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.
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.
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
Take it on the mercy of God to punish unnecessarily.
Ignorance | Industry | Intelligence | Knowledge | Men |
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
Neither the gifts nor the blows of fortune equal those of nature.
Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear, ready-made with a mesh of associative trails running through them, ready to be dropped into the memex and there amplified. The lawyer has at his touch the associated opinions and decisions of his whole experience, and of the experience of friends and authorities. The patent attorney has on call the millions of issued patents, with familiar trails to every point of his client's interest. The physician, puzzled by its patient's reactions, strikes the trail established in studying an earlier similar case, and runs rapidly through analogous case histories, with side references to the classics for the pertinent anatomy and histology. The chemist, struggling with the synthesis of an organic compound, has all the chemical literature before him in his laboratory, with trails following the analogies of compounds, and side trails to their physical and chemical behavior.
Logic | Opportunity | Thought | Time | Will | Teacher | Thought |
Trofim Lysenko, fully Trofim Denisovich Lysenko
And the more profoundly the science of biology reveals the laws of the life and development of living bodies, the more effective is the science of agronomy.
Hsuan Hua, aka An Tzu and Tu Lun
When you no longer make discriminations, your wisdom can appear. Your wisdom will manifest in direct proportion to the degree you have cast out discriminations. In the minds of most people, there are so many discriminations that they entirely fill the field of the eighth consciousness, which is basically pure, with filth and defilements. Once you are rid of all that garbage, your wisdom will appear.
Trofim Lysenko, fully Trofim Denisovich Lysenko
Agricultural practice served Darwin as the material basis for the elaboration of his theory of Evolution, which explained the natural causation of the adaptation we see in the structure of the organic world. That was a great advance in the knowledge of living nature.
Knowledge | Theoretical |
Tommaso Campanella, baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella
When their women have brought forth children, they suckle and rear them in temples set apart for all. They give milk for two years or more as the physician orders. After that time the weaned child is given into the charge of the mistresses, if it is a female, and to the masters, if it is a male. And then with other young children they are pleasantly instructed in the alphabet, and in the knowledge of the pictures, and in running, walking, and wrestling; also in the historical drawings, and in languages; and they are adorned with a suitable garment of different colors.
In its influence on the soul, error has been compared to a magnet concealed near the ship's compass. - As in the latter case, the more favorable the winds, and the greater the diligence and skill in working the ship, the more rapidly will it be speeded on in a wrong course; and so in the former, the greater the struggle for safety, the more speedy the progress to ruin.
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
When Muslim radicals and fundamentalists look at the West, they see only the openness that makes us, in their eyes, decadent and promiscuous. They see only the openness that has produced Britney Spears and Janet Jackson. They do not see, and do not want to see, the openness - the freedom of thought and inquiry - that has made us powerful, the openness that has produced Bill Gates and Sally Ride. They deliberately define it all as decadence. Because if openness, women's empowerment, and freedom of thought and inquiry are the real sources of the West's economic strength, then the Arab-Muslim world would have to change. And the fundamentalists and extremists do not want to change.
Competition | Force | Knowledge | Work |
Thomas J. Watson, fully Thomas John Watson, Sr.
Wisdom is the power to put our time and our knowledge to the proper use.
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
The fact that no two major countries have done to war since they both got McDonald’s is partly due to economic integration, but it is also due to the presence of American power and America’s willingness to use that power against those who would threaten the system of globalization–from Iraq to North Korea. The hidden hand of the market will never work without a hidden fist.[...] McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell Douglas, the designer of the US Air Force F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps the world safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies to flourish is called the US Army, Air Force, Navy and Marine Corps. And these fighting forces and institutions are paid for by American taxpayer dollars.
Age | Important | Influence | Parents | Principles | Thinking | Time | Woman | Teacher |
Thomas J. Watson, fully Thomas John Watson, Sr.
Within us all there are wells of thought and dynamos of energy which are not suspected until emergencies arise. Then often times we find that it is comparatively simple to double or triple our former capacities and to amaze ourselves by the results a
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
It has always been my view that terrorism is not spawned by the poverty of money; it is spawned by the poverty of dignity. Humiliation is the most underestimated force in international relations and in human relations. It is when people or nations are humiliated that they really lash out and engage in extreme violence.