This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Religion, in short, is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.
Religion is a monumental chapter in the history of human egotism.
Elizabeth Janeway, born Elizabeth Ames Hall
If every nation gets the government it deserves every generation writes the history which corresponds with its view of the world.
Government | History | Wisdom | World | Government |
The march of Providence is so slow and our desires to impatient; the work of progress is so immense and our mean of aiding it so feeble; the life of humanity is so long, that of the individual so brief, that we often see only the ebb of the advancing ways, and are thus discouraged. It is history that teaches us to hope.
History | Hope | Humanity | Individual | Life | Life | Progress | Providence | Wisdom | Work |
Many of the ugly pages of American history have been obscured and forgotten... America owes a debt of justice which it has only begun to pay. If it loses the will to finish or slackens in its determination, history will recall its crimes and the country that would be great will lack the most indispensable element of greatness - justice.
Debt | Determination | Greatness | History | Indispensable | Justice | Ugly | Will | Wisdom |
John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes of Tilton
A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind. I do not know which makes man more conservative - to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past.
History | Man | Mind | Nothing | Opinion | Past | Present | Study | Wisdom |
Nikolai Lenin, aka Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, born Vladimir llyich Ulyanov
Even if for every hundred correct things we did we committed ten thousand mistakes, our revolution would still be - and it will be in the judgment of history - great and invincible; for this is the first time that not a minority, not the rich alone, not the educated alone, but the real masses, the overwhelming majority of the working people are themselves building a new life and are by their own experience solving the most difficult problems of socialist organization.
Experience | History | Judgment | Life | Life | Majority | Organization | People | Problems | Revolution | Time | Will | Wisdom |
Philosophy of science without history of science is empty; history of science without philosophy of science is blind.
History | Philosophy | Science | Wisdom |
The quality of civilization depends on a balance of body, mind and spirit in its people, measured on a scale less human than divine... To survive, we must keep this balance. To progress, we must improve it. Science is upsetting it with an overemphasis of mind and a neglect of spirit and body.
Balance | Body | Civilization | Mind | Neglect | People | Progress | Science | Spirit | Wisdom |
The great question is: can war be outlawed? If so, it would mark the greatest advance in civilization since the Sermon on the Mount.
Civilization | Question | War | Wisdom |
At each epoch of history the world was in a hopeless state, and at each epoch of history the world muddled through; at each epoch the world was lost, and at each epoch it was saved.
Newton Minow, fully Newton Norman Minow
Ours has been called the jet age, the atomic age, the space age. It is also, I submit, the television age. And just as history will decide whether the leaders of today’s world employed the atom to destroy the world or rebuild it for mankind’s benefit, so will history decide whether today’s broadcasters employed their powerful voice to enrich the people or debase them.
Age | Destroy | History | Mankind | People | Space | Television | Will | Wisdom | World |
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, aka "Pat"
Liberty and Equality are the twin ideals of American democracy. But they are not the same thing... Many person who would gladly die for liberty are appalled by equality. Many who are devoted to equality are puzzled and even troubled by liberty. Much of the political history of the American nation can be seen as a competition between these two ideals.
Competition | Democracy | Equality | History | Ideals | Liberty | Wisdom |
America was discovered accidentally by a great seaman who was looking for something else; when discovered it was not wanted; and most of the exploration for the next fifty years was done in the hope of getting through or around it. America was named after a man who discovered no part of the New World. History is like that, very chancy.