This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The work of science is to substitute facts for appearances, and demonstrations for impressions.
Whenever men have looked for something solid on which to found their lives, they have chosen not the facts in which the world abounds, but the myths of an immemorial imagination.
Imagination | Men | World |
Not sense data or atoms or electrons or packets of energy, but purposes, interests, and meanings, constitute the underlying facts of human experience.
Energy | Experience | Sense |
Louis D. Brandeis, fully Louis Dembitz Brandeis
Nine-tenths of the serious controversies which arise in life result from misunderstandings; result from one man not knowing the facts which to the other man seem important, or otherwise failing to appreciate his point of view.
History needs distance, perspective. Facts and events which are too well attested cease, n some sort, to be malleable.
Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
The root of honesty is an honest intention, the distinct and deliberate purpose to be true, to handle facts as they are, and not as we wish them to be. Facts lend themselves to manipulation. Many a butcher’s hand is worth more than its weight in gold. What we want things to be, we come to see them to be; and the tailor pulls the coat and the truth into a perfect fit from his point of view.
Gold | Honesty | Intention | Purpose | Purpose | Truth | Worth |
Margaret Atwood, fully Margaret Eleanor Atwood
The facts of this world seen clearly are seen through tears.
The real struggle is not between East and West, or capitalism and communism, but between education and propaganda.
Capitalism | Education | Struggle |
Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson
There's a world of difference between truth and facts. Facts can obscure truth.
Oystein Dahle, or Øystein Dahle
Socialism collapsed because it did not allow the market to tell the economic truth. Capitalism may collapse because it does not allow the market to tell the ecological truth.
Capitalism | Truth |
No facts are to me sacred; none are profane; I simply experiment, an endless seeker with no past at my back.
Experiment | Past | Sacred |
The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.
Natural religion supplies still all the facts which are disguised under the dogma of popular creeds. The progress of religion is steadily to its identity with morals.
The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he seldom has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.
Prayer is the contemplation of the facts of life from the highest point of view.
Contemplation | Life | Life | Prayer | Contemplation |
The key to every man is his thought. Sturdy and defying though he look, he has a helm which he obeys, which is the idea after which all his facts are classified. He can only be reformed by showing him a new idea which commands his own.
The office of the scholar is to cheer, to raise, and to guide men by showing them facts amidst appearances.