This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
L. P. Jacks, fully Lawrence Pearsall Jacks
The spirit of fellowship, with its attendant cheerfulness, is in the air. It is comparatively easy to love one's neighbor when we realize that he and we are common servants and common sufferers in the same cause. A deep breath of that spirit has passed into the life of England. No doubt the same thing has happened elsewhere.
Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
One man does not assert the truth which he knows, because he feels himself bound to the people with whom he is engaged; another, because the truth might deprive him of the profitable position by which he maintains his family; a third, because he desires to attain reputation and authority, and then use them in the service of mankind; a fourth, because he does not wish to destroy old sacred traditions; a fifth, because he has no desire to offend people; a sixth, because the expression of the truth would arouse persecution, and disturb the excellent social activity to which he has devoted himself. One serves as emperor, king, minister, government functionary, or soldier, and assures himself and others that the deviation from truth indispensable to his condition is redeemed by the good he does. Another, who fulfills the duties of a spiritual pastor, does not in the depths of his soul believe all he teaches, but permits the deviation from truth in view of the good he does. A third instructs men by means of literature, and notwithstanding the silence he must observe with regard to the whole truth, in order not to stir up the government and society against himself, has no doubt as to the good he does. A fourth struggles resolutely with the existing order as revolutionist or anarchist, and is quite assured that the aims he pursues are so beneficial that the neglect of the truth, or even of the falsehood, by silence, indispensable to the success of his activity, does not destroy the utility of his work. In order that the conditions of a life contrary to the consciousness of humanity should change and be replaced by one which is in accord with it, the outworn public opinion must be superseded by a new and living one. And in order that the old outworn opinion should yield its place to the new living one, all who are conscious of the new requirements of existence should openly express them. And yet all those who are conscious of these new requirements, one in the name of one thing, and one in the name of another, not only pass them over in silence, but both by word and deed attest their exact opposites.
Aims | Change | Consciousness | Desire | Destroy | Deviation | Doubt | Existence | Good | Government | Humanity | Indispensable | Life | Life | Man | Means | Men | Neglect | Opinion | Order | People | Position | Public | Regard | Reputation | Sacred | Service | Silence | Society | Soul | Success | Truth | Society | Government | Old |
Let us admit that no matter how small the chance it could happen, one molecule could be created by such astronomical odds of chance. However, one molecule is of no use. Hundreds of millions of identical ones are necessary. Thus we either admit the miracle or doubt the absolute truth of science.
Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
My principal sin is doubt. I doubt everything, and am in doubt most of the time.
Lillian Smith, fully Lillian Eugenia Smith
Faith and doubt both are needed - not as antagonists, but working side by side to take us around the unknown curve.
Doubt |
A Course In Miracles, aka ACIM
Doubt is the result of conflicted wishes. Be sure of what you want, and doubt becomes impossible.
Doubt |
Madame de Gasparin, Valérie Boissier de Gasparin
The supreme fall of falls is this, the first doubt of one’s self.
Doubt |
Marcel Proust, fully Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust
No doubt very few people understand the purely subjective nature of the phenomenon that we call love, or how it creates, so to speak, a supplementary person, distinct from the person whom the world knows by the same name, a person most of whose constituent elements are derived from ourselves.
Doubt | Nature | People | World | Understand |
Marcel Proust, fully Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust
Facts do not find their way into the world in which our beliefs reside; they did not produce our beliefs, they do not destroy them; they may inflict on them the most constant refutations without weakening them, and an avalanche of afflictions or ailments succeeding one another without interruption in a family will not make it doubt the goodness of its God or the talent of its doctor.
Destroy | Doubt | Family | God | Will | World | Talent | God |
Mark Twain, pen name of Samuel Langhorne Clemens
Reputation is a hall-mark: it can remove doubt from pure silver, and it can also make the plated article pass for pure.
Doubt |
Max Planck, fully Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck
We must, however, not deceive ourselves – this naive belief does not exist nowadays even among common people, and it cannot be revived by backwards oriented (rückwärts gerichtete) considerations and measures. Since to believe means to consider something true (fürwahrhalten), and the growing knowledge of the nature, proceeding forwards incessantly along incontestably reliable path, had led to the result that for a man educated at least slightly in natural sciences it is entirely (schlechterdings) impossible to consider as reliable many reports about extraordinary events contradicting natural laws, about miracles (Naturwunder) which used to be generally accepted as essential support and confirmation (Bekräftigung) of religious teachings and which people considered formerly as facts without critical examination (Bedenken). The one who takes his religion really seriously and cannot tolerate that it gets into contradiction with his knowledge (Wissen), is facing the question of conscience whether he can still honestly consider himself to be a member of religious community which in its confession (Bekenntnis) contains belief in miracles. For a certain period of time many a believer could find a kind of reconciliation in an effort to take the middle way and to restrict his belief to acceptance (Anerkennung) of few miracles, considered to be extremely important. However, such a position is not tenable for a long time. The belief in miracles must retreat step by step before relentlessly and reliably progressing science and we cannot doubt that sooner or later it must vanish completely (zu Ende gehen muss).
Acceptance | Belief | Conscience | Contradiction | Doubt | Effort | Events | Knowledge | Man | Means | Miracles | People | Position | Question | Reconciliation | Religion | Science | Time |
May Sarton, pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton
There is no doubt that solitude is a challenge and to maintain balance within it a precarious business. But I must not forget that, for me, being with people or even with one beloved person for any length of time without solitude is even worse. I lose my center. I feel dispersed, scattered, in pieces. I must have time alone in which to mull over my encounter, and to extract its juice, its essence, to understand what has really happened to me as a consequence of it.
Balance | Challenge | Doubt | People | Solitude | Time | Understand |
Miguel de Unamuno, fully Miguel de Unamuno y Jogo
True science teaches, above all, to doubt and to be ignorant.
Miguel de Unamuno, fully Miguel de Unamuno y Jogo
The supreme triumph of reason, the analytical... faculty, is to cast doubt upon its own validity.
Doubt |
Miguel de Unamuno, fully Miguel de Unamuno y Jogo
A faith which does not doubt is a dead faith.
Miguel de Unamuno, fully Miguel de Unamuno y Jogo
Life is doubt, and faith without doubt is nothing but death.
Miguel de Unamuno, fully Miguel de Unamuno y Jogo
Faith which does not doubt is a dead faith.
Doubt |
I think it is us who make the future. The future is the way we react to what is happening, it is the way we transform a movement, a doubt into truth. If we want to be masters of our future, we must fundamentally pose the question of what today is.
Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman
We have been going from a rural or quasi-rural society to an aristocratic society. There’s no doubt that in recent years the upper end of the income scale has enjoyed a much larger increase in income and wealth than the lower end.