This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Music is for the betterment and enrichment of the individual, just as education and reading are. When people come together to play music as they do to play bridge, civilization will have taken its longest stride forward since the beginning of time. Music is something to live with always, and children should be taught to regard it as a close and inalienable friend.
Beginning | Children | Civilization | Education | Friend | Individual | Music | People | Play | Reading | Regard | Time | Will | Wisdom |
Robert Heilbroner, fully Robert Louis Heilbroner
The civilization malaise, in a word, reflects the inability of a civilization directed to material improvement - higher incomes, better diets, miracles of medicine, triumphs of applied physics and chemistry - to satisfy the human spirit.
Better | Civilization | Improvement | Miracles | Spirit | Wisdom |
Art is a staple of mankind - never a by-product of elitism. So urgent, so utterly linked with the pulse of feeling that it becomes the singular sing of life when every other aspect of civilization fails... Like hunger and sex, it is a disposition of the human cell - a marvelous fiction of the brain which recreates itself as something as mysterious as mind. Art is consistent with every aspect of every day in the life of every people.
Art | Civilization | Day | Hunger | Life | Life | Mankind | Mind | People | Wisdom | Art |
The quality of civilization depends on a balance of body, mind and spirit in its people, measured on a scale less human than divine... To survive, we must keep this balance. To progress, we must improve it. Science is upsetting it with an overemphasis of mind and a neglect of spirit and body.
Balance | Body | Civilization | Mind | Neglect | People | Progress | Science | Spirit | Wisdom |
The great question is: can war be outlawed? If so, it would mark the greatest advance in civilization since the Sermon on the Mount.
Civilization | Question | War | Wisdom |
Antoine de Rivarol, also known as Comte de Rivarol
Extremes produce reaction. Beware that our boasted civilization does not lapse into barbarism.
Barbarism | Civilization | Wisdom |
In our civilization men are afraid they will not be men enough, and women are afraid they might be considered only women.
Capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.
Capitalism | Civilization | Logic | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom |
Since the beginning of civilization we have explained our existence in terms of what we could observe... Maybe we will discover that the only true reality is a state of mind, shaped by the information we can process and contexts in which we see it. Maybe the Supreme Being we call God can best be appreciated as the power of ultimate understanding. Maybe our destination has always been to learn and grow as we approach the light of ultimate understanding. Only the context of our ability to process information changes.
Ability | Beginning | Civilization | Existence | God | Light | Mind | Power | Reality | Understanding | Will | Wisdom | God | Learn |
No international Eighteenth Amendment will get rid of war or the instruments of war until civilization finds a way for accomplishing what war has done in the past. Simply to prohibit war is not going to get rid of it. Wars must be anticipated and the causes got rid of by a readiness to accept peaceful means of settlement.
Doubt is the disease of this inquisitive, restless age. It is the price we pay for our advanced intelligence and civilization - the dim night of our resplendent day. But as the most beautiful light is born of darkness, so the faith that springs from conflict is often the strongest and the best.
Age | Civilization | Darkness | Day | Disease | Doubt | Faith | Intelligence | Light | Price | Wisdom |
The only limitless thing I know of is human want. Civilization itself is nothing more than the creation of wants, followed by methods of satisfying those wants.
Civilization | Nothing | Wants | Wisdom |
Melvin Tolson, fully Melvin Beaunorus Tolson
The white man’s civilization with its inhuman economic competition and rugged individualism has produced millions of physical and mental wrecks. It has produced enough vices to fill Dante’s hell. Nine-tenths of the people who reach forty are suffering from shattered nerves.
Civilization | Competition | Enough | Hell | Man | People | Suffering | Wisdom |
The farmers are the founders of civilization and prosperity.
Civilization | Prosperity | Wisdom |
The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterward.
Civilization | History |
The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first and deadly afterwards.
Civilization | History |