This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Brooks Atkinson, fully Justin Brooks Atkinson
People everywhere enjoy believing things that they know are not true. It spares them the ordeal of thinking for themselves and taking responsibility for what they know.
People | Responsibility | Thinking | Wisdom |
There is a single reason why 99 out of 100 average business men never become leaders. That is their unwillingness to pay the price of responsibility. By the price of responsibility I mean hard driving, continual work... the courage to make decisions, to stand the gaff... the scourging honesty of never fooling yourself about yourself... And the grooves that lead to the heights are not made between nine and five. They are burned in by the midnight oil.
Business | Character | Courage | Honesty | Men | Price | Reason | Responsibility | Work | Business |
Cecil Beaton, fully Sir Cecil Walter Hardy Beaton
Be daring, be different, be impractical, be anything that will assert integrity of purpose and imaginative vision against the play-it-safers, the creatures of the commonplace, the slaves of the ordinary.
Daring | Integrity | Play | Purpose | Purpose | Vision | Will | Wisdom |
Pearl S. Buck, fully Pearl Sydenstricker Buck, also known by her Chinese name Sai Zhenzhu
Effeminacy is not a feminine possession any more than a masculine one. Men or women become effeminate when privilege and lack of responsibility have made them weak. The true female creature, unspoiled, is tough, persistent, and strong.
Men | Responsibility | Wisdom | Privilege |
Sin with the multitude, and your responsibility and guilt are as great and as truly personal, as if you alone had done the wrong.
Guilt | Responsibility | Sin | Wisdom | Wrong |
All children talk with integrity up to about the age of five, when they fall victim to the influences of the adult world and mass entertainment. It is then that they begin, all unconsciously, to become plausible actors. The product of this process is known as maturity, or you and me.
Age | Children | Entertainment | Integrity | Wisdom | World | Victim |
Paul Géraldy, pen name of Paul Lefevre
What we call love is the desire to awaken and to keep awake in another's body, heart and mind, the responsibility of flattering, in our place, the self of which we are not very sure.
Body | Desire | Heart | Love | Mind | Responsibility | Self | Wisdom |
J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
So many new ideas are at first strange and horrible though ultimately valuable that a very heavy responsibility rests upon those who would prevent their dissemination.
Ideas | Responsibility | Wisdom |
Arianna Huffington, born Arianna Stassinopoulos
Both these perspectives - that the government is responsible for us, and that we are responsible only for ourselves - are dehumanizing. To be fully human, we can neither give up responsibility for ourselves nor refuse responsibility for others. Indeed, we need to redefine individual responsibility to include social responsibility.
Government | Individual | Need | Responsibility | Wisdom | Government |
John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
The function and responsibility of the President is to set before the American people the unfinished business, the things we must do if we are going to succeed as a nation.
Business | People | Responsibility | Wisdom |
John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
Let us not seek the Republican answer or the Democratic answer, but the right answer. Let us not seek to fix the blame for the past. Let us accept our own responsibility for the future.