This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Pierre-Simon Laplace, Compte de Laplace, Marquis de Laplace
The moral virtues, without religion, are but cold, lifeless and insipid; it is only religion which opens the mind to great conceptions, fills it with the most sublime ideas and warms the soul with more than sensual pleasures.
Inayat Khan, aka Hazrat Inayat Khan, fully Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan
The truth is like a piano: the notes may be high or low, one may strike a Cor an E, but they are all notes. So the difference between ideas is like thatbetween notes, and it is the same in daily life with the right and the wrong attitude. If we have the wrong attitude all things are right. The man whomistrusts himself will mistrust his best friend; the man who trusts himself will trust everyone.
Ideas | Life | Life | Man | Mistrust | Right | Trust | Truth | Will | Wrong |
The sensitive eye can never be able to survey, the orb of the sun, unless strongly endued with solar fire, and participating largely of the vivid ray. Everyone therefore must become divine, and of godlike beauty, before he can gaze upon a god and the beautiful itself. Thus proceeding in the right way of beauty he will first ascend into the region of intellect, contemplating every fair species, the beauty of which he will perceive to be no other than ideas themselves; for all things are beautiful by the supervening irradiations of these, because they are the offspring and essence of intellect. But that which is superior to these is no other than the fountain of good, everywhere widely diffusing around the streams of beauty, and hence in discourse called the beautiful itself because beauty is its immediate offspring. But if you accurately distinguish the intelligible objects you will call the beautiful the receptacle of ideas; but the good itself, which is superior, the fountain and principle of the beautiful; or, you may place the first beautiful and the good in the same principle, independent of the beauty which there subsists.
Beauty | Distinguish | God | Good | Ideas | Right | Will | Beauty | God |
All our ideas will be determined by a chain of previous causes; our doings will be determined by those ideas; personal action becomes a mere word. That we are the agents does not save our freedom when our action is prescribed by those causes; we have precisely what belongs to everything that lives, to infants guided by blind impulses, to lunatics; all these act; why, even fire acts; there is act in everything that follows the plan of its being, servilely.
You know that the beginning is the most important part of any work, especially in the case of a young and tender thing; for that is the time at which the character is being formed and the desired impression is more readily taken... Shall we just carelessly allow children to hear any casual tales which may be devised by casual persons, and to receive into their minds ideas for the most part the very opposite of those which we should wish them to have when they are grown up?
Beginning | Character | Children | Ideas | Important | Impression | Receive | Time |
Many of the ideas from the first edition of this book about how to refocus the foster care system on the best interests of the child were later included in the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997, which I worked on with the late Republican Senator John Chafee of Rhode Island and others. After the passage of that legislation, foster adoptions increased 64% nationwide from 31,030 the year the law passed to 51,000 last year. As First Lady, I met many young people aging out of foster care who had little of the emotional, social, and financial support families provide. I worked on the Foster Care Independence Act of 1999, which provides young people aging out of foster care with support services, including access to health care, educational opportunities, job training, housing assistance, and counseling. In the Senate, we passed a law that provides financial incentives to people who adopt older children.
Care | Health | Ideas | Law | Little | People | Safe | System | Child |
It is this mythical, or rather symbolic, content of the religious traditions which is likely to come into conflict with science. This occurs whenever this religious stock of ideas contains dogmatically fixed statements on subjects which belong in the domain of science.
Ideas |
I am absolutely convinced that no wealth in the world can help humanity to progress if it is in the hands of people more dedicated. The figures clean and great alone produces ideas high-end business and noble, and the money it is an engine for selfish and tempt owners of ill-use. Can anyone imagine Moses, Jesus or Gandhi dragging behind them bags of money?
Business | Humanity | Ideas | Money | People | Progress | Wealth | World | Business |
Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller
Real wealth is ideas plus energy.
If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture, let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies.
Ideas |
If most of us are ashamed of shabby clothes and shoddy furniture let us be more ashamed of shabby ideas and shoddy philosophies... It would be a sad situation if the wrapper were better than the meat wrapped inside it.
Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller
My ideas have undergone a process of emergence by emergency. When they are needed badly enough, they are accepted.
Ideas |
Reshad Feild, born Richard Timothy Feild
Serving God - what more beautiful thing is there to do! The only real joy is to be a servant of God, and that means being awake all the time to the needs of the moment…. We cannot have any preconceived ideas of what service means. We never know from one moment to the next, what will be asked of us.
The greatest speakers have usually been remarkable for the abundance of their ideas and their economy of words.
What does it mean to a physician to practice medicine without mystery? When I was a medical student, my school had a large, black-tie retirement dinner for a very famous man on the medical faculty, whose scientific contribution had earned him a Nobel prize. He was 80 years old. The entire school gathered to honor him, and famous medical people came from all over the world. This doctor gave a wonderful speech describing the progress of scientific knowledge during the 50 years that he had been a physician. We gave him a standing ovation. After we sat down he remained at the podium. There was a brief silence and then he said, There's something else important that I want to say. And I especially want to tell the students. I have been a physician for 50 years and I don't know anything more about life now than I did at the beginning. I am no wiser. It slipped through my fingers. We were stunned into silence. I remember thinking that perhaps he was senile. In retrospect, it was a very remarkable thing he did. He took an opportunity to warn us about the cage of ideas and roles and self-expectations that was closing around us, even as he spoke to us - the cage that would keep us from achieving our good purpose, which is healing. Healing is a matter of wisdom, not of scientific knowledge.
Famous | Good | Honor | Ideas | Important | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Opportunity | People | Practice | Progress | Retirement | Silence | Speech | Thinking |
Ralph Ellison, fully Ralph Waldo Ellison
So why do I write, torturing myself to put it down? Because in spite of myself I've learned some things. Without the possibility of action, all knowledge comes to one labeled "file and forget," and I can neither file nor forget. Nor will certain ideas forget me; they keep filing away at my lethargy, my complacency. Why should I be the one to dream this nightmare?
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
A man cannot realize God unless he gets rid of all such egotistic ideas as 'I am such an important man' or 'I am so and so'. Level the mound of 'I' to the ground by dissolving it with tears of devotion.
Why are these two men afraid? They should overcome their fear of facing new ideas and alternative voices, and open the process for the American people,
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
The waves belong to the Ganges, not the Ganges to the waves. A man cannot realize God unless he gets rid of all such egotistic ideas as I am such an important man or I am so and so. Level the mound of I to the ground by dissolving it with tears of devotion.