This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
Lay plans for the accomplishment of the difficult before it becomes difficult; make something big by starting with it when small.
Does music make plants grow, or are there among the plans some that are musical?
Music |
David J. Schwartz, fully David Joseph Schwartz
Believe Big. The size of your success is determined by the size of your belief. Think little goals and expect little achievements. Think big goals and win big success. Remember this, too! Big ideas and big plans are often easier – certainly no more difficult – than small ideas and small plans.
Bill Bradley, fully William Warren "Bill" Bradley
What is life worth if we don’t strive to build something that is bigger than we are and lasts longer than we do? For too long, we’ve not worried about future generations or met our obligations to each other. Instead, we have lived for ourselves, and for today. Such a world is simply not sustainable.
Instead of always thinking about our plans and anxiously looking to the future, or giving ourselves up to regret for the past, we should never forget that the present is the only reality, the only certainty; the future almost always turns out contrary to our expectations; the past, too, was very different from what we suppose it to have been.
Future | Giving | Past | Present | Reality | Regret | Thinking |
If we turn from contemplating the world as a whole, and, in particular, the generations of men as they live their little hour of mock-existence, and then are swept away in rapid succession; if we turn from this, and look at life in its small details, as presented, say, in a comedy, how ridiculous it all seems ! It is like a drop of water seen through a microscope, a single drop teeming with infusoria; or a speck of cheese full of mites invisible to the naked eye. How e laugh as they bustle about so eagerly, and struggle with one another in so tiny a space! And whether here, or in the little span of human life, this terrible activity produces a comic effect.
Comedy | Existence | Life | Life | Little | Men | Space | Struggle | World |
Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
Those whose ways are different do not make plans together.
Successful individuals have game plans and purposes that are clearly defined to which they constantly refer.
Tacitus, fully Publius (or Gaius) Cornelius Tacitus NULL
The wider the scope of my reflection on the present and past, the more I am impressed by their mockery of human plans in every transaction.
Mockery | Past | Present | Reflection |
Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower
The pact of Munich was a more fell blow to humanity than the atom bomb at Hiroshima. Suffocation of human freedom among a once free people, however quietly and peacefully accomplished, is more far-reaching in its implications and its effects on their future than the destruction of their homes, industrial centers and transportation facilities. Out of rubble heaps, willing hands can rebuild a better city; but out of freedom lost can stem only generations of hate and bitter struggle and brutal oppression.
Better | Freedom | Future | Hate | Humanity | Oppression | People | Struggle |
Since I was twenty-four there never was any vagueness in my plans or ideas as to what God's work was for me.
Men in their generations are like the leaves of the trees. The wind blows and one year's leaves are scattered on the ground; but the trees burst into bud and put on fresh ones when the spring comes round.
Men |
One of the difficulties with our busy modern culture is that we don’t take time to listen to our hearts. Our immediate problems, our plans and thoughts, fill our minds and, lost in thinking, we lose our connection to our hearts and our true nature.
One of the drawbacks of old age is that one outlives his generation and feels alone in the world. The new generations have interests of their own, and are no more in sympathy with you than you are with them. The octogenarian has no alternative but to live in the past. He lives with the dead, and they pull him down.
Joseph Chilton Pearce, aka Joe
American high school students of 1950 had a working vocabulary averaging 25,000 words. Today that level is 10,000. As of 1998 some 85 percent of all academic honors in the United States were taken by foreign-born students. Offspring of these students may, in turn, keep our standards from disappearing for perhaps one or two generations more, but that will be all. Sooner or later they will become we, and who will be left to comprehend that intelligence itself has deteriorated?
Intelligence | Will | Words |