This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
The great voice of America does not come from the seats of learning, but in a murmur from the hills and the woods and the farms and the factories and the mills, rolling on and gaining volume until it comes to us the voice from the homes of the common men. Do these murmurs come into the corridors of the university? I have not heard them.
God | Life | Life | Men | Observation | Public | God | Afraid |
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 |
Thornton Wilder, fully Thornton Niven Wilder
Let us at least say of religion that it means that every part of the body is infused with mind, not that the mind is overwhelmed and drowned in body. For the principal attribute of the Gods, without or within us, is mind.
The least degree of ambiguity, which leaves the mind in suspense as to the meaning, ought to be avoided with the greatest care.
Admiration | Contempt | History | Love | Public |
Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
Birth and death were easy. It was life that was hard.
Hope | Personality | Public | Will |
Tom Robbins, fully Thomas Eugene "Tom" Robbins
If one yearns to see the face of the Divine, one must break out of the aquarium, escape the fish farm, to go swim up wild cataracts, dive in deep fjords. One must explore the labyrinth of the reef, the shadows of the lily pads. How limiting, how insulting to think of God as a benevolent warden, an absentee hatchery manager who imprisons us in the 'comfort' of artificial pools, where intermediaries sprinkle our restrictive waters with sanitized flakes of processed nutriment.
And thorough this distemperature we see the seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose, and on old Hiems' thin and icy crown an odorous chaplet of sweet summer buds is, as in mockery, set. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Act ii, Scene 1
Every man has a certain sphere of discretion, which he has a right to expect shall not be infringed by his neighbors. This right flows from the very nature of man. First, all men are fallible: no man can be justified in setting up his judgment as a standard for others. We have no infallible judge of controversies; each man in his own apprehension is right in his decisions; and we can find no satisfactory mode of adjusting their jarring pretensions. If everyone be desirous of imposing his sense upon others, it will at last come to be a controversy, not of reason, but of force. Secondly, even if we had an in fallible criterion, nothing would be gained, unless it were by all men recognized as such. If I were secured against the possibility of mistake, mischief and not good would accrue, from imposing my infallible truths upon my neighbor, and requiring his submission independently of any conviction I could produce in his understanding. Man is a being who can never be an object of just approbation, any further than he is independent. He must consult his own reason, draw his own conclusions and conscientiously conform himself to his ideas of propriety. Without this, he will be neither active, nor considerate, nor resolute, nor generous.
Appearance | Assertion | Darkness | Destroy | Lesson | Means | Neglect | Nothing | Public | Reason | Security |
Daniel Gilbert, fully Daniel Todd Gilbert, aka Professor Happiness
The fact that we often judge the pleasure of an experience by its ending can cause us to make some curious choices.
Conversation | Music | People | Price | Public | Time | Words | World |
O credulity, thou hast as many ears as fame has tongues, open to every sound of truth as of falsehood.
Love | Madness | Moderation | Public | Moderation |
The philosophy of the wisest man that ever existed is mainly derived from the act of introspection.
Improvement | Method | Public |
Success or failure depends more upon attitude than upon capacity successful men act as though they have accomplished or are enjoying something. Soon it becomes a reality. Act, look, feel successful, conduct yourself accordingly, and you will be amazed at the positive results.
Chance | Genius | Individual | Men | Mystery | People | Public | Inertia |
Take the happiest man, the one most envied by the world, and in nine cases out of ten his inmost consciousness is one of failure. Either his ideals in the line of his achievements are pitched far higher than the achievements themselves, or else he has secret ideals of which the world knows nothing, and in regard to which he inwardly knows himself to be found wanting.
Authority | Civilization | Cruelty | Discipline | Doubt | Duty | Force | Little | Manliness | Men | Opinion | Public | Question | War | Work | Cruelty | Afraid |
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
They’ve got as much sex appeal as a road accident.
Public |
Media Fearmongering stories tend to always cover somewhat unlikely events. Recently I read of an initiative to require car manufacturers to install sensors that alert drivers when they leave a baby in the backseat accidentally. Along those same lines, there is an off switch for the passenger-side airbag in my car, a device that has caused only 30-40 deaths ever. By comparison, more people die every year from drinking too much water. Should Congress legislate safety shutoff valves for faucets? Should they regulate our water to keep us from drinking too much?