This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Poetry is something more philosophic and of graver import than history, since its statements are of nature of universals, whereas those of history are of singulars.
Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
My own view of history is that human beings do have genuine freedom to make choices. Our destiny is not predetermined for us; we determine it for ourselves.
Every time history repeats itself the price goes up.
Christianity has this peculiar disadvantage, that unlike other religions, it is not a pure system of doctrine: its chief and essential feature is that it is a history, a series of events, a collection of facts, a statement of the actions and sufferings of individuals: it is this history which constitutes dogma, and belief in it is salvation.
Belief | Doctrine | Dogma | Events | History | Salvation | System |
How much happier would the religious history of the world been if the different religions and sects had seen their role as contributors to a common stream of seeking for the Ultimate, which always escapes the conceptual net, yet perennially inspires the search. Actually many in the modern world are becoming tolerant toward religion in the wrong way. Their tolerance is not a product of understanding but is bred of indifference. They see the conventional forms in which religion is practiced as empty shells although they excite in their defense belligerent intolerance.
Defense | History | Indifference | Intolerance | Religion | Search | Understanding | World | Wrong |
Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, known as Dean Stanley
Insist on reading the great books, on marking the great events of the world. Then the little books can take care of themselves, and the trivial incidents of passing politics and diplomacy may perish with the using.
Books | Care | Diplomacy | Events | Little | Politics | Reading | World |
Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
The history of almost every civilization furnishes examples of geographical expansion coinciding with deterioration in quality.
Civilization | History |
Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr., born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger
Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response. Expelled from individual consciousness by the rush of change, history finds its revenge by stamping the collective unconscious with habits, values, expectations, dreams. The dialectic between past and future will continue to form our lives.
Change | Consciousness | Dreams | Future | History | Individual | Memory | Myth | Past | Revenge | Science | Technology | Tradition | Will |
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
Assassination has never changed the history of the world.
By reading, we enjoy the dead; by conversation, the living; and by contemplation, ourselves. Reading enriches the memory, conversation polishes the wit; and contemplation improves the judgment. Of these, reading is the most important, as it furnishes both the others.
Contemplation | Conversation | Important | Judgment | Memory | Reading | Wit | Contemplation |
When in reading we meet with any maxim that may be of use, we should take it for our own, and make an immediate application of it, as we would of the advice of a friend whom we have purposely consulted.
The history of the world and its peoples in three words – “Born, troubled, died.”
Charles A. Beard, fully Charles Austin Beard
All the lessons of history in four sentences: Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad with power. The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. The bee fertilizes the flower it robs. When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.
Faith is the very heroism and enterprise of intellect. Faith is not a passivity but a faculty. Faith is a power, the material of effect. Faith is a kind of winged intellect. The great workmen of history have been men who believed like giants.
Examine the history of all nations and all centuries and you will always find men subject to three codes: the code of nature, the code of society, and the code of religion; and constrained to infringe upon al three codes in succession, for these codes never were in harmony. the result of this has been that never was in any country... a real man, a real citizen, or a real believer.
Harmony | History | Man | Men | Nations | Nature | Religion | Society | Will |