This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Among well-bred people a mutual deference is affected, contempt of others is disguised; authority concealed; attention given to each in his turn; and an easy stream of conversation maintained without vehemence, without interruption, without eagerness for victory, and without any airs of superiority.
Attention | Authority | Contempt | Conversation | Deference | People | Superiority | Vehemence | Wisdom |
Abbie Hoffman, fully Abbot Howard "Abbie" Hoffman
Kids today live with awful nightmares: AIDS will wipe us out; the polar ice cap will melt; the nuclear bomb will go off at any minute. Even the best tend to believe we are hopeless to affect matters... Young people are detached from history, the planet and, most important, the future.
True greatness, first of all, is a thing of the heart. It is alive with robust and generous sympathies. It is neither behind its age nor too far before it. It is up with its age, and ahead of it only just so far as to be able to lead its march. It cannot slumber, for activity is a necessity of its existence. It is no reservoir, but a fountain.
Herbert Hoover, fully Herbert Clark Hoover
You cannot extend the mastery of the government over the daily working life of a people without at the same time making it the master of the people’s souls and thoughts. Every expansion of government in business means that government in order to protect itself from the political consequences of its errors and wrongs is driven irresistibly without peace to greater and greater control of the nation’s press and platform. Free speech does not live many hours after free industry and free commerce die.
Business | Commerce | Consequences | Control | Free speech | Government | Industry | Life | Life | Means | Order | Peace | People | Speech | Time | Wisdom | Government | Business | Commerce |
Education: To be at home in all lands and ages; to count Nature as a familiar acquaintance and Art an intimate friend; to gain a standard for the appreciation of other men's work and the criticism of one's own; to carry the keys of the world's library in one's pocket, and feel its resources behind one in whatever task he undertakes; to make hosts of friends among the men of one's own age who are the leaders in all walks of life; to lose oneself in general enthusiasms and co-operate with others for common ends.
Acquaintance | Age | Appreciation | Art | Criticism | Education | Ends | Friend | Life | Life | Men | Nature | Wisdom | Work | World | Appreciation | Art | Friends |
Some of our chiefs make the claim that the land belongs to us. It is not what the Great Spirit told me. He told me that the lands belong to Him, that no people owns the land; that AI was not to forget to tell this to the white people when I met them in council.
Religion is not an opiate, for religion does not help people to forget, but to remember. It does not dull people. IT does not say, Take, but Give.
Charles F. Kettering, fully Charles Franklin Kettering
It's amazing what ordinary people can do if they set out without preconceived notions.
Lyndon Johnson, fully Lyndon Baines Johnson, aka LBJ
In this age when there can be no losers in peace and no victors in war - we must recognize the obligation to match national strength with national restraint.
Age | Obligation | Peace | Restraint | Strength | War | Wisdom |
A myth is a collective 'dream' of an entire people at a certain point in their history... But a myth not only lives in literature and imagination, it immediately finds its way into the behavior and attitudes of the culture - into the practical daily lives of the people.
Behavior | Culture | History | Imagination | Literature | Myth | People | Wisdom |
John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
The function and responsibility of the President is to set before the American people the unfinished business, the things we must do if we are going to succeed as a nation.
Business | People | Responsibility | Wisdom |
Although the exact number may vary, the Hundredth Monkey Phenomenon means that when only a limited number of people know of a new way, it may remain the conscious property of these people. But there is a point at which if only one more person tunes in to a new awareness, a field is strengthened so that this awareness is picked up by almost everyone!
Awareness | Means | People | Property | Wisdom | Awareness |
I have no doubt whatever that most people live, whether physically, intellectually, or morally, in a very restricted circle of their potential being. They make use of a very small portion of their possible consciousness and of their souls’ resources in general, much like a man who, out of his whole bodily organism, should get into a habit of using and moving only his little finger... We all have reservoirs of life to draw upon, of which we do not dream.
Consciousness | Doubt | Habit | Life | Life | Little | Man | People | Wisdom |