This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather
I like trees because they seem more resigned to the way they have to live than other things do. I feel as if this tree knows everything I ever think of when I sit here. When I come back to it, I never have to remind it of anything; I begin just where I left off.
Means |
Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather
From the time the Englishman's bones harden into bones at all, he makes his skeleton a flagstaff, and he early plants his feet like one who is to walk the world and the decks of all the seas.
Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
The whole financial structure of Wall Street seems to rise or fall on the mere fact that the Federal Reserve Bank raises or lowers the amount of interest. Any business that can't survive a one percent change must be skating on thin ice.
Means |
Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
You see, all these laws that they are having so much trouble wondering if they are constitutional, they were all drawn up by lawyers. For almost two-thirds of the membership of the House and Senate are lawyers.
Credit | Harmony | Little | Means | Taste | Thought | Time | Old | Think | Thought |
Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather
Every artist knows that there is no such thing as "freedom" in art. The first thing an artist does when he begins a new work is to lay down the barriers and limitations; he decides upon a certain composition, a certain key, a certain relation of creatures or objects to each other. He is never free, and the more splendid his imagination, the more intense his feeling, the farther he goes from general truth and general emotion.
Business | Individual | Means | Business |
Werner Heisenberg, fully Werner Karl Heisenberg
Probability in mathematics or in statistical mechanics means a statement about our degree of knowledge of the actual situation. In throwing dice we do not know the fine details of the motion of our hands which determine the fall of the dice and therefore we say that the probability for throwing a special number is just one in six. The probability wave of Bohr, Kramers, Slater, however, meant more than that; it meant a tendency for something. It was a quantitative version of the old concept of `potentia’ in Aristotelian philosophy. It introduced something standing in the middle between the idea of an event and the actual event, a strange kind of physical reality just in the middle between possibility and reality.
Existence | Experiment | Harmony | Important | Language | Life | Life | Means | Nature | Wisdom | Work | Old |
The manna of popular liberty must be gathered each day, or it is rotten. The living sap of to-day outgrows the dead rind of yesterday. The hand intrusted with power becomes, either from human depravity or esprit de corps, the necessary enemy of the people. Only by continual oversight can a Democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot; only by unintermitted agitation can a people be kept sufficiently awake to principle not to let liberty be smothered in material prosperity.
Werner Heisenberg, fully Werner Karl Heisenberg
Quantum theory can give us an indication of the probability that the alpha-particle will leave the nucleus in unit time, but it cannot predict at what precise point in time the emission will occur, for this is uncertain in principle.
Knowledge | Mathematics | Means | Reality | Old |
Werner Heisenberg, fully Werner Karl Heisenberg
Whenever we proceed from the known into the unknown we may hope to understand, but we may have to learn at the same time a new meaning of the word "understanding."
Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney
Cartoon animation offers a medium of storytelling and visual entertainment which can bring pleasure and information to people of all ages everywhere in the world.
Entertainment | Little | Means | Organization | Present |
Rooting in work is crucial to any accomplishment. Rooting in mere enthusiasm will in the long run force illusory measures to keep the fires of empty enthusiasm going. And this makes politics and politicians.
Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney
Leave today and enter the world of yesterday, tomorrow and fantasy.
Unless we proceed cautiously, there might well arise a few generations of mystics who conceive of the orgone metaphysically, divorced from non-living nature and who do not comprehend it from the standpoint of natural science. And it seems to me that we have more than enough mysticism as it is.
Behavior | Blame | Fault | Influence | Means | People | Pity | War | World | Fault | Victim |
We are not the helpless slaves of technology, but as before - if only we wish to be - captains of our fate.... this argument of technological inevitability is also misleading because it depends entirely on extra-technical factors whether a certain technological process which, for example, favors mass production, is in actual fact really superior from the economic point of view or not.
Assertion | Blame | Distrust | Man | Means | Price | Right | Technology | Will | Wrong | Learn |
Follow the voice of your heart, even if it leads you off the path of timid souls. Do not become hard and embittered, even if life tortures you at times. There is only one thing that counts: to live one’s life well and happily.
Authority | Children | Criticism | Family | Fear | Freedom | Important | Means | Nothing | Order | Power | Youth | Youth |
What would you think of an engineer who expounded the art of flying without revealing the secrets of the engine and propeller? That's what you do, you engineer of the human soul. Just that. You're a coward. You want the raisins out of my cake but you don't want the thorns of my roses. Haven't you too, little psychiatrist, been cracking silly jokes about me? Haven't you ridiculed me as the prophet of bigger and better orgasms? Have you never heard the whimpering of a young wife whose body has been desecrated by an impotent husband? Or the anguished cry of an adolescent bursting with unfulfilled love? Does your security still mean more to you than your patient? How long will you go on valuing your respectability above your medical mission? How long will you refuse to see that your pussyfooting procrastination is costing millions their lives?
Democracy | Future | History | Means | Order | Organic | People | Politics | Responsibility | Society | Time | Work | Society |