This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Thomas J. Watson, fully Thomas John Watson, Sr.
Every time we've moved ahead in IBM, it was because someone was willing to take a chance, put his head on the block, and try something new.
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
Israel’s military was not focused on the morning after the war in Lebanon — when Hezbollah declared victory and the Israeli press declared defeat. It was focused on the morning after the morning after, when all the real business happens in the Middle East. That’s when Lebanese civilians, in anguish, said to Hezbollah: “What were you thinking? Look what destruction you have visited on your own community! For what? For whom?”… In Gaza, I still can’t tell if Israel is trying to eradicate Hamas or trying to “educate” Hamas, by inflicting a heavy death toll on Hamas militants and heavy pain on the Gaza population. If it is out to destroy Hamas, casualties will be horrific and the aftermath could be Somalia-like chaos. If it is out to educate Hamas, Israel may have achieved its aims. Now its focus, and the Obama team’s focus, should be on creating a clear choice for Hamas for the world to see: Are you about destroying Israel or building Gaza?
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
When Muslim radicals and fundamentalists look at the West, they see only the openness that makes us, in their eyes, decadent and promiscuous. They see only the openness that has produced Britney Spears and Janet Jackson. They do not see, and do not want to see, the openness - the freedom of thought and inquiry - that has made us powerful, the openness that has produced Bill Gates and Sally Ride. They deliberately define it all as decadence. Because if openness, women's empowerment, and freedom of thought and inquiry are the real sources of the West's economic strength, then the Arab-Muslim world would have to change. And the fundamentalists and extremists do not want to change.
Competition | Force | Knowledge | Work |
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
Supply chains cannot tolerate even 24 hours of disruption. So if you lose your place in the supply chain because of wild behavior you could lose a lot. It would be like pouring cement down one of your oil wells.
Force |
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
Maybe this neighborhood is just beyond transformation. That will become clear in the next few months as we see just what kind of minority the Sunnis in Iraq intend to be. If they come around, a decent outcome in Iraq is still possible, and we should stay to help build it. If they won’t, then we are wasting our time. We should arm the Shiites and Kurds and leave the Sunnis of Iraq to reap the wind.
Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus
The most successful supporters of tyranny are without doubt those general declaimers who attribute the distresses of the poor, and almost all evils to which society is subject, to human institutions and the iniquity of governments.
Thorstein Veblen, fully Thorstein Bunde Veblen, born Torsten Bunde Veblen
Beauty is commonly a gratification of our sense of costliness masquerading under the name of beauty.
Accomplishment | Force | Man | Taste |
Thorstein Veblen, fully Thorstein Bunde Veblen, born Torsten Bunde Veblen
The changing styles are the expression of a restless search for something which shall commend itself to our aesthetic sense; but as each innovation is subject to the selective action of the norm of conspicuous waste, the range within which innovation can take place is somewhat restricted. The innovation must not only be more beautiful, or perhaps oftener less offensive, than that which it displaces, but it must also come up to the accepted standard of expensiveness.
Birth | Body | Consequences | Culture | Deference | Distinction | Example | Force | Indulgence | Leisure | Lesson | Men | Office | Practice | Regard | Regulation | Respect | Speech | Respect | Vice |
Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
If you want to change the world, change yourself.
Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.
Ay, now am I in Arden: the more fool I. When I was at home I was in a better place; but travellers must be content. As You Like It. Act ii. Sc. 4.
Force |
The lesson from physics is that entropy will always increase, it’s a fundamental law. The message from marketing is that your brand is more dispersed, you can’t fight it, so embrace it and try to find a way to work with it.
Either the nation whose tyrant you would destroy is ripe for the assertion and maintenance of its liberty, or it is not. If it be, the tyrant ought to be deposed with every appearance of publicity. Nothing can be more improper than for an affair, interesting to the general weal, to be conducted as if it were an act of darkness and shame. It is an ill lesson we read to mankind, when a proceeding, built upon the broad basis of general justice, is permitted to shrink from public scrutiny. The pistol and the dagger may as easily be made the auxiliaries of vice, as of virtue. To proscribe all violence, and neglect no means of information and impartiality, is the most effectual security we can have, for an issue conformable to reason and truth.
Force | Man | Mind | Office | Right | Sense | Suffering | Truth | Wrong |
God himself has no right to be a tyrant.
Accident | Argument | Boldness | Censure | Deliberation | Earth | Excellence | Force | Man | Morality | Ostentation | Principles | Property | Purpose | Purpose | Rest | Right | Sense | Will | Excellence | Deliberation |
Every sort of energy and endurance, of courage and capacity for handling life's evils, is set free in those who have religious faith.