This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience.
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
In all technologically "advanced" countries, fashion has replaced tradition, so that involuntary membership in a society can no longer provide a feeling of community.
W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
In my own country for nearly a century I have been nothing but a nigger.
Human nature | Mercy | Nature | Temptation | Will | Temptation |
W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer
Education is essentially the direction of mental energy. Children have abundant energy looking for an outlet. If adult society provides a satisfactory outlet, hobbies develop into professions and adults find life in their work. If adult society fails in providing an outlet, a double disaster occurs. The child has no energy or enthusiasm for work; and the child's energies are left to find an outlet at random. Society has then abdicated its duty to educate.
W. Winwood Reade, fully William Winwood Reade
We live between two worlds; we soar in the atmosphere; we creep upon the soil; we have the aspirations of creators and the propensities of quadrupeds. There can be but one explanation of this fact. We are passing from the animal into a higher form, and the drama of this planet is in its second act.
W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer
My concern has always been to promote joy in mathematics for all-ability pupils, and the driving force has been a feeling that must be shared by anyone who has derived great pleasure from any subject - intense regret that the subject in question is so often presented in a way that produces dislike, worry and a sense of failure.
W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky
When the Church obtained the direction of the civil power, she soon modified or abandoned the tolerant maxims she had formerly inculcated; and, in the course of a few years, restrictive laws were enacted, both against the Jews and against the heretics.
W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer
Mathematicians, it is often said, tend to be musical. It is less well known that problems arising from music have played an important role in the discovery of fundamental mathematical ideas. Questions about the vibrations of a piano string led to a fierce controversy that forced mathematicians to clarify their ideas about area, continuity, and the convergence of series.
Education | Knowledge | Nothing | Opportunity | Will | Trouble | Teacher |
W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer
The effectiveness of education depends on adaptability to individual differences. Rigid syllabuses and lock-step teaching ignore the real forces in the mind that make for development and learning and the resentment of the gifted when drill continues after a skill has been learned is very often evident. The problem is how to get practice of necessary skills without causing such resentment, a problem often neglected by some modern mathematics' reformers.
Rest |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.
Abuse | Democracy | Power | Tyranny | Understand |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The Poor Peasants’ Committees are necessary to fight the kulaks, the rich, the exploiters, who shackle the working peasants. But between the kulaks, who are a small minority, and the poor or semi-proletarians there is the section of the middle peasants. The Soviet government has never declared or conducted any struggle against them. Any steps or measures to the contrary must be condemned most vigorously and stopped. The socialist government must pursue a policy of agreement with the middle peasants.
Meaning | Power | Revolution |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
We have invited and continue to invite the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries to share power with us.
Regard |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Socialism, by organizing production without class oppression, by ensuring the well-being of all members of the state, gives full play to the “sympathies” of the population, thereby promoting and greatly accelerating the drawing together and fusion of the nations.
Proletariat | Revolution | Struggle | Will |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
When feudalism was overthrown and “free” capitalist society appeared in the world, it at once became apparent that this freedom meant a new system of oppression and exploitation of the working people.
Insecurity | Majority | Question | Sense | Old |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
But every little difference may become a big one if it is insisted on.
Absurd | Attention | Books | Earth | Evidence | Humanity | Important | Means | Oppression | Order | Paradise | Philosophy | Practice | Proletariat | Question | Reflection | Religion | Society | Struggle | Tomorrow | Unity | Will | Society | Old | Propaganda |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Perhaps the profoundest cause of disagreement with the Narodniks is the difference in our fundamental views on social and economic processes. When studying the latter, the Narodnik usually draws conclusions that point to some moral; he does not regard the diverse groups of persons taking part in production as creators of various forms of life; he does not set out to present the sum-total of social and economic relationships as the result of the mutual relations between these groups, which have different interests and different historical roles.
Self-deception | Will |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The Capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.
Bourgeoisie | Desire | Freedom | Will |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
From the standpoint of theory, this idea disregards the elementary propositions of Marxism concerning the inevitability of capitalist development where commodity production exists. Marxism teaches that a society which is based on commodity production, and which has commercial intercourse with civilised capitalist nations, at a certain stage of its development, itself, inevitably takes the road of capitalism.
Initiative | Present | Struggle |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
There are at present 300,000 bourgeois in the Crimea. These are a source of future profiteering, espionage and every kind of aid to the capitalists. However, we are not afraid of them. We say that we shall take and distribute them, make them submit, and assimilate them.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Human reason has discovered many amazing things in nature and will discover still more, and will thereby increase its power over nature.