This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The school system can’t make up for family failure. The total education of our children is a cooperative effort requiring community solidarity. Apathetic parents who foster a permissive home atmosphere create a problem for everyone.
Children | Education | Effort | Failure | Family | Parents | System |
Talent is a very common family trait; genius belongs rather to the individuals – just as you find one giant or one dwarf in a family, but rarely a whole brood of either. Talent is often to be envied, and genius very commonly to be pitied. It stands twice the chance of the other of dying in a hospital, in jail, in debt, in bad repute. It is a perpetual insult to mediocrity; its every word is a trespass against somebody’s vested ideas.
Chance | Debt | Family | Genius | Ideas | Insult | Mediocrity | Talent | Insult |
Ring Lardner, fully Ringgold "Ring" Wilmer Lardner
The family you come from isn’t as important as the family you’re going to have.
Ron Leifer, fully Ronald Leifer
Most of the inmates of mental hospitals have been committed as the result of a petition by a family member. Psychiatric commitment is often the result of an acute or prolonged family disruption, which results in the exclusion and isolation of one member (usually the least powerful). Psychiatric commitment therefore serves to relieve intolerable family conflicts by removing one member from the group.
Commitment | Family | Isolation |
The dominant values of activity and productivity, the overwhelming importance of close family ties as well as friendships, the reliance on good health, and now, in old age, the concern with the depletion of one’s life savings and the fear of senility and dependence are commonly held attitudes…
Age | Dependence | Family | Fear | Good | Health | Life | Life | Old age | Old |
Four simple questions have shaped the spiritual journeys of pilgrims and seekers for thousands of years. These questions enable us to gently awaken the four fundamental realms of inner life: Identity, Love, Daily Practice, and Kindness. (1) Who am I? We have within us an essential nature that is whole and unbroken. (2) What do I love? (3) How shall I live, knowing I will die? Every moment of life is a precious gift. (4) What is my gift to the family of the earth?
Earth | Family | Kindness | Knowing | Life | Life | Love | Nature | Practice | Will |
Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair “Will” Rogers
Lead your life so you wouldn’t be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip!
Sisters of the Immaculate Heart NULL
What the world desperately needs is bridges, individuals and groups, like Christ himself, put an end to all the distances which divide men and which hinder their access to truth, dignity, and full human development. This is another way of saying that the world needs community; it needs models of community to convince it that the diverse and warring elements in the human family can be reconciled.
Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
All happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappily in its own way.
Pachacutec Inca Yupanqui, sometimes referred to as Pachacuti
Governors must never forget that he who is unable to run his own house and family is still less competent to be entrusted with public matters.
Philippa Foot, fully Philippa Ruth Foot, née Bosanquet
One of the things a wise man knows and a foolish man does not is that such things as social position, wealth, and the good opinion of the world, are too dearly bought at the cost of health or friendship or family ties.
Cost | Family | Good | Health | Man | Opinion | Position | Wealth | Wise | World | Friendship |
Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
A man can't make a place for himself in the sun if he keeps taking refuge under the family tree.
Jack L. Nelson & William B. Stanley
Most teachers do not like controversy. A study some years ago found that 92 percent of teachers did not initiate discussion of controversial issues, 89 percent didn't discuss controversial issues when students brought them up, and 79 percent didn't believe they should. Among the topics that teachers felt children were interested in discussing but that most teachers believed should not be discussed in the classroom were the Vietnam War, politics, race relations, nuclear war, religion, and family problems such as divorce.
Children | Controversy | Discussion | Family | Politics | Problems | Race | Religion | Study | War |
The most powerful lessons about ethics and morality do not come from school discussions or classes in character-building. They come from family life where people treat one another with respect, consideration, and love.
Character | Consideration | Ethics | Family | Life | Life | Love | Morality | People | Respect |
If you want a place in the sun, you must leave the shade of the family tree.
Family |
All social and political problems are interwoven – that energy, for example, affects economics, which in turn affects health, which in turn, affects education, work, family life, and a thousand other things. The attempt to deal with neatly defined problems in isolation from one another… creates only confusion and disaster.
Economics | Education | Energy | Example | Family | Health | Isolation | Life | Life | Problems | Work |
Allan Bloom, fully Allan David Bloom
The family requires the most delicate mixture of nature and convention, of human and divine, to subsist and perform its function. Its base is merely bodily reproduction, but its purpose is the formation of civilized human beings.
Convention | Family | Nature | Purpose | Purpose |