This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
When all men think alike, no one thinks very much.
Thought is not made in a vacuum, nor created out of likeness. It requires travel and shipping and the coming and going of strangers to impregnate a civilization. That is why thought has flourished in cities which lie along the paths of communication. Nineveh, Athens, Alexandria, Rome, Venice, the Hansa towns, London, Paris -- they have made ideas out of the movement and contact of many people. Men are jostled into thought. Left alone they spin the same thread from the same dream. A community which is self-contained and homogeneous and secluded is intellectually deaf, dumb, and blind. It can cultivate robust virtue and simple dogmatism, but it will not invent or throw out a profusion of ideas.
Authority | Control | Government | Illusion | Majority | Power | Regulation | Sense | Government |
Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
Our second advantage relates to the allocation of the money our businesses earn. After meeting the needs of those businesses, we have very substantial sums left over. Most companies limit themselves to reinvesting funds within the industry in which they have been operating. That often restricts them, however, to a "universe" for capital allocation that is both tiny and quite inferior to what is available in the wider world. Competition for the few opportunities that are available tends to become fierce. The seller has the upper hand, as a girl might if she were the only female at a party attended by many boys. That lopsided situation would be great for the girl, but terrible for the boys.
Young lawyers attend the courts not because they have business there but because they have no business anywhere else.
Beauty | Cause | Darkness | Desire | Existence | Health | Heart | Life | Life | Little | Love | Melancholy | Nature | Rest | Sorrow | Strength | Will | Woman | World | Friendship | Beauty |
Wei Wu Wei, pen name for Terence James Stannus Gray
The practice of meditation is represented by the three monkeys, who cover their eyes, ears and mouths so as to avoid the phenomenal world. The practice of non-meditation is ceasing to be the see-er, hearer or speaker while eyes, ears and mouths are fulfilling their function in daily life.
Awakening | Consciousness | Existence | Service |
For this great Chinese patriot to die in the American desert 22 years after he was forced into exile symbolizes the harsh truth about the ruling Communist regime which Mr. Fang [Chinese astrophysicist] often warned the world about. For those of us whose memories have not been erased by the censorship of getting rich gloriously, Fang was a hero. In the years and months leading up to the Tiananmen demonstrations in 1989, he dared to tell the historical facts – about Mao, the Party, the Great Leap Forward, and the Cultural Revolution – to a new generation.
Wei Wu Wei, pen name for Terence James Stannus Gray
"The action of non-action," is the central paradox of Taoism and as a concept is second in importance only to the Tao itself, which incorporates it; Lao Tzu describes the action/non-action of someone who has realized the Tao as wu-wei: Thus, the wise man deals with things through wu-wei and teaches through no-words. The ten thousand things flourish without interruption. They grow by themselves, and no one possesses them.
Democracy | Existence | Freedom | Need | Objectives | World | Happiness |
In a time of disorder [Laertes] has returned to the care of the earth, the foundation of life and hope. And Odysseus finds him in an act emblematic of the best and most responsible kind of agriculture: an old man caring for a young tree.
Citizenship | Commerce | Enemy | Family | Freedom | Health | Individual | Life | Life | Majority | Mind | People | Power | Property | Society | Truth | Wealth | Will | Society | Commerce | Learn | Value |
I took her into bed with me and propped myself up with pillows against the headboard to let her nurse. As she nursed and the milk came, she began a little low contented sort of singing. I would feel milk and love flowing from me to her as once it had flowed to me. It emptied me. As the baby fed, I seemed slowly to grow empty of myself, as if in the presence of that long flow of love even grief could not stand.
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
It is, for example, axiomatic that we should all think of ourselves as being more sensitive than other people because, when we are insensitive in our dealings with others, we cannot be aware of it at the time: conscious insensitivity is a self-contradiction.
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
The actors today really need the whip hand. They're so lazy. They haven't got the sense of pride in their profession that the less socially elevated musical comedy and music hall people or acrobats have. The theater has never been any good since the actors became gentlemen.
Existence | Individual | Qualities | Speech |
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
This great society is going smash; they cannot fool us with how fast they go, how much they cost each other and the gods! A culture is no better than its woods.
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
When one looks into the window of a store which sells devotional art objects, one can't help wishing the iconoclasts had won.
W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky
The stately ship is seen no more, the fragile skiff attains the shore; and while the great and wise decay, and all their trophies pass away, some sudden thought, some careless rhyme, still floats above the wrecks of Time.
Age | Belief | Culture | Existence | Faith | Ideas | Imagination | Legends | Life | Life | Light | Little | Poetry | Religion | System | Time |