This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Hal Borland, formally Harold Glen Borland
For all his learning or sophistication, man is still instinctively reaching toward that force beyond. Only arrogance can deny its existence and the denial falters in the face of evidence on every hand. In every tuft of grass, in every bird, in every opening bud, there it is.
Arrogance | Evidence | Existence | Force | Learning | Man | Wisdom |
War, like other situations of danger and of change, calls for the exertion of admirable intellectual qualities and great virtues, and it is only by dwelling on these, and keeping out of sight the sufferings and sorrows, and all the crimes and evils that follow in its train, that it has its glory in the eyes of man.
Change | Danger | Glory | Man | Qualities | War | Wisdom | Danger |
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
Style supposes the reunion and the exercise of all the intellectual faculties. The style is the man.
Brander Matthews, fully James Brander Matthews
The worst effect of party is its tendency to generate narrow, false, and illiberal prejudices, by teaching the adherents of one party to regard those that belong to an opposing party as unworthy of confidence.
Confidence | Regard | Wisdom |
I call that mind free which jealously guards its intellectual rights and powers, which calls no man master, which does not content itself with a passive or hereditary faith, and receives new truth as an angel for Heaven.
The most effective teacher will always be biased, for the chief force in teaching is confidence and enthusiasm.
Confidence | Enthusiasm | Force | Will | Wisdom | Teacher |
All that man does outwardly is but the expression and completion of his inward thought. To work effectually, he must think clearly; to act nobly, he must think nobly. Intellectual force is a principal element of the soul's life, and should be proposed by every man as the principal end of his being.
Force | Life | Life | Man | Soul | Thought | Wisdom | Work | Think |
The teaching of any science, for purposes of liberal education, without linking it with social progress and teaching its social significance, is a crime against the student mind. It is like teaching a child how to pronounce words but now what they mean.
Crime | Education | Mind | Progress | Science | Wisdom | Words | Child |
Philosophy abounds more than philosophers, and learning more than learned men.
Learning | Men | Philosophy | Wisdom |
Calvin Coolidge, fully John Calvin Coolidge, Jr.
We do not need more intellectual power; we need more spiritual power. We do not need more of the things that are seen, we need more of the things that are unseen.
Genuine ignorance is... profitable because it is likely to be accompanied by humility, curiosity, and open-mindedness; whereas ability to repeat catch-phrases, cant terms, familiar propositions, gives the conceit of learning and coats the mind with varnish water-proof to new ideas.
Ability | Curiosity | Humility | Ideas | Ignorance | Learning | Mind | Wisdom |
People sometimes refer to higher education as the higher learning, but colleges and universities are much more than the knowledge factories; they are testaments to man's perennial struggle to make a better world for himself, his children, and his children's children. This, indeed, is their sovereign purpose. They are great fortifications against ignorance and irrationality; but they are more than places of higher learning - they are centers and symbols of man's higher yearning.
Better | Children | Education | Ignorance | Knowledge | Learning | Man | People | Purpose | Purpose | Struggle | Wisdom | World |
The teaching profession is the only profession that has no definition for malpractice.
Wisdom |
Be sure to find a place for intellectual and cultural interests outside your daily occupation. It is necessary that you do so if this business of living is not to turn to dust and ashes in your mouth. Moreover, do not overlook the claims of religion as the explanation of an otherwise unintelligible world. It is not the fast tempo of modern life that kills but the boredom, a lack of strong interest and failure to grow that destroy. It is the feeling that nothing is worth while that makes men ill and unhappy.
Business | Destroy | Failure | Life | Life | Men | Nothing | Occupation | Religion | Wisdom | World | Worth | Failure | Business |