This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
With a true view all data harmonize, but with a false one the facts soon clash.
The search for truth is one way hard, and in another way easy. For it is evident that no one can master it fully, nor yet miss it wholly. But each adds a little to our knowledge of nature, and from all the facts assembled, there arises a certain grandeur.
To the man who studies to gain a thorough insight into science, books and study are merely the steps of the ladder by which he climbs to the summit; as soon as a step has been advanced he leaves it behind. The majority of mankind, however, who study to fill their memory with facts do not use the steps of the ladder to mount upward, but take them off and lay them on their shoulders in order that they may take them along, delighting in the weight of the burden they are carrying. They ever remain below because they carry what should carry them.
Books | Insight | Majority | Man | Mankind | Memory | Order | Science | Study |
Ayn Rand, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum
If one wishes to advocate a free society - that is, capitalism - one must realize that its indispensable foundation is the principle of individual rights.
Capitalism | Indispensable | Individual | Rights | Society | Wishes | Society |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
The fact that the majority of a community dislikes an opinion gives it no right to interfere with those who hold it. And the fact that the majority of a community wishes not to know certain facts gives it no right to imprison those who wish to know them.
Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey
Get all the facts. Let's not even attempt to solve our problems without first collecting all the facts in an impartial manner.
Problems |
Live in contact with dreams, and you will get something of their charm; live in contact with facts, and you will get something of their brutality. I wish I could find a country where the facts were not brutal, and the dreams not unreal.
Under full developed Capitalism civilization is always on the verge of revolution. We live as in a villa on Vesuvius.
Capitalism | Civilization | Revolution |
Galileo Galilei, known simply as Galileo
The knowledge of a single fact acquired through a discovery of its causes prepares the mind to understand and ascertain other facts without need of recourse to experiment.
Discovery | Experiment | Knowledge | Mind | Need | Discovery | Understand |
We see facts with our eyes; we see ideas with our minds; we see ideals with our souls. Whatever we see with our souls is real and permanent and cannot be destroyed.
A myth is, of course, not a fairy story. It is the presentation of facts belonging to one category in the idioms appropriate to another. To explode a myth is accordingly not to deny the facts but to re-allocate them.
Henry Miller, aka Henry Valentine Miller
We do not talk - we bludgeon one another with facts and theories gleaned from cursory readings of newspapers, magazines and digests.
Theories |
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; not did I wish to practice resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and search out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and if it proved to be mean, when they to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion.
Experience | Life | Life | Meanness | Practice | Resignation | Search | Teach | World | Learn |
Jessamyn West, fully Mary Jessamyn West
We want the facts to fit the preconceptions. When they don't, it is easier to ignore the facts than to change the preconceptions.
Change |
To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, to imagine your facts is another.
John Foster, fully John Watson Foster
All reason is retrospect; it consists in the application of facts and principles previously known. This will show the very great importance of knowledge, especially that kind which is called experience.
Experience | Knowledge | Principles | Reason | Will |
To treat your facts with imagination is one thing, to imagine your facts is quite another.
Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.