This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Wilkie Collins, fully William Wilkie Collins
I sadly want a reform in the construction of children. Nature's only idea seems to be to make them machines for the production of incessant noise.
Wilkie Collins, fully William Wilkie Collins
Life is a comedy to those who think, and a tragedy to those who feel.
Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant
It may be true, as Lincoln supposed, that 'You can't fool all the people all the time,' but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country.
Philosophy | Trifles | Learn |
Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather
Of all the bewildering things about a new country, the absence of human landmarks is one of the most depressing and disheartening.
Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather
The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one's own.
Giving | Habit | Language | Personality | Power |
Werner Heisenberg, fully Werner Karl Heisenberg
The physicist may be satisfied when he has the mathematical scheme and knows how to use for the interpretation of the experiments. But he has to speak about his results also to non-physicists who will not be satisfied unless some explanation is given in plain language. Even for the physicist the description in plain language will be the criterion of the degree of understanding that has been reached.
Language |
Werner Heisenberg, fully Werner Karl Heisenberg
The exact sciences also start from the assumption that in the end it will always be possible to understand nature, even in every new field of experience, but that we may make no a priori assumptions about the meaning of the word understand.
Language | Life | Life | Man | Refinement | Science | Theoretical |
Werner Heisenberg, fully Werner Karl Heisenberg
It seems sensible to discard all hope of observing hitherto unobservable quantities, such as the position and period of the electron... Instead it seems more reasonable to try to establish a theoretical quantum mechanics, analogous to classical mechanics, but in which only relations between observable quantities occur.
Language | Mathematics | Will | Words |
Werner Heisenberg, fully Werner Karl Heisenberg
The reality we can put into words is never reality itself.
Werner Heisenberg, fully Werner Karl Heisenberg
Probability in mathematics or in statistical mechanics means a statement about our degree of knowledge of the actual situation. In throwing dice we do not know the fine details of the motion of our hands which determine the fall of the dice and therefore we say that the probability for throwing a special number is just one in six. The probability wave of Bohr, Kramers, Slater, however, meant more than that; it meant a tendency for something. It was a quantitative version of the old concept of `potentia’ in Aristotelian philosophy. It introduced something standing in the middle between the idea of an event and the actual event, a strange kind of physical reality just in the middle between possibility and reality.
Existence | Experiment | Harmony | Important | Language | Life | Life | Means | Nature | Wisdom | Work | Old |
Werner Heisenberg, fully Werner Karl Heisenberg
Every experiment destroys some of the knowledge of the system which was obtained by previous experiments.
Language | Understanding | Will |
Werner Heisenberg, fully Werner Karl Heisenberg
The positivists have a simple solution: the world must be divided into that which we can say clearly and the rest, which we had better pass over in silence. But can anyone conceive of a more pointless philosophy, seeing that what we can say clearly amounts to next to nothing? If we omitted all that is unclear, we would probably be left completely uninteresting and trivial tautologies.
Language | Understanding | Will |
Werner Heisenberg, fully Werner Karl Heisenberg
Whenever we proceed from the known into the unknown we may hope to understand, but we may have to learn at the same time a new meaning of the word "understanding."
Werner Heisenberg, fully Werner Karl Heisenberg
Natural science does not simply describe and explain nature; it is part of the interplay between nature and ourselves.
Duality | Language | Mathematics | Will | Words |
Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers
There has never been a society or a nation without God. But history is cluttered with the wreckage of nations that became indifferent to God, and died.
Government | Language | Time | War | Government |
Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers
Yet, so strong is the hold which the insidious evil of Communism secures upon its disciples, that I could still say to someone at that time: I know that I am leaving the winning side for the losing side, but it is better to die on the losing side than to live under Communism.
Daughter | Experience | Father | Logic | Myth | Question | Reason | Soul | Vision | Will | Child |
Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney
Animation offers a medium of story-telling and visual entertainment which can bring pleasure and information to people of all ages everywhere in the world.
Language |