This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Make haste slowly, and do not be slothful when opportunity beckons.
Haste | Opportunity |
Louis D. Brandeis, fully Louis Dembitz Brandeis
In the field of modern business, so rich in opportunity for the exercise of man's finest and most varied mental faculties and moral qualities, mere money-making cannot be regarded as the legitimate end... since with the conduct of business human happiness or misery is inextricably interwoven.
Business | Conduct | Man | Money | Opportunity | Qualities | Business | Happiness |
Life is a score that we play at sight, not merely before we have divined the intentions of the composer, but even before we have mastered our instruments: even worse, a large part of the score has been only roughly indicated, and we must improvise the music for our particular instrument, over long passages. On these terms, the whole operation seems one endless difficulty and frustration; and indeed, were it not for the fact that some of the passages have been played so often by our predecessors that, when we come to them, we seem to recall some of the score and can anticipate the natural sequence of the notes, we might often give up in sheer despair. The wonder is not that so much cacophony appears in our actual individual lives, but that there is any appearance of harmony and progression.
Appearance | Despair | Difficulty | Harmony | Individual | Life | Life | Music | Play | Wonder |
Louis D. Brandeis, fully Louis Dembitz Brandeis
No danger flowing from speech can be deemed clear and present, unless the incidence of the evil apprehended is so imminent that it may befall before there is opportunity for full discussion. If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence.
Danger | Discussion | Education | Evil | Falsehood | Opportunity | Present | Silence | Speech | Time | Danger |
M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
Learning from their children is the best opportunity most people have to assure themselves of meaningful old age.
Age | Children | Learning | Old age | Opportunity | People | Old |
Lou Holtz, fully Louis Leo "Lou" Holtz
The greatest power God gave us is the power to choose. We have the opportunity to choose whether we’re going to act or procrastinate, believe or doubt, pray or curse, help or heal. We also choose whether we’re going to be happy or whether we’re going to be sad.
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
Without doubt, the highest privilege of wealth is the opportunity it affords for doing good, without giving up one’s fortune.
Doubt | Fortune | Giving | Good | Opportunity | Wealth | Privilege |
Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
Opportunities do not come with their values stamped upon them. Every one must be challenged. A day dawns, quite like other days; in it a single hour comes, quite like other hours; but in that day and in that hour the chance of a lifetime faces us. To face every opportunity of life thoughtfully and ask its meaning bravely and earnestly, is the only way to meet the supreme opportunities when they come, whether open-faced or disguised.
No one is born with good character. It's not hereditary. Yet everyone, regardless of background, enters the world with the opportunity to become a person of exemplary character.
Character | Good | Opportunity | World |
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
One difficulty about achieving social improvement is that we tend to uncritically regard any advance in either differentiation or in integration as a good thing. If a new law increases freedom, it must be progress, as is a new movement that fosters the feeling of solidarity among people. yet neither of these programs is likely to improve matters without the complementary contribution of the other. Complexity requires the synergy of these dialectically opposed force; a gain in only one is likely to promote confusion and chaos. We think of social entropy as being caused by a loss of liberty or a loss of common values; but gains in either at the expense of its complement are just as dangerous.
Difficulty | Force | Freedom | Good | Improvement | Integration | Law | Liberty | People | Progress | Regard | Loss | Think |
Noam Chomsky, fully Avram Noam Chomsky
More democratic societies, including the United States, instituted measures to impose discipline on the domestic population and to institute unpopular measures under the guise of "combating terror," exploiting the atmosphere of fear and the demand for "patriotism" - which in practice means: "You shut up and I'll pursue my own agenda relentlessly." The Bush administration used the opportunity to advance its assault against most of the population, and future generations, in service to the narrow corporate interests that dominate the administration to an extent even beyond the norm.
Administration | Discipline | Fear | Future | Means | Opportunity | Patriotism | Practice | Service | Terror |
I am continually fascinated at the difficulty intelligent people have in distinguishing what is controversial from what is merely offensive.
Difficulty | People |
Whatever disagreement there may be as to the scope of the phrase "due process of law" there can be no doubt that it embraces the fundamental conception of a fair trial, with opportunity to be heard.
Disagreement | Doubt | Man | Mind | Opportunity |
Trouble, difficulty and hardship are three great teachers. Fortunate is the person who in keeping company with them keeps his eyes, his ears and, better still, his mind open; they can teach him valuable things.
Better | Difficulty | Mind | Teach | Hardship |
[In the cave allegory] those whose who are destitute of philosophy may be compared to prisoners in a cave, who are only able to look in one direction because they are bound, and who have a fire behind them and a wall in front. Between them and the wall there is nothing; all that they see are shadows of themselves, and of objects behind them, cast on the wall by the light of the fire. Inevitably they regard these shadows as real, and have no notion of the objects to which they are due. At last some man succeeds in escaping from the cave to the light of the sun; for the first time he sees real things, and becomes aware that he had hitherto been deceived by shadows. If he is the sort of philosopher who is fit to become a guardian, he will feel it his duty to those who were formerly his fellow prisoners to go down again into the cave, instruct them as to the truth, and show them the way up. But he will have difficulty in persuading them, because, coming out of the sunlight, he will see shadows less clearly than they do, and will seem to them stupider than before his escape.
Difficulty | Duty | Light | Man | Nothing | Philosophy | Regard | Time | Truth | Will |
Peter McWilliams, fully Peter Alexander McWilliams
Acceptance is not a state of passivity or inaction. I am not saying you can't change the world, right wrongs, or replace evil with good. Acceptance is, in fact, the first step to successful action. If you don't fully accept a situation precisely the way it is, you will have difficulty changing it. Moreover, if you don't fully accept the situation, you will never really know if the situation should be changed.
Acceptance | Action | Change | Difficulty | Evil | Good | Right | Will | World |
The greatest difficulty is that men do not think enough of themselves, do not consider what it is that they are sacrificing when they follow in a herd, or when they cater for their establishment.
Difficulty | Enough | Men | Think |
Never lose an opportunity of seeing anything that is beautiful; for beauty is God's handwriting - a wayside sacrament. Welcome it in every fair face, in ever fair sky, in every fair flower, and thank God for it as a cup of blessing.
Beauty | God | Opportunity | Beauty | God |