This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Virginia Gildersleeve, fully Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve
The ability to think straight, some knowledge of the past, some vision of the future, some skill to do useful service some urge to fit that service into the well-being of the community - these are the most vital things education must try to produce.
Ability | Education | Future | Knowledge | Past | Service | Skill | Vision | Wisdom | Think |
If a man empties his purse into his head, no man can take it away from him. An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest.
Buckminster Fuller, fully Richard Buckminster "Bucky" Fuller
Pollution is nothing but resources we're not harvesting. We allow them to disperse because we've been ignorant of their value. But if we got onto a planning planning basis, the government could trap pollutants in the stacks and spillages and get back more money than this would cost out of the stockpiled chemistries they'd be collecting. Margaret Mead gets cross with me when I talk like this because she says people are doing some very important things because they're worried and excited and I'm going to make them relax and stop doing those things. But we're dealing with something much bigger than we're accustomed to understanding, we're on a very large course indeed. You speak of racism, for example, and I tell you that there's no such thing as race. The point is that racism is the product of tribalism and ignorance and both are falling victim to communications and world-around literacy.
Cost | Government | Ignorance | Important | Money | Nothing | People | Wisdom | Government | Victim |
Some people speak as if hypocrites were confined to religion; but they are everywhere; people pretending to wealth when they have not a sixpence, assuming knowledge of which they are ignorant; shamming a culture they are far removed from adopting opinions they don't hold.
J. B. S. Haldane, fully John Burdon Sanderson Haldane
A single mind can acquire a fair knowledge of the whole field of science, and find plenty of time to spare for ordinary human affairs. Not many people take the trouble to do so. But without a knowledge of science one cannot understand current events. That is why our modern our modern literature and art are mostly so unreal.
Art | Events | Knowledge | Literature | Mind | People | Plenty | Science | Time | Wisdom | Trouble | Art | Understand |
The shaman typically experiences ineffable joy in what he sees, an awe of the beautiful and mysterious worlds that open before him... He is a self-reliant explorer of the endless mansions of a magnificent hidden universe. Finally, he brings back his discoveries to build his knowledge and help others.
There is one type of feeling which is above all important to foster in childhood. Children have naturally an abundant faculty for wonder and reverence. There are so many books, so many radio and television hours, so many encyclopedias and, alas, so many teachers whose aim is to import knowledge quickly and easily without any element of that faculty which the Greeks said was the beginning of philosophy – Wonder. It is strange that an age which has discovered so many marvels in the universe should be so conspicuously lacking in the sense of wonder.
Age | Beginning | Books | Childhood | Children | Important | Knowledge | Philosophy | Reverence | Sense | Television | Universe | Wisdom | Wonder |
A people’s literature is the great textbook for real knowledge of them. The writings of the day show the quality of the people as no historical reconstruction can.
Day | Knowledge | Literature | People | Wisdom |
Victor G. Heiser, fully Victor George Heiser
As knowledge with regard to the effects of food upon man increases, it is more than conceivable that the races that first avail themselves of the new values of nutrition may decrease the handicaps of disease, lengthen their lives, and so become the leaders of the future.