This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The surest sign of age is loneliness. While one finds company in himself and his pursuits, he cannot be old, whatever his years may be.
Age | Loneliness |
If you would keep young and happy, be good; live a high moral life; practice the principles of the brotherhood of man; send out good thoughts to all, and think evil of no man. This is in obedience to the great natural law; to live otherwise is to break this great Divine law. Other things being equal, it is the cleanest, purest minds that live long and are happy. The man who is growing and developing intellectually does not grow old like the man who has stopped advancing, but when ambition, aspirations and ideals halt, old age begins.
Age | Ambition | Brotherhood | Evil | Good | Happy | Ideals | Law | Life | Life | Man | Obedience | Old age | Practice | Principles | Old | Think |
Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
In an age in which mankind’s collective power has suddenly been increased, for good or evil, a thousand-fold through the tapping of atomic energy, the standard of conduct demanded from ordinary human beings can be no lower than the standard attained in times past by rare saints.
Age | Conduct | Energy | Evil | Good | Mankind | Past | Power |
Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
In an age in which mankind’s collective power has suddenly been increased, for good or evil, a thousandfold through the tapping of atomic energy, the standard of conduct demanded from ordinary human beings can be no lower than the standard in times past by rare saints.
Age | Conduct | Energy | Evil | Good | Mankind | Past | Power |
Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
We are in the first age since the dawn of civilization in which people have dared to think it practicable to make the benefits of civilization available to the whole human race.
Age | Civilization | Dawn | Human race | People | Race | Think |
You’ve reached middle age when all you exercise is caution.
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
The spirit of the age is the very thing that a great man changes.
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
To teach how to live with uncertainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy in our age can still do for those who study it.
Age | Philosophy | Study | Teach | Uncertainty |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
The central problem of our age is how to act decisively in the absence of certainty.
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
The value of philosophy is to be sought largely in its very uncertainty. He who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the cooperation or consent of his deliberate reason. As soon as we begin to philosophize, on the contrary, we find that even the most everyday things lead to problems to which only very incomplete answers can be given. Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thought and free them from the tyranny of custom.
Age | Common Sense | Convictions | Cooperation | Custom | Life | Life | Mind | Philosophy | Problems | Reason | Sense | Thought | Tyranny | Uncertainty | Thought | Value |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
Men sometimes speak as though the progress of science must necessarily be a boon to mankind, but that, I fear, is one of the comfortable nineteenth century delusions which our more disillusioned age must discard.
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
To teach how to live with uncertainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy in our age can still do for those who study it.
Age | Philosophy | Study | Teach | Uncertainty |
Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age 18.
Age | Common Sense | Sense |
Charles Dickens, fully Charles John Huffam Dickens
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way.
Age | Belief | Darkness | Despair | Heaven | Hope | Incredulity | Light | Nothing | Wisdom |
In an age remarkable for good reasoning and bad conduct, for sound rules and corrupt manners, when virtue fills our heads, but vice our hearts; when those who would fain persuade us that they are quite sure of heaven, appear in no greater hurry to go there than other folks, but put on the livery of the best master only to serve the worst; in an age when modesty herself is more ashamed of detection than delinquency; when independence of principle consists in having no principle on which to depend; and free thinking, not in thinking freely, but in being free from thinking; in an age when patriots will hold anything except their tongues; keep anything except their word; and lose nothing patiently except their character; to improve such an age must be difficult; to instruct it dangerous; and he stands no chance of amending it who cannot at the same time amuse it.
Age | Chance | Character | Conduct | Detection | Good | Heaven | Hurry | Manners | Modesty | Nothing | Sound | Thinking | Time | Virtue | Virtue | Will | Vice |