This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and often, paradoxically, it is literature that suffers for it.
Spirit |
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
The hatred is no less fickle than friendship.
Achievement | Spirit |
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
The excuse usually those who are the misfortune of others is that they want their property.
The publicly and privately supported colleges, universities, and research institutes are the centers of basic research. They are the wellsprings of knowledge and understanding. As long as they are vigorous and healthy and their scientists are free to pursue the truth wherever it may lead, there will be a flow of new scientific knowledge to those who can apply it to practical problems in Government, in industry, or elsewhere.
Better | Individual | Progress | Science | Security | Spirit |
Two centuries ago Leibnitz invented a calculating machine which embodied most of the essential features of recent keyboard devices, but it could not then come into use. The economics of the situation were against it: the labor involved in constructing it, before the days of mass production, exceeded the labor to be saved by its use, since all it could accomplish could be duplicated by sufficient use of pencil and paper. Moreover, it would have been subject to frequent breakdown, so that it could not have been depended upon; for at that time and long after, complexity and unreliability were synonymous.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
There does not exist a man sufficiently intelligent never to be tiresome.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
Neither the gifts nor the blows of fortune equal those of nature.
Thomas J. Watson, fully Thomas John Watson, Sr.
Really big people are, above everything else, courteous, considerate and generous - not just to some people in some circumstances - but to everyone all the time.
Organization | Progress | Spirit |
It seems unspeakably important that all persons among us, and especially the student and the writer, should be pervaded with Americanism. Americanism includes the faith that national self-government is not a chimera, but that, with whatever inconsistencies and drawbacks, we are steadily establishing it here. It includes the faith that to this good thing all other good things must in time be added. When a man is heartily imbued with such a national sentiment as this, it is as marrow in his bones and blood in his veins. He may still need culture, but he has the basis of all culture. He is entitled to an imperturbable patience and hopefulness, born of a living faith. All that is scanty in our intellectual attainments, or poor in our artistic life, may then be cheerfully endured: if a man sees his house steadily rising on sure foundations, he can wait or let his children wait for the cornice and the frieze. But if one happens to be born or bred in America without this wholesome confidence, there is no happiness for him; he has his alternative between being unhappy at home and unhappy abroad; it is a choice of martyrdoms for himself, and a certainty of martyrdom for his friends.
Affectation | Change | Choice | Enough | Literature | Little | Memory | Spirit | Wonder | Work | Poem |
Thomas J. Watson, fully Thomas John Watson, Sr.
Sin hath the devil for its father, shame for its companion, and death for its wages
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
But the right is more precious than peace, and we shall fight for the things which we have always carried nearest our hearts--for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own Governments, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.
Spirit |
Thomas J. Watson, Jr., fully Thomas John Watson, Jr.
Real character emerges in the way we meet our routine, everyday obligations.
Organization | Progress | Spirit |
Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus
It cannot be true, therefore, that among animals some of the offspring will possess the desirable qualities of the parents in greater degree, or that animals are indefinitely perfectible.
Philosophy | Spirit |
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
A man who thinks of himself as belonging to a particular national group in America has not yet become an American. And the man who goes among you to trade upon your nationality is no worthy son to live under the Stars and Stripes.
Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
The condition of leadership adds new degrees of solitariness to the basic solitude of mankind. Every order that we issue increases the extent to which we are alone, and every show of deference which is extended to us separates us from our fellows.
Our form of government does not enter into rivalry with the institutions of others. We do not copy our neighbors, but are an example to them. It is true that we are called a democracy, for the administration is in the hands of the many and not of the few. But while the law secures equal justice to all alike in their private disputes, the claim of excellence is also recognized; and when a citizen is in any way distinguished, he is preferred to the public service, not as a matter of privilege, but as the reward of merit. Neither is poverty a bar, but a man may benefit his country whatever be the obscurity of his condition.
Control | Excellence | Justice | Opinion | Play | Public | Reason | Restraint | Spirit | Excellence | Talent |
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
Nothing was ever done so systematically as nothing is being done now.
Art | Literature | Man | Obligation | Right | Sense | Spirit | Study | Will | Instruction | Art | Leadership |