This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Gersonides, abbreviation of first letters as RalBaG from Levi ben Gerson NULL
By means of rational thought we have reached the opinion that God knows in advance only the possibilities open to a man in his freedom, not the particular decisions he will make.. It is the opinion of our religion that God never changes... and yet we find in the words of the prophets that God does repent over some things... It is impossible to solve this contradiction if we adopt the view that God knows particular things as particulars.
Contradiction | Freedom | God | Man | Means | Opinion | Religion | Thought | Will | Wisdom | Words | God | Thought |
Indignation boils my blood at the thought of the heritage we are throwing away; at the thought that, with few exceptions, the fight for freedom is left to the poor, forlorn and defenseless, and to the few radicals and revolutionaries who would make use of liberty to destroy, rather than to maintain, American institutions.
Destroy | Freedom | Indignation | Liberty | Thought | Wisdom | Thought |
The essence of music is revelation... There is something marvelous in music. I might almost say it is, in itself, a marvel. Its position is somewhere between the region of thought and that of a phenomena; a glimmering medium between mind and matter, related to both and yet differing from either. Spiritual, and yet requiring rhythm; material, and yet independent of space... It is spirit, yet in need of time, rhythm; it is matter, yet independent of space.
Mind | Music | Need | Phenomena | Position | Revelation | Space | Spirit | Thought | Time | Wisdom | Thought |
Julius Charles Hare (1795-1855) and his brother Augustus William Hare
I have ever gained the most profit, and the most pleasure also, from the books which have made me think the most: and, when the difficulties have once been overcome, these are the books which have struck the deepest root, not only in my memory and understanding, but likewise in my affections.
Books | Memory | Pleasure | Understanding | Wisdom | Think |
Music is for the betterment and enrichment of the individual, just as education and reading are. When people come together to play music as they do to play bridge, civilization will have taken its longest stride forward since the beginning of time. Music is something to live with always, and children should be taught to regard it as a close and inalienable friend.
Beginning | Children | Civilization | Education | Friend | Individual | Music | People | Play | Reading | Regard | Time | Will | Wisdom |
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was.
Books | Ecstasy | Good | People | Reading | Remorse | Sorrow | Will | Wisdom |
What has become of the descendants of the irresponsible adventurers, the scapegrace sons, the bond servants, the redemptionists and the indentured maidens, the undesirables, and even the criminals, which made up, not all, of course, but nevertheless a considerable part of, the earliest emigrants to these virgin countries? They have become the leaders of the thought of the world, the vanguard in the march of progress, the inspirers of liberty, the creators of national prosperity, the sponsors of universal education and enlightenment.
Education | Enlightenment | Liberty | Progress | Prosperity | Thought | Wisdom | World | Thought |
Do give books - religious or otherwise - for Christmas. They're never fattening, seldom sinful, and permanently personal.
Somewhere among the youth of today are minds capable of discovering ways to world peace, ways to deeper and more fulfilling lives, ways to new appreciations of beauty in art or literature or music, just as there have been minds capable of splitting the atom. Ours is the task of breaking through the thought barrier which keeps our young people from realizing their creative potentiality.
Art | Beauty | Literature | Music | Peace | People | Thought | Wisdom | World | Youth | Youth | Art | Beauty | Thought |
But it is not hard work which is dreary; it is superficial work. That is always boring in the long run, and it has always seemed strange to me that in our endless discussions about education so little stress is ever laid on the pleasure of becoming an educated person, the enormous interest it adds to life. To be able to be caught up into the world of thought - that is to be educated.
Education | Life | Life | Little | Pleasure | Thought | Wisdom | Work | World | Thought |