This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Whence arose all the horrid assassinations of whole nations of men, women, and infants, with which the Bible is filled; and the bloody persecutions, and tortures unto death, and religiosu wars, that since that time have laid Europe in blood and ashes; whence arose they, but from this impious thing called religion, and this monstrous belief that God has spoken to man?
Action | Error | Genius | God | Habit | Ideas | Life | Life | Light | Study | Talent | God | Think |
A teacher is one who makes himself progressively unnecessary.
Culture | Extreme | Freedom | Global | Ideas | Innovation | Risk-taking | Stigma | System |
It is a question of fact, whether the influence of motives be fixed by laws of nature, so that they shall always have the same effect in the same circumstances.
Victor Weisskopf, fully Victor "Viki" Frederick Weisskopf
Goedel proved that a system of axioms can never be based on itself; in order to prove its validity, statements from outside must be used.
Challenge | Enthusiasm | Ideas | Influence | Present | Sense | Unique |
W. D. Joske, fully William "Bill"
Many people are afraid of philosophy precisely because they dread being forced to the horrifying conclusion that life is meaningless, so that human activities are ultimately insignificant, absurd and inconsequential.
W. H. Murray, fully William Hutchinson Murray
The more the soul knows, the more she loves, and loving much, she tastes much.
Ideas | Ignorance | Initiative | Providence |
The long-range transformation may be characterized perhaps most dramatically thus. There was a time when “I believe” as a ceremonial declaration of faith meant, and was heard as meaning: “Given the reality of God, as a fact of the universe, I hereby proclaim that I align my life accordingly, pledging love and loyalty.” A statement about a person’s believing has now come to mean, rather, something of this sort: “Given the uncertainty of God, as a fact of modern life, so-and-so reports that the idea of God is part of the furniture of his mind.”
Correctness | Ideas | Knowing | Knowledge | Man | Mind | Neutrality | Thought | Thought |
William D. Hoard, fully William Dempster Hoard
The fool has set in his heart that he can get more money through the tiring of his muscle and the starvation of his brain-but he can’t.
I believe: (a) That there is no personal god or life after death (b) That the most desirable thing in the world is freedom to be true to oneself, i.e., Honesty (c) That the only difference between human beings is intelligence (d) That the only criterion of an action is its ultimate effect on making the individual happy or unhappy (e) That it is wrong to deprive any man of life [Entries 'f' and 'g' are missing.] (h) I believe, furthermore, that an ideal state (besides ‘g’) should be a strong centralized one with government control of public utilities, banks, mines, + transportation and subsidy of the arts, a comfortable minimum wage, support of disabled and age[d]. State care of pregnant women with no distinction such as legitimate + illegitimate children.
Ideas |
Willard Quine, fully Willard Van Orman Quine
Uncritical semantics is the myth of a museum in which the exhibits are meanings and the words are labels. To switch languages is to change the labels.
Henry Miller, aka Henry Valentine Miller
My huge failure was like the recapitulation of the experience of the race: I had to grow foul with knowledge, realize the futility of everything, smash everything, grow desperate, then humble, then sponge myself off the slate, as it were, in order to recover my authenticity. I had to arrive at the brink and then take a leap in the dark.
Absolute | Adventure | Art | Beginning | Destiny | Emotions | Faith | Ideas | Important | Life | Life | Man | Order | Sense | Space | Story | Time | Art |
Invention depends altogether upon execution or organization; as that is right or wrong so is the invention perfect or imperfect.
Conscience | Ideas | Man |
I feel now if I think of it, it will come out in the painting. In other words, if I want to make the whole painting look like a bottle, like a lot of bottles - for instance maybe the end of the day, when everything is very light, but not in sunlight necessarily - and so if I have this image of this bottle and if I really think about it, it will come out in the painting. That doesn’t mean that people notice a bottle, but I know when I succeed in it – then the painting would have this.
I see the canvas and I begin... It's a necessary evil to get into the work, and it's pretty marvelous to be able to get out of it.
Wassily Kandinsky understood ‘form’ as a form, like an object in the real world; and a object, he said, was a narrative – and so, of course, he disapproved of it. He wanted ‘his music without words’. He wanted to be ‘simple as a child’. He intended, with his ‘inner-self’ to rid himself of ‘philosophical barricades’ (he sat down and wrote something about all this). But in turn his own writing has become a philosophical barricade, even it is a barricade full of holes. It offers a kind of Middle European idea of Buddhism or, anyhow, something too theosophical for me.
Age | Desire | Future | Happy | Ideas | Life | Life | Think |
If my resolution to be a great man was half so strong as it is to despise the shame of being a little one.
Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather
She had never known before how much the country meant to her. The chirping of the insects in the long grass had been like the sweetest music. She had felt as if her heart were hiding down there, somewhere, with the quail and the plover and all the little wild things that crooned or buzzed in the sun. Under the long shaggy ridges, she felt the future stirring.
Ideas |
Werner Heisenberg, fully Werner Karl Heisenberg
Any concepts or words which have been formed in the past through the interplay between the world and ourselves are not really sharply defined with respect to their meaning: that is to say, we do not know exactly how far they will help us in finding our way in the world. We often know that they can be applied to a wide range of inner or outer experience, but we practically never know precisely the limits of their applicability. This is true even of the simplest and most general concepts like existence and space and time. Therefore, it will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth. The concepts may, however, be sharply defined with regard to their connections... a group of connected concepts may be applicable to a wide field of experience and will help us to find our way in this field. But the limits of the applicability will in general not be known, at least not completely.
Ideas |