This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
As a nation, we are too young to have true mythic heroes, and we must press real human beings into service. Honest Abe Lincoln the legend is quite a different character from Abraham Lincoln the man. And so should they be. And so should both be treasured, as long as they are distinguished. In a complex and confusing world, the perfect clarity of sports provides a focus for legitimate, utterly unambiguous support [or] disdain. The Dodgers are evil, the Yankees good. They really are, and have been for as long as anyone in my family can remember.
Commitment | Nature | Phenomena | Science | Success | Time |
My profession often gets bad press for a variety of sins, both actual and imagined: arrogance, venality, insensitivity to moral issues about the use of knowledge, pandering to sources of funding with insufficient worry about attendant degradation of values. As an advocate for science, I plead mildly guilty now and then to all these charges. Scientists are human beings subject to all the foibles and temptations of ordinary life. Some of us are moral rocks; others are reeds. I like to think (though I have no proof) that we are better, on average, than members of many other callings on a variety of issues central to the practice of good science: willingness to alter received opinion in the face of uncomfortable data, dedication to discovering and publicizing our best and most honest account of nature's factuality, judgment of colleagues on the might of their ideas rather than the power of their positions.
Commitment | Little |
Words change their meanings, just as organisms evolve. We would impose an enormous burden on our economy if we insisted on payment in cattle every time we identified a bonus as a pecuniary advantage (from the Latin pecus, or cattle, a verbal fossil from a former commercial reality).
Commitment | Problems | Rationality | Science |
Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
Yeah. But-- what-- what I object to is the people that the-- the biggest payday of their life is the day that they leave a company from which they failed, or-- or where they get paid automatically big sums. If you want the shot at the brass ring-- if you want a shot at making tens of millions of dollars a year, if you flop, why in the world should you be making $5 million a year, or $3 million a year? That-- it's-- pay for performance is fine, you know. Pay for showing up is not-- with the-- with the huge goodbye present, you know-- or-- or bonuses that are not tied to real performance, I think that's terrible.
Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
If you're always in a hurry, always trying to get ahead of the other guy, or someone else's performance is what motivates you, then that person is in control of you.
Commitment | Life | Life | Money | Purpose | Purpose | Will |
Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
Make peace with silence, and remind yourself that it is in this space that you'll come to remember your spirit. When you're able to transcend an aversion to silence, you'll also transcend many other miseries. And it is in this silence that the remembrance of God will be activated.
Commitment | Respect | Universe | Respect |
Vince Lombardi, fully Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi
The dictionary is the only place where success comes before work.
Character | Commitment |
Vince Lombardi, fully Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi
I would say that the quality of each man’s life is the full measure of that man’s commitment of excellence and victory – whether it be football, whether it be business, whether it be politics or government or what have you.
Commitment | Excellence | Life | Life | Will | Excellence |
Vince Lombardi, fully Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi
Once you agree upon the price you and your family must pay for success, it enables you to ignore the minor hurts, the opponent's pressure, and the temporary failures.
Commitment | Heart | Man | Nothing | Strength | Will | World |
Vince Lombardi, fully Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi
I’ve never known a man worth his salt who, in the long run, deep down in his heart, didn’t appreciate the grind, the discipline.
Commitment | Excellence | Government | Life | Life | Politics | Excellence | Government |
Vince Lombardi, fully Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi
The real glory is being knocked to your knees and then coming back. That's real glory. That's the essence of it.
Commitment | Excellence | Life | Life | Excellence |
V. S. Pritchett, fully Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett
All writers - all people - have their stores of private and family legends which lie like a collection of half-forgotten, often violent toys on the floor of memory.
Commitment | Evil | Hell | Society | Society |
Timothy Leary, fully Timothy Francis Leary
We always have urged people: Don't take LSD unless you are very well prepared, unless you are specifically prepared to go out of your mind. Don't take it unless you have someone that's very experienced with you to guide you through it. And don't take it unless you are ready to have your perspective on yourself and your life radically changed, because you're gonna be a different person, and you should be ready to face this possibility.
Commitment | Consciousness | Detachment | Discovery | World | Discovery |
Elizabeth Dole, fully Mary Elizabeth Alexander Hanford "Liddy" Dole
My objective as Secretary of Labor is to look through the 'glass ceiling' to see who is on the other side, and to serve as a catalyst for change.
Commitment | Lord | Reading | Will |
Imagine that the universe is a great spinning engine. You want to stay near the core of the thing - right in the hub of the wheel - not out at the edges where all the wild whirling takes place, where you can get frayed and crazy. The hub of calmness - that's your heart. That's where God lives within you. So stop looking for answers in the world. Just keep coming back to that center and you'll always find peace.
Commitment | Good | Mind | Self | Leader |
In order to be one, you must first be two.
Commitment | Love | Marriage | Relationship | Security | Story | Will | Writing |
I think it's unfortunate and really reflects the mean-spirited nature of the anti-abortion movement that it is willing to sacrifice poor women in this debate as a means of making gains. Abortion is legal in this country and is not something that should be denied women, but anti-abortion advocates suggest that if they can't deny it to every woman, they will at least deny it to low-income women.
Commitment | Determination | Important | Respect | Understanding | Respect |
Who by himself can do anything, do not wait for others to do.