This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
Maybe this neighborhood is just beyond transformation. That will become clear in the next few months as we see just what kind of minority the Sunnis in Iraq intend to be. If they come around, a decent outcome in Iraq is still possible, and we should stay to help build it. If they won’t, then we are wasting our time. We should arm the Shiites and Kurds and leave the Sunnis of Iraq to reap the wind.
Thomas R. Kelly, fully Thomas Raymond Kelly
But O how slick and weasel-like is self-pride! Our learnedness creeps into our sermons with a clever quotation which adds nothing to God's glory, but a bit to our own. Our cleverness in business competition earns as much self-flattery as does the possession of the money itself. Our desire to be known and approved by others, to have heads nod approvingly about us behind our backs, and flattering murmurs which we can occasionally overhear, confirm the discernment in Alfred Adler's elevation of the superiority motive. Our status as "weighty Friends" gives us secret pleasures which we scarcely own to ourselves, yet thrive upon. Yes, even pride in our own humility is one of the devil's own tricks. But humility rests upon a holy blindedness, like the blindedness of him who looks steadily into the sun. For wherever he turns his eyes on earth, there he sees only the sun. The God-blinded soul sees naught of self, naught of personal degradation or of personal eminence, but only the Holy Will working impersonally through him, through others, as one objective Life and Power. But what trinkets we have sought after in life, the pursuit of what petty trifles has wasted our years as we have ministered to the enhancement of our own little selves! And what needless anguishes we have suffered because our little selves were defeated, were not flattered, were not cozened and petted! But the blinding God blots out this self and gives humility and true self-hood as wholly full of Him. For as He gives obedience so He graciously gives to us what measure of humility we will accept. Even that is not our own, but His who also gives us obedience. But the humility of the God-blinded soul endures only so long as we look steadily at the Sun. Growth in humility is a measure of our growth in the habit of the Godward-directed mind. And he only is near to God who is exceedingly humble. The last depths of holy and voluntary poverty are not in financial poverty, important as that is; they are in poverty of spirit, in meekness and lowliness of soul.
Body | Evil | Joy | Man | Mystery | Nature | Need | Obedience | Oblivion | Paradox | Soul | Suffering | World |
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
The saying in China is If you're one in a million, there's still 1,300 people just like you.
Poverty |
Thomas Szasz, fully Thomas Stephen Szasz
What the psychiatrist calls a “delusion of persecution” is one of the most dramatic human defenses against the feeling of personal insignificance and worthlessness. In fact, no one cares a hoot about Jones. He is an extra on the stage of life. But he wants to be a star.
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
Rock stars get room keys, I get business cards.
Thomas R. Kelly, fully Thomas Raymond Kelly
But self-renunciation means God-possession, the being possessed by God. Out of utter humility and self-forgetfulness comes the thunder of the prophets, "Thus saith the Lord." High station and low are leveled before Him. Be not fooled by the world's power. Imposing institutions of war and imperialism and greed are wholly vulnerable for they, and we, are forever in the hands of a conquering God. These are not cheap and hasty words. The high and noble adventures of faith can in our truest moments be seen as no adventures at all, but certainties. And if we live in complete humility in God we can smile in patient assurance as we work. Will you be wise enough and humble enough to be little fools of God? For who can finally stay His power? Who can resist His persuading love? Truly says Saint Augustine, "There is something in humility which raiseth the heart upward."
Business | Competition | Desire | Discernment | God | Growth | Habit | Humility | Important | Life | Life | Little | Looks | Meekness | Money | Nothing | Obedience | Poverty | Pride | Self | Soul | Superiority | Trifles | Will | Business | God |
Thomas Malthus, fully Thomas Robert Malthus
I cannot doubt the talents of such men as Godwin and Condorcet. I am unwilling to doubt their candor.
Individual | Poverty |
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
There is no future in vanilla for most companies in a flat world. A lot of vanilla making in software and other areas is going to shift to open-source communities.
Balance | Business | Global | Good | Growth | History | Past | People | Poverty | Power | Price | Size | Time | Will | World | Business | Think |
Thomas R. Kelly, fully Thomas Raymond Kelly
The fruits of holy obedience are many. But two are so closely linked together that they can scarcely be treated separately. They are the passion for personal holiness and the sense of utter humility. God inflames the soul with a craving for absolute purity. But He, in His glorious otherness, empties us of ourselves in order that He may become all. Humility does not rest, in final count, upon bafflement and discouragement and self-disgust at our shabby lives, a brow-beaten, dog-slinking attitude. It rests upon the disclosure of the consummate wonder of God, upon finding that only God counts, that all our own self-originated intentions are works of straw. And so in lowly humility we must stick close to the Root and count our own powers as nothing except as they are enslaved in His power.
Glory | Important | Men | Nature | Need | Poverty | Salvation | Thought | World | Thought |
The absence of romance in my history will, I fear, detract somewhat from its interest, but if it is judged worthy by those inquirers who desire an exact knowledge of the past as an aid to the understanding of the future, which in the course of human things must resemble if it does not reflect it, I shall be content.
Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
Comparisons of one's lot with others' teaches us nothing and enfeebles the will.
Consequences | Contemplation | Conversation | Decision | Deliberation | Dread | Enough | Glory | Illusion | Life | Life | Men | Past | Poverty | Practice | Reality | Deliberation | Contemplation | Think |
Peace is an armistice in a war that is continuously going on.
Administration | Example | Excellence | Government | Justice | Law | Man | Obscurity | Obscurity | Poverty | Public | Reward | Rivalry | Excellence | Government |
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
We shall fight for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.
Age | Agony | Beauty | Body | Children | Cost | Counsel | Diversity | Energy | Enough | Evil | Genius | Gold | Government | Helpfulness | Individual | Liberty | Life | Life | Men | Model | Riches | Strength | Struggle | Sympathy | System | Will | World | Riches | Government | Counsel | Beauty |
Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
It required all his delicate Epicurean education to prevent his doing something about it; he had to repeat over to himself his favorite notions: that the injustice and unhappiness in the world is a constant; that the theory of progress is a delusion; that the poor, never having known happiness, are insensible to misfortune. Like all the rich he could not bring himself to believe that the poor (look at their houses, look at their clothes) could really suffer. Like all the cultivated he believed that only the widely read could be said to know that they were unhappy.
Sow good and you'll reap good; sow bad and you'll reap bad. You don't have to cut down a tree to get its fruit.
The father may well be a horse, but it's most likely that the son will be a mule.
Ah! when the means are gone that buy this praise, The breath is gone whereof this praise is made. The Life of Timon of Athens (Flavius at II, ii)
Evil |