This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
To think better, to think like the best humans, we are probably going to have to learn again to judge a person's intelligence, not by the ability to recite facts, but by the good order or harmoniousness of his or her surroundings. We must suspect that any statistical justification of ugliness and violence is a revelation of stupidity.
Beginning | Family | Global | Good | Knowledge | Patience | People | Politics | Principles |
W. C. Fields, stage name for William Claude Dukenfield
All women are crazy, it’s only a question of degree.
The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
Age | Art | Beauty | Consciousness | Culture | Elegance | Evidence | Excitement | Failure | Family | Good | Hate | Health | Life | Life | Loneliness | Marriage | Past | People | Politics | Recreation | Reward | Science | Self | Talking | Time | Work | World | Failure | Loss | Art | Beauty |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
To carry on a war for the overthrow of the international bourgeoisie, a war which is a hundred times more difficult, protracted and complex than the most stubborn of ordinary wars between states, and to renounce in advance any change of tack, or any utilization of a conflict of interests (even if temporary) among one’s enemies, or any conciliation or compromise with possible allies (even if they are temporary, unstable, vacillating, or conditional allies)—is that not ridiculous in the extreme?”
Equality | Family | Ideas | Principles | Struggle | Weapons | World |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Just like a man grieving because he has recently lost in his dreams some thing that he had never had in reality, or hoping that tomorrow he would dream that he found it again. That is how mathematics is created; it has its fatal flaw.
Character | Conscience | Emotions | Family | History | Individual | Magic | Mind | Work | World |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
My God died young. Theolatry I found degrading, and its premises, unsound. No free man needs God; but was I free?
Family |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
The day, like the previous days, dragged sluggishly by in a kind of insipid idleness, devoid even of that dreamy expectancy which can make idleness so enchanting.
Family |
Vince Lombardi, fully Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi
People who work together will win, whether it be against complex football defenses, or the problems of modern society.
Orderliness - One doesn't have to begin to learn how to be silent, but one has to begin with learning to function in an orderly, clear, unconfused way. Every cerebral movement has to be clear, precise and accurate. Accuracy, precision, is the breath of orderliness. So I learn to be precise and accurate. And in learning to be precise and accurate I learn to be totally present with everything that I do.
Bravery | Faith | Family | Fear | Man | Religion | Understanding |
Vince Lombardi, fully Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi
The quality of each man's life is the full measure of that man's personal commitment to excellence and to victory.
Family | Life | Life | Philosophy |
Rearing a family is probably the most difficult job in the world. It resembles two business firms merging their respective resources to make a single product. All the potential headaches of that operation are present when an adult male and an adult female join to steer a child from infancy to adulthood.
Adolescents are not monsters. They are just people trying to learn how to make it among the adults in the world, who are probably not so sure themselves.
Body | Family | Observation |
It's sad that children cannot know their parents when they were younger; when they were loving, courting, and being nice to one another. By the time children are old enough to observe, the romance has all too often faded or gone underground.
Change | Family | Study | World | Understand |
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Men felt a chill in their hearts; a damp in their minds. In a desperate effort to snuggle their feelings into some sort of warmth, one subterfuge was tried after another … sentences swelled, adjectives multiplied, lyrics became epics.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
Needless to say, the business of living interferes with the solitude so needed for any work of the imagination. Here's what Virginia Woolf said in her diary about the sticky issue: I've shirked two parties, and another Frenchman, and buying a hat, and tea with Hilda Trevelyan, for I really can't combine all this with keeping all my imaginary people going.
Deeds | Ends | Family | Land | Lying | Man | Memory | Need | Work | Deeds |