This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Henri Poincaré, fully Jules Henri Poincaré
The search for truth should be the goal of our activities; it is the sole end worthy of them. Doubtless we should first bend our efforts to assuage human suffering, but why? Not to suffer is a negative ideal more surely attained by the annihilation of the world. If we wish more and more to free man from material cares, it is that he may be able to employ the liberty obtained in the study and contemplation of truth.
Contemplation | Liberty | Man | Search | Study | Suffering | Truth | World | Contemplation |
Karl Popper, fully Sir Karl Raimund Popper
Instead of encouraging the student to devote himself to his studies for the sake of studying, instead of encouraging in him a real love for his subject and for inquiry, he is encouraged to study for the sake of his personal career; he is led to acquire only such knowledge as is serviceable in getting him over the hurdles which he must clear for the sake of his advancement.
Lord Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
In order to judge of the inside of others, study your own; for men in general are very much alike, and though one has one prevailing passion, and another has another, yet their operations are much the same; and whatever engages or disgusts, pleases, or offends you in others, will, mutatis mutandis, engage, disgust, please, or offend others in you.
Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
One of the commonest mistakes and one of the costliest thinking that success is due to some genius, some magic - something or other which we do not possess. Success is generally due to holding one, and failure to letting go. You decide to learn a language, study music, take a course of reading, train yourself physically. Will it be success or failure? It depends upon how much pluck and perseverance that word “decide” contains. The decision that nothing can overrule, the grip that nothing can detach will bring success.
Decision | Failure | Genius | Language | Magic | Music | Nothing | Perseverance | Reading | Study | Success | Thinking | Will | Failure | Learn |
Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
There are more men ennobled by study than by nature.
Ovid, formally Publius Ovidius Naso NULL
The faithful study of the liberal arts humanizes character.
The more we study the more we discover our ignorance.
The study of history is in the truest sense an education and a training for political life... The most instructive, or rather the only, method of learning to bear with dignity the vicissitudes of fortune is to recall the catastrophes of others.
Dignity | Education | Fortune | History | Learning | Life | Life | Method | Sense | Study | Training | Vicissitudes |
Let no one when young delay to study philosophy, nor when he is old grow weary of his study. For no one can come too early or too late to secure the health of his soul.
The end of study should be to direct the mind towards the enunciation of sound and correct judgments on all matters that come before it.
Is not prayer also a study of truth – a sally of the soul into the unfound infinite? No man ever prayed heartily without learning something. But when a faithful thinker, resolute to detach every object from personal relations and see it in the light of thought, shall at the same time kindle science with the fire of the holiest affections, then will God go forth anew into the creation.
God | Learning | Light | Man | Object | Prayer | Science | Soul | Study | Thought | Time | Truth | Will | God |
Isaac Newton, fully Sir Isaac Newton
The existence of a Being endowed with intelligence and wisdom is a necessary inference from a study of celestial mechanics.
Existence | Intelligence | Study | Wisdom |
Benjamin Collins Brodie, fully Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, 1st Baronet
Humility leads to the highest distinction, because it leads to self-improvement. Study your own characters; endeavor to learn and to supply your own deficiencies; never assume to yourselves qualities which you do not possess; combine all this with energy and activity, and you cannot predicate of yourselves, nor can others predicate of you, at what point you may arrive at last.
Distinction | Energy | Humility | Improvement | Qualities | Self | Self-improvement | Study | Learn |
T. S. Eliot, fully Thomas Sterns Eliot
No one can become really educated without having pursued some study in which they took no interest. For it is part of education to interest ourselves in subjects for which we have no aptitude.
No profit grows where is no pleasure taken; in brief, sir, study what you most affect.