This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Upon the standard to which the wise and honest will now repair it is written You have lived the easy way henceforth, you will live the hard way.... You came into a great heritage made by the insight and the sweat and the blood of inspired and devoted and courageous men thoughtlessly and in utmost self-indulgence you have all but squandered this inheritance. Now only by the heroic virtues which made this inheritance, can you restore it again. You took the good things for granted. Now you must earn them again.... For every right that you cherish, you have a duty which you must fulfill. For every hope that you entertain, you have a task that you must perform. For every good that you wish to preserve, you will have to sacrifice your comfort and your ease. There is nothing for nothing any longer.
Ideas |
Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
You don't need to be a rocket scientist. Investing is not a game where the guy with the 160 IQ beats the guy with 130 IQ.
Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
Know that no one is capable of making you upset without your consent.
The world had become pretty generally Ceceliafied.
Care | Cultivation | Culture | Ideas | Meaning | Means | Sense | Understanding | Words | Worship |
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
I sit in one of the dives On Fifty-Second Street Uncertain and afraid As the clever hopes expire Of a low dishonest decade: Waves of anger and fear Circulate over the bright And darkened lands of the earth, Obsessing our private lives; The unmentionable…
W. C. Fields, stage name for William Claude Dukenfield
I have spent a lot of time searching through the Bible . . . for loopholes.
Ideas |
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 |
W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer
To master anything from football to relativity requires effort. But it does not require unpleasant efforts, drudgery. The main task of any teacher is to make a subject interesting.
Enthusiasm | Ideas | Mathematics | Following |
W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer
Most teachers who are honest with themselves are forced to admit that, in the main, the class would make the same progress if the teacher were not there at all, the clever remaining clever and the dull remaining dull.
Controversy | Discovery | Ideas | Important | Music | Problems | Discovery |
W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky
There have certainly been many periods in history when virtue was more rare than under the Caesars; but there has probably never been a period when vice was more extravagant or uncontrolled.
Doubt | Feelings | Ideas | Little | Order | Purity | World |
In that November off Tehuantepec, the slopping of the sea grew still one night and in the morning summer hued the deck and made one think of rosy chocolate and gilt umbrellas.
The wind had seized the tree and ha, and ha, it held the shivering, the shaken limbs, then bathed its body in the leaping lake.
Ideas |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The crisis in Germany has only begun. It will inevitably end in the transfer of political power to the German proletariat. The Russian proletariat is following events with the keenest attention and enthusiasm. Now even the blindest workers in the various countries will see that the Bolsheviks were right in basing their whole tactics on the support of the world workers' revolution.
Aims | Ideas | Individual | Method | Organization | Present | Struggle | System | Work |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Without a revolutionary theory there cannot be a revolutionary movement.
Ideas | Literature | Power |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
No revolution is worth anything unless it can defend itself.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
A sense of security, of well-being, of summer warmth pervades my memory. That robust reality makes a ghost of the present. The mirror brims with brightness; a bumblebee has entered the room and bumps against the ceiling. Everything is as it should be, nothing will ever change, nobody will ever die.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
To carry on a war for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie, a war which is a hundred times more difficult, protracted and complex than the most stubborn of ordinary wars between states, and to renounce in advance any change of tack, or any utilization of a conflict of interests (even if temporary) among one’s enemies, or any conciliation or compromise with possible allies (even if they are temporary, unstable, vacillating, or conditional allies)—is that not ridiculous in the extreme?”
Equality | Family | Ideas | Principles | Struggle | Weapons | World |