This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
Wilson was once asked how long it took him to write a speech. He answered, 'That depends. If I am to speak 10 minutes, I need a week for preparation. If 15 minutes,3 days. If half hour, two days. If an hour, I am ready now.'
The society that separates its scholars from its warriors will have its thinking done by cowards and its fighting by fools.
Thorstein Veblen, fully Thorstein Bunde Veblen, born Torsten Bunde Veblen
The dog commends himself to our favor by affording play to our propensity for mastery
Action | Aesthetic | Innovation | Search |
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
We see that in many things that life is very great. It is incomparably great in its material aspects, in its body of wealth, in the diversity and sweep of its energy, in the industries which have been conceived and built up by the genius of individual men and the limitless enterprise of groups of men. It is great, also, very great, in its moral force. Nowhere else in the world have noble men and women exhibited in more striking forms the beauty and the energy of sympathy and helpfulness and counsel in their efforts to rectify wrong, alleviate suffering, and set the weak in the way of strength and hope. We have built up, moreover, a great system of government, which has stood through a long age as in many respects a model for those who seek to set liberty upon foundations that will endure against fortuitous change, against storm and accident. Our life contains every great thing, and contains it in rich abundance. But the evil has come with the good, and much fine gold has been corroded. With riches has come inexcusable waste. We have squandered a great part of what we might have used, and have not stopped to conserve the exceeding bounty of nature, without which our genius for enterprise would have been worthless and impotent, scorning to be careful, shamefully prodigal as well as admirably efficient. We have been proud of our industrial achievements, but we have not hitherto stopped thoughtfully enough to count the human cost, the cost of lives snuffed out, of energies overtaxed and broken, the fearful physical and spiritual cost to the men and women and children upon whom the dead weight and burden of it all has fallen pitilessly the years through. The groans and agony of it all had not yet reached our ears, the solemn, moving undertone of our life, coming up out of the mines and factories, and out of every home where the struggle had its intimate and familiar seat. With the great Government went many deep secret things which we too long delayed to look into and scrutinize with candid, fearless eyes. The great Government we loved has too often been made use of for private and selfish purposes, and those who used it had forgotten the people.
Age | Duty | Excitement | Little | Nothing | Search | Afraid |
Timothy Leary, fully Timothy Francis Leary
There's one uneasy borderline between what is external and what is internal, and this borderline is defined exactly by the sense organs and the skin and the introduction of external things within my own body. Consciousness is altered by physical events and physical objects, which impinge upon my sense organs, or which I introduce into my body.
The person who gets stuck on trivial prosperity will not attain great prosperity.
But, orderly to end where I begun, our wills and fates do so contrary run that our devices still are overthrown; our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own. Hamlet, Act iii, Scene 2
BENEDICK: What, my dear Lady Disdain! are you yet living? BEATRICE: Is it possible disdain should die while she hath such meet food to feed it as Signior Benedick? Courtesy itself must convert to disdain, if you come in her presence.
But old folks—many feign as they were dead, unwieldy, slow, heavy, and pale as lead.
DON PEDRO: To be merry best becomes you; for, out o' question, you were born in a merry hour. BEATRICE: No, sure, my lord, my mother cried; but then there was a star danced, and under than was I born. Much Ado about Nothing, Act ii, Scene 1
Daniel Gilbert, fully Daniel Todd Gilbert, aka Professor Happiness
'Reality' is a movie generated by our brains. Because we don't realize this, we are far too confident that the stuff appearing in the movie is actually 'out there' in the world when, in fact, it's not.
Liberty is one of the best of all sublunary advantages. I would willingly therefore communicate knowledge, without infringing, or with as little possible violence to, the volition and individual judgment of the person to be instructed.
Accident | Consideration | Contradiction | Control | Experiment | Father | Indulgence | Little | Man | Means | Mind | Nothing | Passion | Persuasion | Power | Trust | Will | Happiness |
Actions seems to follow feeling, but really actions and feeling go together; and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not. Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there.
Hardly ever can a youth transferred to the society of his betters unlearn the nasality and other vices of speech bred in him by the associations of his growing years. Hardly ever, indeed, no matter how much money there be in his pocket, can he ever learn to dress like a gentleman-born. The merchants offer their wares as eagerly to him as to the veriest swell, but he simply cannot buy the right things.
Evil | Good | Man | Melancholy | Reality | Thought | Happiness | Thought |
It would probably astound each of us beyond measure to be let into his neighbors mind and to find how different the scenery was there from that of his own.
Resignation | Stoic | Universe | Happiness |