This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney
I first saw the site for Disneyland back in 1953. In those days it was all flat land - no rivers, no mountains, no castles or rocketships - just orange groves, and a few acres of walnut trees.
Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers
Political freedom is a political reading of the Bible.
Agony | Man | Money | Revolution | Vision |
Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers
Yet, so strong is the hold which the insidious evil of Communism secures upon its disciples, that I could still say to someone at that time: I know that I am leaving the winning side for the losing side, but it is better to die on the losing side than to live under Communism.
Daughter | Experience | Father | Logic | Myth | Question | Reason | Soul | Vision | Will | Child |
It is though we had wanted to add to the already existing proofs of God's Existence, a new and finally convincing one: the universal destruction that follows on assuming God's non-existence.
Lending | Personality | Race | Unity | Vision |
Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers
The dying world of 1925 was without faith, hope, character, understanding of its malady or will to overcome it. It was dying but it laughed. And this laughter was not the defiance of a vigor that refuses to know when it is whipped. It was the loss, by the mind of a whole civilization, of the power to distinguish between reality and unreality, because, ultimately, though I did not know it, it had lost the power to distinguish between good and evil.… The dying world had no answer at all to the crisis of the 20th century, and, when it was mentioned, and every moral voice in the Western world was shrilling crisis, it cocked an ear of complacent deafness and smiled a smile of blank senility—throughout history, the smile of those for whom the executioner waits.
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
I have just this moment heard from the front — there is nothing yet of a movement, but each side is continually on the alert, expecting something to happen.
Age | Beginning | Heaven | Hell | Perfection | Will | Youth | Youth |
Any man or woman who neglects to maintain inward vigilance, and only makes an outward show of holiness in dress, speech, and behavior, is a wretched creature. For they watch the doings of other people and criticize their faults, imagining themselves to be something when in reality they are nothing. In this way they deceive themselves. Be careful to avoid this, and devote yourself inwardly to His likeness by humility, charity, and other spiritual virtues. In this way you will be truly converted to God.
Advice | God | Heart | Life | Life | Love | Sin | Vision | Will | God | Obstacle |
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
There's a man in the world who is never turned down, wherever he chances to stray; he gets the glad hand in the populous town, or out where the farmers make hay; he's greeted with pleasure on deserts of sand, and deep in the aisles of the woods; wherever he goes there's a welcoming hand-he's the man who delivers the goods.
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
You must not know too much or be too precise or scientific about birds and trees and flowers and watercraft; a certain free-margin, and even vagueness - ignorance, credulity - helps your enjoyment of these things.
Love | Perfection | Receive | Sense |
The prophet is called to be a child of the tradition, one who has taken it seriously in the shaping of his or her own field of perception and system of language, who is so at home in that memory that the points of contact and incongruity with the situation of the church in culture can be discerned and articulated with proper urgency.
Culture | Future | Imagination | Vision |
Absence and death are the same -- only that in death there is no suffering.
Walter J. Ong, fully Walter Jackson Ong
In the printed book, these vague psychic "places" became quite physically and visibly localized. A new noetic world was shaping up, spatially organized. In this new world, the book was less like an utterance, and more like a thing.
Knowledge | Method | Observation | Thought | World | Thought |
Warren Bennis, fully Warren Gamaliel Bennis
We have more information now than we can use, and less knowledge and understanding than we need. Indeed, we seem to collect information because we have the ability to do so, but we are so busy collecting it that we haven't devised a means of using it. The true measure of any society is not what it knows but what it does with what it knows.
Capacity | Purpose | Purpose | Vision | Leadership |
Warren Bennis, fully Warren Gamaliel Bennis
I am reminded how hollow the label of leadership sometimes is and how heroic followership can be.
Style | Universe | Vision | Leader | Leadership |
Warren Bennis, fully Warren Gamaliel Bennis
Leadership is the wise use of power. Power is the capacity to translate intention into reality and sustain it.
Warren Bennis, fully Warren Gamaliel Bennis
Effective leaders allow great people to do the work they were born to do.
Mahomet now proceeded to execute the great object of his religious aspirations, the purifying of the sacred edifice from the symbols of idolatry, with which it was crowded. All the idols in and about it, to the number of three hundred and sixty, were thrown down and destroyed. Among these, the most renowned was Hobal, an idol brought from Balka, in Syria, and fabled to have the power of granting rain. It was, of course, a great object of worship among the inhabitants of the thirsty desert. There were statues of Abraham and Ishmael also, represented with divining arrows in their hands ; an outrage on their memories, said Mahomet, being symbols of a diabolical art which they had never practiced. In reverence of their memories, therefore, these statues were demolished. There were paintings, also, depicting angels in the guise of beautiful women. The angels, said Mahomet, indignantly, are no such beings. There are celestial hour is provided in paradise for the solace of true believers ; but angels are ministering spirits of the Most High, and of too pure a nature to admit of sex. The paintings were accordingly obliterated. Even a dove, curiously carved of wood, he broke with his own hands, and cast upon the ground, as savoring of idolatry.
Better | Chastity | Day | Devotion | Giving | God | Gratitude | Life | Life | Tenderness | Wife | God |