This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
I would rather be the author of one original thought than conqueror of a hundred battles. Yet moral excellence is so much superior to intellectual, that I ought to esteem one virtue more valuable than a hundred original thoughts.
Esteem | Excellence | Thought | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom | Excellence | Thought |
Clarence Darrow, fully Clarence Seward Darrow
When we abandon the thought of immortality we at least have cast out fear. We gain a certain dignity and self-respect. We regard our fellow travelers as companions in the pleasures and tribulations of life... We gain kinship with the world.
Dignity | Fear | Immortality | Life | Life | Regard | Respect | Self | Thought | Tribulations | Wisdom | World | Thought |
Philosophy abounds more than philosophers, and learning more than learned men.
Learning | Men | Philosophy | Wisdom |
Genuine ignorance is... profitable because it is likely to be accompanied by humility, curiosity, and open-mindedness; whereas ability to repeat catch-phrases, cant terms, familiar propositions, gives the conceit of learning and coats the mind with varnish water-proof to new ideas.
Ability | Curiosity | Humility | Ideas | Ignorance | Learning | Mind | Wisdom |
People sometimes refer to higher education as the higher learning, but colleges and universities are much more than the knowledge factories; they are testaments to man's perennial struggle to make a better world for himself, his children, and his children's children. This, indeed, is their sovereign purpose. They are great fortifications against ignorance and irrationality; but they are more than places of higher learning - they are centers and symbols of man's higher yearning.
Better | Children | Education | Ignorance | Knowledge | Learning | Man | People | Purpose | Purpose | Struggle | Wisdom | World |
Always have a book at hand, in the parlor, on the table, for the family; a book of condensed thought and striking anecdote, of sound maxims and truthful apothegms. It will impress on your mind a thousand valuable suggestions, and teach your children lessons of truth and duty. Such a book is a casket of jewels for your household.
Apothegms | Children | Duty | Family | Maxims | Mind | Sound | Teach | Thought | Truth | Will | Wisdom | Thought |
Change of opinion is often only the progress of sound thought and growing knowledge; and though sometimes regarded as an inconsistency, it is but the noble inconsistency natural to a mind ever ready for growth and expansion of thought, and that never fears to follow where truth and duty may lead the way.
Change | Duty | Growth | Inconsistency | Knowledge | Mind | Opinion | Progress | Sound | Thought | Truth | Wisdom | Thought |
The devotion of thought to an honest achievement makes the achievement possible.
Achievement | Devotion | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |
Jean Dubuffet, fully Jean Philippe Arthur Dubuffet
Being and thought are one.
Anyone who stops learning is old, whether this happens at twenty or at eighty. Anyone who keeps on learning not only remains young but becomes constantly more valuable, regardless of physical capacity.