This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Tom Lehrer, fully Thomas Andrew Lehrer
One of the problems I see with these comics on television, particularly cable television, is, since you can say anything in terms of sex and scatological references and so on, therefore, you should do it. So they all limit themselves to these subjects and this vocabulary. My objection is that it is a lack of articulateness ... Irreverence is easy, but what is hard is wit. Wit is what these comedians lack.
Sense |
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
Communism was a great system for making people equally poor - in fact, there was no better system in the world for that than communism. Capitalism made people unequally rich.
Effort | Government | Public | Sense | Will | Worth | Government | Think |
Thomas R. Kelly, fully Thomas Raymond Kelly
The last fruit of holy obedience is the simplicity of the trusting child, the simplicity of the children of God. It is the simplicity which lies beyond complexity. It is the naiveté which is the yonder side of sophistication. It is the beginning of spiritual maturity, which comes after the awkward age of religious busy-ness for the Kingdom of God—yet how many are caught, and arrested in development, within this adolescent development of the soul's growth! The mark of this simplified life is radiant joy. It lives in the Fellowship of the Transfigured Face. Knowing sorrow to the depths it does not agonize and fret and strain, but in serene, unhurried calm it walks in time with the joy and assurance of Eternity. Knowing fully the complexity of men's problems it cuts through to the Love of God and ever cleaves to Him. Like the mercy of Shakespeare, "'tis mightiest in the mightiest." But it binds all obedient souls together in the fellowship of humility and simple adoration of Him who is all in all.
Absolute | God | Humility | Nothing | Obedience | Order | Passion | Sense | Soul | Wonder | God |
To be really cosmopolitan a man must be at home even in his own country.
Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
All that we know about those we have loved and lost is that they would wish us to remember them with a more intensified realization of their reality. What is essential does not die but clarifies. The highest tribute to the dead is not grief but gratitude.
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
Nothing was ever done so systematically as nothing is being done now.
Art | Literature | Man | Obligation | Right | Sense | Spirit | Study | Will | Instruction | Art | Leadership |
Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
Nature reserves the right to inflict upon her children the most terrifying jests.
Action | Confidence | Fear | Life | Life | Obligation | Security | Sense | Spirit | Time |
The Thracian people, like the bloodiest of the barbarians, being ever most murderous when it has nothing to fear.
Contemplation | Sense | Contemplation |
Thorstein Veblen, fully Thorstein Bunde Veblen, born Torsten Bunde Veblen
The visible imperfections of hand-wrought goods, being honorific, are accounted marks of superiority in point of beauty, or serviceability, or both.
Contemplation | Sense | Contemplation |
Thorstein Veblen, fully Thorstein Bunde Veblen, born Torsten Bunde Veblen
Born in iniquity and conceived in sin, the spirit of nationalism has never ceased to bend human institutions to the service of dissension and distress
Sense |
We can always stick together when we are losing, but tend to find means of breaking up when we're winning.
It is not easy to describe in words the precise impression which great and sublime objects make upon us when we behold them; but every one has a conception of it. It produces a sort of internal elevation and expansion; it raises the mind much above its ordinary state, and fills it with a degree of wonder and astonishment which it cannot well express. The emotion is certainly delightful, but it is altogether of the serious kind; a degree of awfulness and solemnity, even approaching to severity, commonly attends it when at its height, very distinguishable from the more gay and brisk emotion raised by beautiful objects.
Timothy Leary, fully Timothy Francis Leary
Think for yourself, question authority.
Consciousness | Events | Sense |
Todd Rundgren, fully Todd Harry Rundgren
There are still people who believe in that and wake up every day believing it's possible, and invest their whole selves in that.
Dishonesty | Existence | Order | Sense |