This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The use of history is to give to the present hour and its duty.
The history of mankind is the history of arrested growth.
We cannot describe the natural history of the soul, but we know that it is divine.
Most of the great results of history are brought about by discreditable means.
Robert Kennedy, fully Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy
It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.
Belief | Courage | Daring | Energy | History | Hope | Injustice | Injustice | Man | Oppression | Time |
Ruth Benedict, born Ruth Fulton
The life history of the individual is first and foremost an accommodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in his community. From the moment of his birth the customs into which he is born shape his experience and behavior. By the time he can talk, he is the little creature of his culture, and by the time he is grown and able to take part in its activities, its habits are his habits, its beliefs his beliefs, its impossibilities his impossibilities... There is no social problem it is more incumbent upon us to understand that this of the role of custom. Until we are intelligent as to its laws and varieties, the main complicating facts of human life must remain unintelligible.
Behavior | Birth | Culture | Custom | Experience | History | Individual | Life | Life | Little | Time | Understand |
Robert Kennedy, fully Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy
Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but each of us can work to change a small portion of events. It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance. n.
Belief | Change | Courage | Daring | Energy | Events | Greatness | History | Man | Oppression | Time | Will | Work |
Robert Ingersoll, fully Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll
The history of intellectual progress is written in the lives of infidels.
Benjamin Collins Brodie, fully Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, 1st Baronet
Our minds are so constructed that we can keep the attention fixed on a particular object until we have, as it were, looked all around it; and the mind that possesses this faculty in the highest degree of perfection will take cognizance of relations of which another mind has no perception. It is this, much more than any difference in the abstract power of reasoning, which constitutes the vast difference between the minds of different individuals. This is the history alike of the poetic genius and of the genius of discovery in science. “I keep the subject,” said Sir Isaac Newton, “constantly before me, and wait until the dawnings open by little and little into a full light.” It was thus that after long meditation he was led to the invention of fluxions, and to the anticipation of the modern discovery of the combustibility of the diamond. It was thus that Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood, and that those views were suggested by Davy which laid the foundation of that grand series of experimental researches which terminated in the decomposition of the earths and alkalies.
Abstract | Age | Ambition | Anticipation | Attention | Contentment | Death | Discovery | Disease | Ennui | Failure | Genius | History | Indolence | Intelligence | Invention | Little | Meditation | Men | Mind | Object | Old age | Perfection | Power | Will | Discovery |
T. S. Eliot, fully Thomas Sterns Eliot
After such knowledge, what forgiveness? Think now history has many cunning passages, contrived corridors and issues, deceives with whispering ambitions, guides us by vanities. Think now she gives when our attention is distracted and what she gives, gives with such supple confusions that the giving famishes the craving. Gives too late what’s not believed in, or if still believed, in memory only, reconsidered passion. Gives too soon into weak hands, what’s thought can be dispensed with till the refusal propagates a fear. Think neither fear nor courage saves us. Unnatural vices are fathered by our heroism. Virtues are forced upon us by our impudent crimes. These tears are shaken from the wrath-bearing tree.
Attention | Courage | Cunning | Fear | Forgiveness | Giving | History | Knowledge | Memory | Tears | Thought | Think | Thought |
Ted Sorensen, fully Theodore Chalkin "Ted" Sorensen
Public opinion rarely considers the needs of the next generation or the history of the last. It is frequently hampered by myths and misinformation, by stereotypes and shibboleths, and by an innate resistance to innovation.
History | Innovation | Opinion | Public |
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
Liberty never came from the government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of government. The history of liberty is the history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it.
Government | History | Liberty | Power |
Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant
One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
The history of human opinion is scarcely anything more than the history of human errors[crimes].
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
The history of liberty is the history of the limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it. When we resist the concentration of power we are resisting the powers of death. Concentration of power precedes the destruction of human liberties.
Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant
Moral progress in history lies not so much in the improvement of the moral code as in the enlargement of the area within which it is applied.
History | Improvement | Progress |