This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The uprooting of human beings from the land, the concentration in cities, the breakdown of the authority of family, of tradition, and of moral conventions, the complexity and the novelty of modern life, and finally the economic insecurity of our industrial system have called into being the modern social worker. They perform a function in modern society which is not a luxury but an absolute necessity.
Absolute | Authority | Family | Insecurity | Land | Life | Life | Luxury | Necessity | Novelty | Society | System | Tradition | Wisdom | Society | Novelty |
Our problem is that once we have accepted an irreducible distinction between mental and physical facts and properties, and have allowed that physical facts and properties constitute sufficient causes of actions, we seem to be forced to admit that mental facts and properties are epiphenomenal, causally idle; yet this conclusion is itself implausible.
Distinction | Wisdom |
Japanese poetry has as its subject the human heart. It may seem to be of no practical use and just as well left uncomposed, but when one knows poetry well, one understands also without explanation the reasons governing order and disorder in the world.
Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
Constant experience shows us that every man invested with power is apt to abuse it, and to carry his authority as far as it will go... To prevent this abuse, it is necessary from the very nature of things that power should be a check to power.
Abuse | Authority | Experience | Man | Nature | Power | Will | Wisdom |
What is the standpoint of materialism?... We look outwards (via the senses) for the explanation and cause of everything. We start from phenomena as absolute truth... Materialism gives sense and physical matter priority over mind or idea... The customary standpoint of scientific materialism is that primary matter is dead - and the universe is dead and nature is dead - and a dead nature can, of course, aim at nothing. It cannot be teleological.
Absolute | Cause | Materialism | Mind | Nature | Nothing | Phenomena | Sense | Truth | Universe | Wisdom |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
It is not the last step that causes weariness: it only declares it.
Wisdom |
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Familiarity in one's superiors causes bitterness, fir it may not be returned.
Bitterness | Familiarity | Wisdom |
Lucretia Mott, fully Lucretia Coffin Mott
Truth for authority, not authority for truth.
A truth which one has never heard causes the soul surprise at first, which touches it keenly; but when it is accustomed to it, it becomes very insensible there.
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Many things are not believed because their current explanation is not believed.
Wisdom |
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Undeserved praise causes more pangs of conscience later than undeserved blame, but probably only for this reason, that our powers of judgment are more completely exposed by being overpraised than by being unjustly underestimated.
J. B. Rhine, fully Joseph Banks Rhine
If parapsychology deals with all the personality manifestations that are beyond explanation by physics, then by definition it should claim the entire spiritual order of reality.
Order | Personality | Reality | Wisdom |
No international Eighteenth Amendment will get rid of war or the instruments of war until civilization finds a way for accomplishing what war has done in the past. Simply to prohibit war is not going to get rid of it. Wars must be anticipated and the causes got rid of by a readiness to accept peaceful means of settlement.