This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel
This demand, that the doctrine of descent should be grounded on experiment, is so perverse and shows such ignorance of the very essence of our theory, that though we have never been surprised at hearing it continually repeated by ignorant laymen, from the lips of a Virchow it has positively astounded us. What can in this case be proved by experiment, and what can experiment prove?
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
Excellent! This is real life, full of antinomies and bigger than logic. Without order, planning, predictability, central control, accountancy, instructions to the underlings, obedience, discipline—without these, nothing fruitful can happen, because everything disintegrates. And yet—without the magnanimity of disorder, the happy abandon, the entrepreneurship venturing into the unknown and incalculable, without the risk and the gamble, the creative imagination rushing in where bureaucratic angels fear to tread—without this, life is a mockery and a disgrace.
Ends | Guidance | Need | People | Science | Wisdom | Work | Guidance | Value |
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
To organize work in such a manner that it becomes meaningless, boring, stultifying, or nerve-racking for the worker would be little short of criminal; it would indicate a greater concern with goods than with people, an evil lack of compassion and a soul-destroying degree of attachment to the most primitive side of this worldly existence.
Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel
They throw light first of all on the "natural history of creation," then on psychology, or "the science of the soul," and through this on the whole of philosophy. And as the general results of every branch of inquiry are summed up in philosophy, all the sciences come in turn to be touched and influenced more or less by the study of the evolution of man.
Science |
Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger
Conditions are admittedly such that we can always manage to make doing each concrete individual case without the two different aspects leading to different expectations as to the result of certain experiments. We cannot, however, manage to make do with such old, familiar, and seemingly indispensable terms as "real" or "only possible"; we are never in a position to say what really is or what really happens, but we can only say what will be observed in any concrete individual case. Will we have to be permanently satisfied with this...? On principle, yes. On principle, there is nothing new in the postulate that in the end exact science should aim at nothing more than the description of what can really be observed. The question is only whether from now on we shall have to refrain from tying description to a clear hypothesis about the real nature of the world. There are many who wish to pronounce such abdication even today. But I believe that this means making things a little too easy for oneself.
Knowledge | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Research | Science | Space |
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
In other words, everybody claims to achieve freedom by his own "system" and accuses every other "system" as inevitably entailing tyranny, totalitarianism, or anarchy leading to both.
Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson
The very best thing that can happen is that, in despairing of philosophy, they remember that God did not choose to save men through metaphysics, so that its loses be not their loss.
Writing is an expression of the writer's own peculiar personality, could not help being so. Yet in reading great works one feels that the finished piece transcends the personal. All writers great and small must sometimes have felt that they have become part of what they wrote even more than it still remains a part of them.
I don't know whether I could do either one, reading or writing, without the other
Experience | Life | Life | Think |
The more a man has what he desired, he cherishes most it has.
The greatest thing a human soul ever does in this world is to see something and tell what it saw in a plain way. Hundreds of people can talk for one who can think, and thousands can think for one who can see. To see clearly is poetry, philosophy, and religion all in one.
ThereÂ’s still a strange moment with every book when I move from the position of writer to the position of reader, and I suddenly see my words with the eyes of the cold public. It gives me a terrible sense of exposure, as if IÂ’d gotten sunburned.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
I used to be able to summon up scenes at will, but now aging memory is so busy weeding its own garden that, promiscuously, it pulls up roses as well as crabgrass.
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
By the time a man gets to be presidential material, he's been bought ten times over.
Work |
Gore Vidal, fully Eugene Luther Gore Vidal
You cannot get through the density of the propaganda with which the American people, through the dreaded media, have been filled and the horrible public educational system we have for the average person. It's just grotesque.
I was a poet who wrote an autobiography poetic without ceasing to beat at the gates of the impossible. I would not dare to speak of myth in my poetry, but there is a desire to question life. At the beginning I was skeptical, influenced by Schopenhauer . But in my verses of maturity I tried to hope, to beat the wall, to see what could be the other side of the wall, convinced that life has a meaning that escapes us. I knocked desperately as one who waits for a response.
Evelyn Waugh, fully Evelyn Arthur St. John Waugh
Aesthetic value is often the by-product of the artist striving to do something else.
Science |