This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Maureen Dowd, fully Maureen Bridgid Dowd
Wooing the press is an exercise roughly akin to picnicking with a tiger. You might enjoy the meal, but the tiger always eats last.
Max Planck, fully Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck
Religion represents a bond (Bindung) of man to god. It consists in reverent aw of supernatural might (Macht), to which human life is subordinated [?] and which has in its power (Gewalt) our wellfare and misery (Wohl und Wehe). To remain in permanent contact with this might and keep it all the time inclined to oneself, is the unending effort and the highest goal of believing man. Because only [?] in such a way can one feel himself safe before expected and unexpected dangers, which threaten one in his life, and can take part in the highest happiness – inner psychical peace – which can be attained only [?] by means of strong bond to god and unconditional trust to his omnipotence and willingness to help. As far as here the religion originates in the consciousness of individual man.
Consciousness | Effort | God | Individual | Life | Life | Man | Means | Omnipotence | Peace | Power | Religion | Safe | Time | Trust | God | Happiness |
Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani
Trust God completely and He will solve all your difficulties. Faithfully leave everything to Him and He will see to everything. Love God sincerely and He will reveal Himself to you. I am never silent. I speak eternally. The voice that is heard deep within the soul is My voice...the voice of inspiration, of intuition, of guidance. To those who are receptive to this voice, I speak. Everything is Mine except for Myself; Myself is for those who love Me. I am the Ancient One, The Highest of the High. Love Me; Love Me; Love Me; and you will find Me. This is Truth but intellect cannot grasp it, wisdom cannot weigh it, space cannot hold it, time cannot check it, angels cannot fathom it, but human beings can realize it through love, the Divine Love, the Love for the Almighty, except whom, nothing is. If you have rock-like faith in God and flame-like love for Him, nothing in this world will affect you. Misery will not trouble you, flattery will not touch you, happiness will not humour you. Such faith and love will cause you to rise above the imaginary phenomenon and make you understand that God alone is real. Trust God completely and He will solve all your difficulties. Faithfully leave everything to Him and He will see to everything. Love God sincerely and He will reveal Himself to you. This love needs no ceremonies and show. Your heart must love so that even your mind is not aware of it. Let nothing shake your faith in Me, and all your bindings will be shaken off. Once you open your wings to fly, you must fly straight like the swan. Do not flit from tree to tree like the sparrow, or many things will distract you.
Cause | Faith | Flattery | God | Heart | Love | Mind | Nothing | Soul | Space | Time | Truth | Will | Trouble | God | Happiness | Intellect | Understand |
Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
What all other men are is of the greatest importance to me. However independent I may imagine myself to be, however far removed I may appear from mundane considerations by my social status, I am enslaved to the misery of the meanest member of society. The outcast is my daily menace. Whether I am Pope, Czar, Emperor, or even Prime Minister, I am always the creature of their circumstance, the conscious product of their ignorance, want and clamoring. They are in slavery, and I, the superior one, am enslaved in consequence.
Men |
Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman
The great advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science or literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government. Columbus did not set out to seek a new route to China in response to a majority directive of a parliament, though he was partly financed by an absolute monarch. Newton and Liebnitz; Einstein and Bohr; Shakespeare, Milton, and Pasternak; Whitney, McCormick, Edison, and Ford; Jane Addams, Florence Nightingale, and Albert Scweitzer; no one of these opened new frontiers in human knowledge and understanding, in literature, in technical possibilities, or in the relief of human misery in response to governmental directives. Their achievements were the product of individual genius, of strongly held minority views, of a social climate permitting variety and diversity.
Absolute | Individual | Industry | Knowledge | Majority | Science |
Acquire knowledge. It enableth its posessor to distinguish right from wrong it lighteth the way to Heave it is our friend in the desert, our society in solitude, our companion when friendless it guideth us to happiness it sustaineth us in misery it is an ornament among friends, and an armour against enemies.
Distinguish | Friend | Right | Society | Wrong | Society | Happiness |
Morrie Schwartz, fully Morris "Morrie" S. Schwartz
All this emphasis on youth - I don’t buy it. Listen, I know what a misery being young can be, so don’t tell me it’s so great. All these kids who came to me with their struggles, their strife, their feelings of inadequacy, their sense that life was miserable, so bad they wanted to kill themselves... and in addition to all the miseries, the young are not wise. They have very little understanding about life. Who wants to live everyday when you don’t know what’s going on? When people are manipulating you, telling you to buy this perfume and you’ll be beautiful, or this pair of jeans and you’ll be sexy - and you believe them! It’s such nonsense.
Feelings | Kill | Life | Life | Little | People | Sense | Understanding | Wants | Youth | Youth |
Nāgārjuna, fully Acharya Nāgārjuna NULL
There is no ornament like virtue, there is no misery like worry, there is no protection like patience, there is no friend equal to generosity.
Friend |
You may be hurt if you love too much, but you will live in misery if you love too little.
Remember, no more effort is required to aim high in life, to demand abundance and prosperity, than is required to accept misery and poverty.
Press on! for in the grave there is no work and no device. Press on! while yet you may.
Newt Gingrich, fully Newton Leroy "Newt" Gingrich, born Newton Leroy McPherson
You have to give the press confrontations. When you give them confrontations, you get attention; when you get attention, you can educate.
Nikita Krushchev, fully Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev
The press is our chief ideological weapon.
Oswald Spengler, fully Oswald Manuel Arnold Gottfried Spengler
The press today is an army with carefully organized weapons, the journalists its officers, the readers its soldiers. But, as in every army, the soldier obeys blindly, and the war aims and operating plans change without his knowledge. The reader neither knows nor is supposed to know the purposes for which he is used and the role he is to play. There is no more appalling caricature of freedom of thought. Formerly no one was allowed to think freely; now it is permitted, but no one is capable of it any more. Now people want to think only what they are supposed to want to think, and this they consider freedom.
Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
The root cause of misery is fear: we are too afraid of the unknown. We remain confined in the known, and because we remain confined in the known, life becomes a repetition, a circle; one goes on moving in the same circle again and again and again. Because of this continuous, repetitive, routine life, one feels misery, boredom, futility.
Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
If you live consciously, if you try to bring consciousness to every act that you go through, you will be living in a silent, blissful state, in serenity, in joy, in love. Your life will have the flavour of a festival. That is the meaning of heaven: your life will have many flowers in it, much fragrance will be released through you. You will have an aura of delight. Your life will be a song of life-affirmation, it will be a sacred yes to all that existence is. You will be in communion with existence — in communion with stars, with the trees, with the rivers, with the mountains, with people, with animals. This whole life and this whole existence will have a totally different meaning for you. From every nook and corner, rivers of bliss will be flowing towards you. Heaven is just a name for that state of mind. Hell means you are living so unconsciously, so absurdly, in such contradiction, that you go on creating more and more misery for yourself.
Consciousness | Existence | Heaven | Hell | Life | Life | Meaning | Means | Sacred | Will |
Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
Life has not to be taken as a problem; it is not. It has to be taken as a gift, a tremendously valuable gift from God. Life has not to be taken as a burden but as a dance. One need not drag oneself. We can dance the whole way, we can laugh the whole way, and we can love the whole way. Life is meant to be a miracle, but it depends: if we choose misery, life becomes misery. Life is very obliging: if you choose misery it becomes misery, if you choose darkness it becomes darkness. It is so obliging, whatsoever you choose it becomes that for you. If you choose bliss it becomes bliss, if you choose God it becomes God. It depends on you. People go on choosing wrong things, and then they make life responsible. In fact they are responsible: whatsoever happens, happens because they have willed it so. Knowingly, unknowingly, consciously, unconsciously, they have willed it so. It happens only when somehow, somewhere, in your being, you have willed it
Otto von Bismarck, Otto Eduard Leopold, Prince of Bismarck, Duke of Lauenburg
Numerous politicians have seized absolute power and muzzled the press. Never in history has the press seized absolute power and muzzled the politicians.
What a sad fate for a painter who loves blondes, but who refrains from putting them in his picture because they don’t go with the basket of fruit! What misery for a painter who hates apples to be obliged to use them all the time because they go with the cloth! I put everything I love in my pictures. So much the worse for the things, they have only to arrange themselves with one another.
When I was a child, I often used to lie awake at night, in fearful anticipation of some unpleasant event the following day, such as a visit to the dentist, and wish I could press some sort of button that would have the effect of instantly transporting me twenty-four hours into the future. The following night, I would wonder whether that magic button was in fact real, and that the trick had indeed worked. After all, it was twenty-four hours later, and though I could remember the visit to the dentist, it was, at that time, only a memory of an experience, not an experience.
Anticipation | Magic | Memory | Wonder | Following |