawkins
"The kinds of spiritual practices we can undertake are limitless. However, ultimately the form is less important than these factors: the commitment to practice, the ability to keep returning to the intention, the attitude one brings to the uncontrollable and the ability to transfer the benefits of the practice into how we live our lives, how we relate to ourselves and others, how free we become to embody the values and ideals we embrace in our minds, how we deal with temptations of all sorts. In other words we practice to live with the wisdom and compassion, which we already possess. We practice to actualize the pure soul, which God has planted with us." - Sheila Peltz Weinberg
"It's not how old you are, it's how hard you work at it." - Jonah Barrington, Sir Jonah Barrington
"The Soviet Union would remain a one-party nation even if an opposition party were permitted-because everyone would join that party." - Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan
"A leader who pushes the authority figure in an attempt to solve important problems should expect the authority figure to strike back, not necessarily from personal motivations but form the community’s pressure on him to maintain equilibrium." - Ronald A. Heifetz
"Greatness consists not in holding some office; greatness really consists in doing some great deed with little means, in the accomplishment of vast purposes from the private ranks of life that is true greatness." - Russell H. Conwell, fully Russell Herman Conwell
"In this world without quiet corners, there can be no easy escapes from history, from hullabaloo, from terrible, unquiet fuss." - Salman Rushdie, fully Sir Ahmed Salman Rushdie
"Without relationships, no matter how much wealth, fame, power, prestige and seeming success by the standards and opinions of the world one has, happiness will constantly eluded him." - Sidney Madwed
"Holmes, who loathed every form of society with his whole Bohemian soul, remained in our lodgings in Baker Street, buried among his old books, and alternating from week to week between cocaine and ambition, the drowsiness of the drug, and the fierce energy of his own keen nature." - Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle
"It's a very cheery thing to come into London by any of these lines which run high and allow you to look down upon the houses like this. I thought he was joking, for the view was sordid enough, but he soon explained himself. Look at those big, isolated clumps of buildings rising up above the slates, like brick islands in a lead-colored sea. The board-schools. Light-houses, my boy! Beacons of the future! Capsules with hundreds of bright little seeds in each, out of which will spring the wiser, better England of the future." - Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle
"Let me say right here, Mr. Holmes, that money is nothing to me in this case. You can burn it if it’s any use in lighting you to the truth. This woman is innocent and this woman has to be cleared, and it’s up to you to do it. Name your figure! My professional charges are upon a fixed scale, I do not vary them, save when I remit them altogether." - Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle
"As a word, ecology has been so debased by recent political usage that many people employ it to identify anything good that happens far from cities and without human interference." - Stephan Jay Gould
"Forgiveness is not a condoning of the unskillful act which has caused injury, but a touching of the actor with mercy and loving kindness." - Stephen Levine
"Businesses, are, in reality, quasi-religious sects. When you go to work in one, you embrace A New Faith. And if they are really big businesses, you progress from faith to a kind of mystique. Belief in the product, preaching the product, in the end the product becomes the focus of a transcendental experience. Through “the product” one communes with the vast forces of life, nature, and history that are expressed in business." - Thomas Merton
"But I believe that the desire to please You does in fact pleases You." - Thomas Merton
"Logic chases truth up the tree of grammar." - Willard Quine, fully Willard Van Orman Quine
"I wanted my wife to realize clearly one long-term penalty, for herself and for the children, of the step I was taking. I said: You know, we are leaving the winning world for the losing world." - Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers
"I hope we don't lose in America this demand that those of us who want this office must be prepared not to handle the 10-second gimmick that deals, say, with little things like war and peace." - Walter Pater, fully Walter Horatio Pater
"Not to discriminate every moment some passionate attitude in those about us, and in the very brilliancy of their gifts some tragic dividing on their ways, is, on this short day of frost and sun, to sleep before evening." - Walter Pater, fully Walter Horatio Pater
"All emanates from Source!...You're not this body and its accomplishments. You are the observer. Notice it all; and be grateful for the abilities you've been given, the motivation to achieve, and the stuff you've accumulated. But give all the credit to the power of intention, which brought you into existence." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
"An infinity of forests lies dormant within the dreams of one Acorn." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
"If you are living out of a sense of obligation you are slave." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
"When I chased after money, I never had enough. When I got my life on purpose and focused on giving of myself and everything that arrived into my life, then I was prosperous." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
"When you become certain that nothing is impossible for you, you'll attain everything you desire." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
"But being a religious person, I would like to question the validity of everything for myself. That is the essence of religion, which is humility. Not to accept anything unless you understand the meaning there of, personally in your life. If you accept without understanding, you will be imposing upon the mind. And then you are neither true to the mind, nor true to the meaning. The essence of religion, which is humility, lies in uncovering the meaning of life, uncovering the meaning of every moment, learning the meaning for ourselves." - Vimala Thakar
"Wind and storm colored July. Also, in the middle, cadaverous, awful, lay the grey puddle in the courtyard, when holding an envelope in my hand, I carried a message. I came to the puddle. I could not cross it. Identity failed me. We are nothing, I said, and fell. I was blown like a feather. I was wafted down tunnels. Then very gingerly, I pushed my foot across. I laid my hand against a brick wall. I returned very painfully, drawing myself back into my body over the grey, cadaverous space of the puddle. This is life then to which I am committed." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
"Meaning is different from explanation and it certainly isn’t blame (no shame no blame really helps with seeing clearly, no?) I asked, “What is the cancer trying to tell me?” What is the story of this tumor? How does it fit into the narrative of my life?” The cancer seemed sweet to me. Well meaning. It was trying to hold all the undigested feelings and experiences I had raced right past in my headstrong, headlong race to save the world. She (the tumor felt like a little girl) became beloved. I owned her as my creation – not as my fault but as my perfectly crafted, unconscious, possibly deadly solution to the complex equation of my life. In one bundle it took on the world’s toxicity and my own reaction to it." - Vicki Robin
"Renouncement of evils and sins helps in the attainment of prosperity and success." - Atharva Veda, or Atharvaveda
"I believe that during the intervention of NATO in Kosovo there is an element nobody can question: the air attacks, the bombs, are not caused by a material interest. Their character is exclusively humanitarian: What is at stake here are the principles, human rights which have priority above state sovereignty. This makes it legitimate to attack the Yugoslav Federation, although without the United Nations mandate." - Václav Havel
"By ‘flat’ I did not mean that the world is getting equal. I said that more people in more places can now compete, connect and collaborate with equal power and equal tools than ever before. That’s why an Indian in Bangalore can take care of the office work of American doctors or read the X-rays of German hospitals." - Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
"Improv time is over. This is crunch time. Iraq will be won or lost in the next few months. But it won't be won with high rhetoric. It will be won on the ground in a war over the last mile." - Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
"Most people outside of America won't get it. It's the Easter bunny. It's another lie and I don't understand why we had to invent this character." - Todd Rundgren, fully Todd Harry Rundgren
"Gratitude always comes into play; research shows that people are happier if they are grateful for the positive things in their lives, rather than worrying about what might be missing." - Dan Buettner
"I slept peacefully that night, feeling exultant and determined. Little did I know that I was making the most common and the most painful mistake women have made all throughout the ages: to naively think that with their love they can change the man they love." - Elif Safak