This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
In the heat of [social] movements brains are set stirring with new ideas which live on through quieter times, waiting for another opportunity to ignite into action and change the world around us.
It is not time or opportunity that is to determine intimacy; it is disposition alone. Seven years would be insufficient to make some people acquainted with each other, and seven days are mor than enough for others.
Enough | Opportunity | People | Time |
Every temptation is an opportunity of our getting nearer to God.
God | Opportunity | Temptation | Temptation |
Look underfoot. You are always nearer to the true sources of your power than you think. The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are. Don't despise your own place and hour. Every place is the center of the world.
Despise | Opportunity | Power |
Men lose their high aspirations as they lose their intellectual tastes, because they have not time or opportunity for indulging them; and they addict themselves to inferior pleasures, not because they deliberately prefer them, but because they are either the only ones to which they have access, or the only ones which they are any longer capable of enjoying. It may be questioned whether any one who has remained equally susceptible to both classes of pleasures, every knowingly and calmly preferred the lower; though many, in all ages, have broken down in an ineffectual attempt to combine both.
Men | Opportunity | Time |
Joseph Chilton Pearce, aka Joe
Each major stage of development offers a window of opportunity distinctly different from anything that has come before. The increase of intelligence at each stage of development is disproportionately greater than the increase exhibited in the previous stage, similar to the order of increase found in the Richter scale for measuring earthquakes.
Intelligence | Opportunity | Order |
Make haste slowly, and do not be slothful when opportunity beckons.
Haste | Opportunity |
Louis D. Brandeis, fully Louis Dembitz Brandeis
In the field of modern business, so rich in opportunity for the exercise of man's finest and most varied mental faculties and moral qualities, mere money-making cannot be regarded as the legitimate end... since with the conduct of business human happiness or misery is inextricably interwoven.
Business | Conduct | Man | Money | Opportunity | Qualities | Business | Happiness |
Louis D. Brandeis, fully Louis Dembitz Brandeis
No danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present, unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.
Danger | Discussion | Education | Evil | Falsehood | Opportunity | Present | Silence | Speech | Time | Danger |
M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
Learning from their children is the best opportunity most people have to assure themselves of meaningful old age.
Age | Children | Learning | Old age | Opportunity | People | Old |
Lou Holtz, fully Louis Leo "Lou" Holtz
The greatest power God gave us is the power to choose. We have the opportunity to choose whether we’re going to act or procrastinate, believe or doubt, pray or curse, help or heal. We also choose whether we’re going to be happy or whether we’re going to be sad.
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
Without doubt, the highest privilege of wealth is the opportunity it affords for doing good, without giving up one’s fortune.
Doubt | Fortune | Giving | Good | Opportunity | Wealth | Privilege |
Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
Opportunities do not come with their values stamped upon them. Every one must be challenged. A day dawns, quite like other days; in it a single hour comes, quite like other hours; but in that day and in that hour the chance of a lifetime faces us. To face every opportunity of life thoughtfully and ask its meaning bravely and earnestly, is the only way to meet the supreme opportunities when they come, whether open-faced or disguised.
No one is born with good character. It's not hereditary. Yet everyone, regardless of background, enters the world with the opportunity to become a person of exemplary character.
Character | Good | Opportunity | World |
Noam Chomsky, fully Avram Noam Chomsky
More democratic societies, including the United States, instituted measures to impose discipline on the domestic population and to institute unpopular measures under the guise of "combating terror," exploiting the atmosphere of fear and the demand for "patriotism" - which in practice means: "You shut up and I'll pursue my own agenda relentlessly." The Bush administration used the opportunity to advance its assault against most of the population, and future generations, in service to the narrow corporate interests that dominate the administration to an extent even beyond the norm.
Administration | Discipline | Fear | Future | Means | Opportunity | Patriotism | Practice | Service | Terror |
Whatever disagreement there may be as to the scope of the phrase "due process of law" there can be no doubt that it embraces the fundamental conception of a fair trial, with opportunity to be heard.
Disagreement | Doubt | Man | Mind | Opportunity |
Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God's handwriting - a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in ever fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.
Beauty | God | Opportunity | Beauty | God |