This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Compton Mackenzie, fully Sir Edward Montague Compton Mackenzie
Take two workers in an organization. One limits his giving by wages he is paid. He insists on being paid instantly for what he does. That shows he is a man of limited imagination and intelligence. The other is a natural giver. His philosophy of life compels him to make himself useful. He knows that if he takes care of other people's problems they will be forced to take care of him to protect their own interests. The more a man gives of himself to his work, the more he will get out of it, both in wages and satisfaction.
Care | Giving | Imagination | Intelligence | Life | Life | Man | Organization | People | Philosophy | Problems | Will | Wisdom | Work |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
Many things seem greater by imagination than be effect.
Imagination | Wisdom |
Eugene McCarthy, fully Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy
Conspicuous waste beyond the imagination of Thorstein Veblen has become the mark of American life. As a nation we find ourselves overbuilt, if not overhoused; overfed, although millions of poor people are undernourished; overtransported in overpowered cars; and also... overdefended or overdefensed.
In the end, thought rules the world. There are times when impulses and passions are more powerful, but they soon expend themselves; while mind, acting constantly, is ever ready to drive them back and work when their energy is exhausted.
The Imagination makes us transcendent of Time and we see what is gorgeous.
Imagination | Time | Wisdom |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously.
Idealism | Materialism | Men | Teach | Wisdom | World | Trouble |
N. Scott Momaday, fully Navarre Scott Momaday
We are what we imagine. Our very existence consists in our imagination of ourselves... The greatest tragedy that can befall us is to go unimagined.
Existence | Imagination | Tragedy | Wisdom |
Romances, in general, are calculated rather to fire the imagination than to inform the judgment.
Imagination | Judgment | Wisdom |
The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless. Not being able to enlarge the one, let us contract the other; for it is from their difference that all evils arise which render us unhappy.
Imagination | Reality | Wisdom | World |
We believe in a life continuum, and eternal life. Each incarnation or lifetime on earth is 'just a day in the classroom'... We believe the plane of greatest learning is the physical plane. It is up to all of us to make the most of each carnation. We believe that all there is in the universe is energy... and all energy forms, from subatomic particles to stars, are in a constant state of change and transformation... that interpreting energy frequencies on sensory bands creates the reality in which each life-form lives.
Change | Day | Earth | Energy | Eternal | Learning | Life | Life | Reality | Universe | Wisdom |
The faculty of imagination is the great spring of human activity, and the principal source of human improvement. As it delights in presenting to the mind scenes and characters more perfect than those which we are acquainted with, it prevents us from ever being completely satisfied with our present condition, or with our past attainments, and engages us continually in the pursuit of some untried enjoyment, or of some ideal excellence. Destroy this faculty, and the condition of man will become as stationary as that of the brutes.
Destroy | Enjoyment | Excellence | Imagination | Improvement | Man | Mind | Past | Present | Will | Wisdom |
Lillian Smith, fully Lillian Eugenia Smith
To believe in something not yet proved and to underwrite it with our lives; it is the only way we can leave the future open. Man, surrounded by facts, permitting himself no surprise, no intuitive flash, no great hypothesis, no risk, is in a locked cell. Ignorance cannot seal the mind and imagination more securely.
Future | Hypothesis | Ignorance | Imagination | Man | Mind | Risk | Wisdom |
Research teaches a man to admit he is wrong and to be proud of the fact that he does so, rather than try with all his energy to defend an unsound plan because he is afraid that admission of error is a confession of weakness when rather it is a sign of strength.
Energy | Error | Man | Plan | Research | Strength | Weakness | Wisdom | Wrong | Afraid |
Enthusiasm is that temper of the mind in which the imagination has got the better of the judgment.
Better | Enthusiasm | Imagination | Judgment | Mind | Temper | Wisdom |
In short, human society is a product of evolution. It is created by natural selection and environmental pressures which bring individuals together in a special and powerful way, but it requires no physical change or mutation. It is a composition of ideas and beliefs - a new and essentially psychic phenomenon. A kind of supermind.