This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
In his anti-Darwinian book... (and eponymously named The Neck of the Giraffe), Francis Hitching tells the story... The need to survive by reaching ever higher for food is, like so many Darwinian explanations of its kind, little more than a post hoc speculation. Hitching is quite correct, but he rebuts a fairy story that Darwin was far too smart to tell - even though the tale later entered our high school texts as a classic case nonetheless.
Plan |
Phony psychics like Uri Geller have had particular success in bamboozling scientists with ordinary stage magic, because only scientists are arrogant enough to think that they always observe with rigorous and objective scrutiny, and therefore could never be so fooled—while ordinary mortals know perfectly well that good performers can always find a way to trick people.
Anton Chekhov wrote that one must not put a loaded rifle on stage if no one is thinking of firing it. Good drama requires spare and purposive action, sensible linking of potential causes with realized effects. Life is much messier; nothing happens most of the time. Millions of Americans (many hotheaded) own rifles (many loaded), but the great majority, thank God, do not go off most of the time. We spend most of real life waiting for Godot, not charging once more unto the breach.
The highest form of success... comes... to the man who does not shrink from danger, from hardship or from bitter toil, and who out of these wins the splendid ultimate triumph.
Ladies know what to guard against, because they read novels that tell them of these tricks.
Let a man (as most men do) rate themselves as the highest Value they can; yet their true Value is no more than it is esteemed by others.
With earnest prayers to all my friends to cherish mutual good will, to promote harmony and conciliation, and above all things to let the love of our country soar above all minor passions, I tender you the assurance of my affectionate esteem and respect.
Present |
A view or form of thought is more objective than another if it relies less on the specifics of the individual's makeup and position in the world, or on the character of the particular type of creature he is.
Character | Difficulty | Fame | Luck | Need | Opinion | Philosophy | Plenty | Position | Public | Receive | Will | Work | World | Luck | Think |
Poor England! Thou art a devoted deer, beset with every ill but that of fear. The nations hunt; all mock thee for a prey; they swarm around thee, and thou stand'st at bay.
Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
In any relationship in which two people become one, the end result is two half people.
World |
W. Eugene Smith, fully William Eugene Smith
Each time I pressed the shutter release it was a shouted condemnation hurled with the hope that the picture might survive through the years, with the hope that they might echo through the minds of men in the future - causing them caution and remembrance and realization.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Russians are too kind, they lack the ability to apply determined methods of revolutionary terror.
Agony |
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
Human thought, flying on the trapezes of the star-filled universe, with mathematics stretched beneath, was like an acrobat working with a net but suddenly noticing that in reality there is no net.
Let us ask ourselves seriously and honestly, “What do I believe after all? What sort of manner of man am I after all? What sort of show should I make after all, if the people round me knew my heart and all my secret thoughts? What sort of show, then, do I already make in the sight of Almighty God, who sees every man exactly as he is?”
Reason, though it cannot excite us to action, is calculated to regulate our conduct, according to the comparative worth it ascribes to different excitements.
We forget that every good that is worth possessing must be paid for in strokes of daily effort. We postpone and postpone until those smiling possibilities are dead... By neglecting the necessary concrete labor, by sparing ourselves the little daily tax, we are positively digging the graves of our higher possibilities.
Consciousness | Mind | Suppression |