This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Aristotle said that all creative people are dissatisfied because they are looking for happiness in perfection and seeking for things that do not exist. This is one of the hopes of the world. There is no progress where people are satisfied. Discontent is perhaps the most potent challenge to improvement.
Challenge | Discontent | Improvement | People | Perfection | Progress | Wisdom | World | Happiness |
The cure for "Materialism" is to have enough for everybody and to spare. When people are sure of having what they need they cease to think about it.
It must be terrible to have to live among people and not like human beings.
Anatole France, pen name of Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault
There are very honest people who do not think that they have had a bargain unless they have cheated a merchant.
Anatole France, pen name of Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault
If 50 million people say a foolish thing, it is still a foolish thing.
When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.
Anatole France, pen name of Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault
A people living under the... threat of war and invasion is very easy to govern. It demands no social reforms. It doesn't not haggle over armaments and military expenditures. It pays without discussion, it ruins itself, and that is a fine thing for the financiers and manufacturers for whom patriotic terrors are an abundant source of gain.
Discussion | People | War | Wisdom |
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
Taboos are very ancient prohibitions which at one time were forced upon a generation of primitive people by an earlier generation. These prohibitions concerned actions for which there existed a strong desire. The prohibitions maintain themselves from generation to generation, perhaps only as the results of a tradition set up by paternal and social authority.
Real leaders are ordinary people with extraordinary determinations.
The proper function of a government is to make it easy for people to do good, and difficult for them to do evil.
Evil | Good | Government | People | Wisdom | Government |
The eyes of other people are the eyes that ruin us. If all but myself were blind, I should want neither fine clothes, fine houses, nor fine furniture.
What is best for the people is what they do for themselves.
Those who are versed in the history of their country, in the history of the human race, must know that rigorous state prosecutions have always preceded the era of convulsion; and this era, I fear, will be accelerated by the folly and madness of our rulers. If the people are discontented, the proper mode of quieting their discontent is, not by instituting rigorous and sanguinary prosecutions, but by redressing their wrongs and conciliating their affections. Courts of justice, indeed, may be called in to the aid of ministerial vengeance; but if once the purity of their proceedings is suspected, they will cease to be objects of reverence to the nation; they will degenerate into empty and expensive pageantry, and become the partial instruments of vexatious oppression. Whatever may become of me, my principles will last forever. Individuals may perish; but truth is eternal. The rude blasts of tyranny may blow from every quarter; but freedom is that hardy plant which will survive the tempest and strike an everlasting root into the most unfavorable soil.
Aid | Discontent | Era | Eternal | Folly | Freedom | History | Madness | People | Principles | Purity | Reverence | Truth | Tyranny | Will | Wisdom |
Young people tell what they are doing, old people what they have done and fools what they wish to do.
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 |
David Frost, fully Sir David Paradine Frost
Television is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your living room by people you wouldn't have in your home.
Invention | People | Television | Wisdom |
Half of the secret of getting along with people is consideration of their views; the other half is toleration in one's own views.
Consideration | People | Toleration | Wisdom |