This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
That industry is in a state of flux right now. It's historically earned very good returns on invested capital, but it could well be that the world will unfold differently in the future than in the past. I'm not sure I can give you a good answer on that.
Wang Yang-Ming or Yangming, aka Wang Shouren or Wang Shou-jen, courtesy name Bo'an
The Taoist talk about vacuity is motivated by a desire for nourishing everlasting life, and the Buddhist talk about non-being is motivated by the desire to escape from the sorrowful sea of life and death. In both cases, a certain selfish idea has been added to the original substance [of the mind], thereby losing the true character of vacuity and obstructing the original substance [of the mind]. The Confucian sage merely returns to the true condition of innate knowledge of the good and does not attach to it any selfish desire.
Warren Bennis, fully Warren Gamaliel Bennis
What makes a good follower? The single most important characteristic may well be a willingness to tell the truth. In a world of growing complexity leaders are increasingly dependent on their subordinates for good information, whether the leaders want to hear it or not. Followers who tell the truth and leaders who listen to it are an unbeatable combination.
Ability | Knowledge | Means | Society | Understanding | Society |
Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
It’s better to hang out with people better than you. Pick out associates whose behavior is better than yours and you’ll drift in that direction.
Ability |
The forests had put on their sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tenderer kind had been nipped by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet. Streaming files of wild ducks began to make their appearance high in the air; the back of the squirrel might be heard from the groves of beech and hickory-nuts, and the pensive whistle of the quail at intervals from the neighboring stubble field. The small birds were taking their farewell banquets. In the fullness of their revelry, they fluttered, chirping and frolicking from bush to bush, and tree to tree, capricious from the very profusion and variety around them. There was the honest cock robin, the favorite game of stripling sportsmen, with its loud querulous note; and the twittering blackbirds flying in sable clouds; and the golden-winged woodpecker with his crimson crest, his broad black gorget, and splendid plumage; and the cedar bird, with its red-tipt wings and yellow-tipt tail and its little monteiro cap of feathers; and the blue jay, that nosy coxcomb, in his gay light blue coat and white underclothes, screaming and chattering, nodding and bobbing and bowing, and pretending to be on good terms with every songster of the grove.
Ability |
Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
Anything that has been accomplished by any other human being in the physical realm is within the field of possibility.
Sabbath requires surrender. If we only stop when we are finished with all our work, we will never stop, because our work is never completely done. With every accomplishment there arises a new responsibility... Sabbath dissolves the artificial urgency of our days, because it liberates us from the need to be finished.
Even in the middle of a hurricane, the bottom of the sea is calm. As the storm rages and the winds howl, the deep waters sway in gentle rhythm, a light movement of fish and plant life. Below there is no storm.
Ability | Courage | Equanimity | Experience | Feelings | Strength | Learn |
Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
Transformation literally means going beyond your form.
Ability |
Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
The activity of worrying keeps you immobilized.
Ability | Honor | Humanity | Intention | Relationship | World |
Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
The fact that you are willing to say, "I do not understand, and it is fine," is the greatest understanding you could exhibit.
Ability | Circumstances | Fulfillment | Greatness |
If we are looking for insurance against want and oppression, we will find it only in our neighbors' prosperity and goodwill and, beyond that, in the good health of our worldly places, our homelands. If we were sincerely looking for a place of safety, for real security and success, then we would begin to turn to our communities - and not the communities simply of our human neighbors but also of the water, earth, and air, the plants and animals, all the creatures with whom our local life is shared.
Ability | Beauty | Change | Freedom | Health | Mistrust | Oppression | Order | War | Will | Beauty | Think | Understand |
The care of the earth is our most ancient and most worthy and, after all, our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it, and to foster its renewal, is our only legitimate hope.
Ability | Abundance | Defeat | Desire | Evidence | Hope | Ignorance | Knowledge | Problems | Revelation | World |
In Port William, more than anyplace else I had been, this religion that scorned the beauty and goodness of this world was a puzzle to me. To begin with, I don’t think anybody believed it. I still don’t think so. Those world-condemning sermons were preached to people who, on Sunday mornings, would be wearing their prettiest clothes. Even the old widows in their dark dresses would be pleasing to look at. By dressing up on the one day when most of them had leisure to do it, they had signified their wish to present themselves to one another and to Heaven looking their best. The people who heard those sermons loved good crops, good gardens, good livestock and work animals and dogs; they loved flowers and the shade of trees, and laughter and music; some of them could make you a fair speech on the pleasures of a good drink of water or a patch of wild raspberries. While the wickedness of the flesh was preached from the pulpit, the young husbands and wives and the courting couples sat thigh to thigh, full of yearning and joy, and the old people thought of the beauty of the children. And when church was over they would go home to Heavenly dinners of fried chicken, it might be, and creamed new potatoes and hot biscuits and butter and cherry pie and sweet milk and buttermilk. And the preacher and his family would always be invited to eat with somebody and they would always go, and the preacher, having just foresworn on behalf of everybody the joys of the flesh, would eat with unconsecrated relish.
Ability | Imagination | Inevitable | Necessity | Order | Understanding |
A proper community, we should remember also, is a commonwealth: a place, a resource, an economy. It answers the needs, practical as well as social and spiritual, of its members - among them the need to need one another. The answer to the present alignment of political power with wealth is the restoration of the identity of community and economy.
Ability | Change | Exploit | Mind | Mistrust | Will | Wrong | Understand |