This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Babbage, even with remarkably generous support for his time, could not produce his great arithmetical machine. His idea was sound enough, but construction and maintenance costs were then too heavy. Had a Pharaoh been given detailed and explicit designs of an automobile, and had he understood them completely, it would have taxed the resources of his kingdom to have fashioned the thousands of parts for a single car, and that car would have broken down on the first trip to Giza.
My dear fellow citizens: For forty years you have heard from my predecessors on this day different variations of the same theme: how our country flourished, how many millions of tons of steel we produced, how happy we all were, how we trusted our government, and what bright perspectives were unfolding in front of us. I assume you did not propose me for this office so that I, too, would lie to you. . . We live in a contaminated moral environment. We have fallen morally ill because we became used to saying one thing and thinking another. We have learned not to believe in anything, to ignore each other, to care only about ourselves. Notions such as love, friendship, compassion, humility, or forgiveness have lost their depth and dimensions. . . The previous regime . . . reduced man to a means of production and nature to a tool of production. Thus it attacked both their very essence and their mutual relationship. It reduced gifted and autonomous people to nuts and bolts in some monstrously huge, noisy, and stinking machine.
Doubt | Mind | Organization | Leadership |
One who is angry does not distinguish between what can be spoken and what is unspeakable. There is nothing which an angry man cannot do meaning he can commit any crime. There is nothing unspeakable for him. Fire cannot act on fire.
Man | Melancholy | Mind |
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
It is sad that goodness does not always accompany the force.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
The mind is the soul's eye, not its source of power. That lies in the heart, in other words, in the passions.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
If a man is endowed with a noble and courageous soul, if he is painstaking, proud, ambitious, without meanness, of a profound a deep-seated intelligence, I dare assert that he lacks nothing to be neglected by the great and men in high office, who fear, more than other men, those whom they cannot dominate.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
I'm always on time for my appointment, so I can leave quickly.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
The burning ambition exile the pleasures of youth to govern alone.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
The mind reaches great heights only by spurts.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
The mind of man is more intuitive than logical, and comprehends more than it can coordinate.
Mind |
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
If our friends do us a service, we think they owe it to us by their title of friend. We never think that they do not owe us their friendship.
Children | Dependence | Energy | Glory | Judgment | Love | Memory | Mind | Order | Success | Teach | Truth |
Tommaso Campanella, baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella
But the accusation and witnesses are produced in the presence of the judge and Power; the accused person makes his defense, and he is immediately acquitted or condemned by the judge; and if he appeals to the triumvirate, on the following day he is acquitted or condemned.
The impulses which flow in the arm nerves of a typist convey to her fingers the translated information which reaches her eye or ear, in order that the fingers may be caused to strike the proper keys. Might not these currents be intercepted, either in the original form in which information is conveyed to the brain, or in the marvelously metamorphosed form in which they then proceed to the hand?
Association | Memory | Mind | Work | Association |
The responsibility for the creation of new scientific knowledge — and for most of its application — rests on that small body of men and women who understand the fundamental laws of nature and are skilled in the techniques of scientific research. We shall have rapid or slow advance on any scientific frontier depending on the number of highly qualified and trained scientists exploring it.
The scene changes but the aspirations of men of good will persist.
Body | Knowledge | Men | Nature | Responsibility | Understand |
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
The lack of ambition, in large, is sometimes the source of many vices; their duties breed contempt, arrogance, cowardice and weakness.
Mind |
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
Take it on the mercy of God to punish unnecessarily.
Ignorance | Industry | Intelligence | Knowledge | Men |
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
The mind does not need to know.