This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Both houses of Congress have, by their joint Committee, requested me “To recommend to the People of the United States, a Day of Public Thanksgiving and Prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful Hearts the many Signal Favours of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a Form of Government for their Safety and Happiness”... That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks for his kind Care and Protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation; for the signal and manifold Mercies, and the favourable Interpositions of his Providence in the Course & Conclusion of the late War; for the great Degree of Tranquillity, Union, and Plenty, which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational Manner in which we have been enabled to establish Constitutions of Government for our Safety and Happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious Liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general, for all the great and various Favours which he hath been pleased to confer upon us... to enable us all, whether in public or private Stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually... to promote the Knowledge and Practice of true Religion and Virtue, and the increase of Science among them and us; and generally to grant unto all mankind such a Degree of temporal Prosperity as He alone knows to be best.
Care | Day | God | Government | Knowledge | Liberty | Mankind | Means | Opportunity | People | Plenty | Practice | Prayer | Prosperity | Providence | Public | Religion | Science | Tranquility | Virtue | Virtue | War | Government |
Imagination is potentially infinite. Though actually we are limited to the types of experience for which we possess organs, those organs are somewhat plastic. Opportunity will change their scope and even their centre.
Change | Experience | Imagination | Opportunity | Will |
Age is opportunity no less than youth itself, though in another dress, and as the evening twilight fades away the sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
Age | Day | Opportunity | Youth | Youth |
Hippocrates, fully known as Hippocrates of Cos or Hippokrates of Kos NULL
Life is short, art long, opportunity fleeting, experience treacherous, judgment difficult.
Art | Experience | Judgment | Life | Life | Opportunity | Art |
For age is opportunity no less than youth itself, though in another dress, And as the evening twilight fades away the sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
Age | Day | Opportunity | Youth | Youth |
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
What is leisure but opportunity for more complete and entire action?
Action | Leisure | Opportunity |
A good educational system should have three purposes: it should provide all who want to learn with access to available resources at anytime in their lives; empower all who want to share what they know to find those who want to learn it from them; and finally, furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to make their challenge known.
Challenge | Good | Opportunity | Present | Public | System | Learn |
In the heat of [social] movements brains are set stirring with new ideas which live on through quieter times, waiting for another opportunity to ignite into action and change the world around us.
It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy; it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are mor than enough for others.
Enough | Opportunity | People | Time |
Every temptation is an opportunity of our getting nearer to God.
God | Opportunity | Temptation | Temptation |
Look underfoot. You are always nearer to the true sources of your power than you think. The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are. Don't despise your own place and hour. Every place is the center of the world.
Despise | Opportunity | Power |
Men lose their high aspirations as they lose their intellectual tastes, because they have not time or opportunity for indulging them; and they addict themselves to inferior pleasures, not because they deliberately prefer them, but because they are either the only ones to which they have access, or the only ones which they are any longer capable of enjoying. It may be questioned whether any one who has remained equally susceptible to both classes of pleasures, every knowingly and calmly preferred the lower; though many, in all ages, have broken down in an ineffectual attempt to combine both.
Men | Opportunity | Time |
Joseph Chilton Pearce, aka Joe
Each major stage of development offers a window of opportunity distinctly different from anything that has come before. The increase of intelligence at each stage of development is disproportionately greater than the increase exhibited in the previous stage, similar to the order of increase found in the Richter scale for measuring earthquakes.
Intelligence | Opportunity | Order |
Make haste slowly, and do not be slothful when opportunity beckons.
Haste | Opportunity |
Louis D. Brandeis, fully Louis Dembitz Brandeis
In the field of modern business, so rich in opportunity for the exercise of man's finest and most varied mental faculties and moral qualities, mere money-making cannot be regarded as the legitimate end... since with the conduct of business human happiness or misery is inextricably interwoven.
Business | Conduct | Man | Money | Opportunity | Qualities | Business | Happiness |
Louis D. Brandeis, fully Louis Dembitz Brandeis
No danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present, unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.
Danger | Discussion | Education | Evil | Falsehood | Opportunity | Present | Silence | Speech | Time | Danger |
M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
Learning from their children is the best opportunity most people have to assure themselves of meaningful old age.
Age | Children | Learning | Old age | Opportunity | People | Old |