This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Change of opinion is often only the progress of sound thought and growing knowledge; and though sometimes regarded as an inconsistency, it is but the noble inconsistency natural to a mind ever ready for growth and expansion of thought, and that never fears to follow where truth and duty may lead the way.
Change | Duty | Growth | Inconsistency | Knowledge | Mind | Opinion | Progress | Sound | Thought | Truth | Wisdom | Thought |
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.
Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
Man has such a predilection for systems and abstract deductions that he is ready to distort the truth intentionally, he is ready to deny the evidence of his senses only to justify his logic.
Abstract | Evidence | Justify | Logic | Man | Truth | Wisdom |
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
Falsehood is easy, truth so difficult.
The ideal itself is but truth clothed in the forms of art.
François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
How different the peace of god from that of the world! It calms the passions, preserves the purity of conscience, is inseparable from righteousness, unites us to God and strengthens us against temptations. The peace of the soul consists in an absolute resignation to the will of God.
Absolute | Conscience | God | Peace | Purity | Resignation | Righteousness | Soul | Will | Wisdom | World | God |
Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.
Capital punishment | Charity | Crime | Poverty | Punishment | Wisdom | Wrong |
The majority of people are naturally straddlers. They are not in the world to pioneer but to be as happy as possible. If pioneering in a cause brings discomfort, they would rather not be among the pioneers. they would rather stand on the sidelines and, in the combat between truth and error, wait and see which proves the stronger. Though they may have a lazy faith that truth at last will win, they do not wish to lend a premature support.
Cause | Error | Faith | Happy | Majority | People | Truth | Will | Wisdom | World |