This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
This is a good place, he said. There's a lot of liquor, I agreed.
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
Economists themselves, like most specialists, normally suffer from a kind of metaphysical blindness, assuming that theirs is a science of absolute and invariable truths, without any presuppositions.
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
How can we disarm greed and envy? Perhaps by being much less greedy and envious ourselves; perhaps by resisting the temptation of letting our luxuries become needs; and perhaps by even scrutinizing our needs to see if they cannot be simplified and reduced.
Compensation | Leisure | Sacrifice | Work |
If we were talking to you on your first day here we would say, "Welcome to planet Earth. There is nothing that you cannot be or do or have. And your work here, your lifetime career is...to seek joy."
Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel
A society for investigating nature and ascertaining truth cannot celebrate its commemoration day more fittingly than by a discussion of its highest general problems.
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
It takes a good deal of courage to say "no" to the fashions and fascinations of the age and to question the presuppositions of a civilization which appears destined to conquer the whole world; the requisite strength can be derived only from deep convictions. If it were derived from nothing more than fear of the future, it would be likely to disappear at the decisive moment.
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
No one is really working for peace unless he is working primarily for the restoration of wisdom.
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
To press non-economic values into the framework of the economic calculus, economists use the method of cost/benefit analysis. This is generally thought to be an enlightened and progressive development, as it is at least an attempt to take account of costs and benefits which might otherwise be disregarded altogether. In fact, however, it is a procedure by which the higher is reduced to the level of the lower and the priceless is given a price. It can therefore never serve to clarify the situation and lead to an enlightened decision. All it can do is lead to self-deception or the deception of others; all one has to do to obtain the desired results is to impute suitable values to the immeasurable costs and benefits. The logical absurdity, however, is not the greatest fault of the undertaking: with is worse, and destructive of civilization, is the pretense that everything has a price or, in other words, that money is the highest of all values.
Compassion | Evil | Little | Work |
Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger
Democritus introduces the intellect having an argument with the senses about what is 'real'.
Hypothesis | Indispensable | Individual | Little | Means | Nature | Nothing | Position | Question | Science | Will |
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
Is it not evident that our current methods of production are already eating into the very substance of industrial man?
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
Since there is now increasing evidence of environmental deterioration, particularly in living nature, the entire outlook and methodology of economics is being called into question. The study of economics is too narrow and too fragmentary to lead to valid insights, unless complemented and completed by a study of meta-economics.
Cooperation | Nature | Public | Will | Work |
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
Social cohesion, cooperation, mutual respect, and above all, self-respect, courage in the face of adversity, and the ability to bear hardship—all this and much else disintegrates and disappears when these "psychological structures" are gravely damaged. A man is destroyed by the inner conviction of uselessness. No amount of economic growth can compensate for such losses—though this may be an idle reflection, since economic growth is normally inhibited by them.
Work |
Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel
In many of these languages there are numerals only for one, two, and three: no Australian language counts beyond four. Very many wild tribes can count no further than ten or twenty, whereas some very clever dogs have been made to count up to forty and even beyond sixty.
Existence | Faith | Force | History | Knowledge | Necessity | Nothing | Position | Science | Work |
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
The effort needed to sustain a way of life which seeks to attain the optimal pattern of consumption is likely to be much smaller than the effort needed to sustain a drive for maximum consumption.
Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara
The first duty of a revolutionary is to be educated.
Good | Intention | Journey | Means | Space | Theoretical | Think |
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
Can we establish an ideology, or whatever you like to call it, which insists that the educated have taken upon themselves an obligation and have not simply acquired a "passport to privilege"? Â…It is, you might well say, an elementary matter of justice.
Fanaticism | Means | Objectives |