This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa
Tell me what company you keep and I'll tell you what you are (thou art).
Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman
In the field of medical care. We have a socialist-communist system of distributing medical care. Instead of letting people hire their own physicians and pay them, no one pays his or her own medical bills. Instead, there's a third party payment system. It is a communist system and it has a communist result. Despite this, we've had numerous miracles in medical science. From the discovery of penicillin, to new surgical techniques, to MRIs and CAT scans, the last 30 or 40 years have been a period of miraculous change in medical science. On the other hand, we've seen costs skyrocket. Nobody is happy: physicians don't like it, patients don't like it. Why? Because none of them are responsible for themselves. You no longer have a situation in which a patient chooses a physician, receives a service, gets charged, and pays for it. There is no direct relation between the patient and the physician. The physician is an employee of an insurance company or an employee of the government. Today, a third party pays the bills. As a result, no one who visits the doctor asks what the charge is going to be—somebody else is going to take care of that. The end result is third party payment and, worst of all, third party treatment
Care | Change | Discovery | Miracles | People | System | Discovery |
It is better to sit alone than in company with the bad, and it is better still to sit with the good than alone. It is better to speak to a seeker of knowledge than to remain silent, but silence is better than idle words.
Acquire knowledge, it enables its professor to distinguish right from wrong; it lights the way to heaven. It is our friend in the desert, our company in solitude and companion when friendless. It guides us to happiness, it sustains us in misery, it is an ornament amongst friends and an armor against enemies.
Distinguish | Friend | Right | Solitude | Friends |
Every company has room for the man who has a definite plan of action which is to the advantage of that company.
Nikolai Gogol, fully Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol or Nikolay Vasilyevich Gogol
Mind you learn your lessons, Pavlusha, don't play the fool and don't get into scrapes, but spare no pain to please your teachers and superiors. So long as you please your superiors it does not matter if you are no good at learning and God has not endowed you with talent: you will still go far and outstrip the others. Do not keep company with your schoolfellows; they will teach you no good; but if you must, then choose those that are richer so that when the occasion arises they may be useful to you. Do not open your purse too freely to others, but rather conduct yourself in such a manner that others will open their freely to you, and, most important, husband your money and save every copeck: of all things in the world, money is the most dependable. A playmate or friend will lead you a merry dance and will be the first to betray you in times of trouble, but a copeck will never betray you, whatever trouble you might be in. With that copeck you can do everything and achieve everything in this world.
Conduct | Friend | God | Good | Husband | Learning | Money | Pain | Play | Teach | Will | Trouble | God | Learn |
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
Environment is stronger than will power. If you want to be spiritual, seek good company and don’t mix with those whose bad habits may wrongly influence you. Be always with people who inspire you; surround yourself with people who lift you up.
Pachacutec Inca Yupanqui, sometimes referred to as Pachacuti
Lost in memories of urban decay, we are leaving behind our gluttonous ways and singing songs into the eternal sky even as we wander the world alone, carrying flags of fathers who never loved us billowing over our shoulders, like new angels soaring into heaven wings thrown earthward feeling the company of all of us- pioneers of solitude- even as we wander the world alone.
When you keep company with an eminent master, his qualities will automatically influence you.
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
Do not keep company with people unless you are prepared to give them your full attention.
People |
Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker
The most valuable assets of a 20th-century company were its production equipment. The most valuable asset of a 21st-century institution, whether business or nonbusiness, will be its knowledge workers and their productivity.
Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker
Ideas are somewhat like babies--they are born small, immature, and shapeless. They are promise rather than fulfillment. In the innovative company executives do not say, "This is a damn-fool idea." Instead they ask, "What would be needed to make this embryonic, half-baked, foolish idea into something that makes sense, that is an opportunity for us?"
Opportunity | Promise |
Unless the distant goals of meaning, greatness, and destiny are addressed, we can't make an intelligent decision about what to do tomorrow morning -- much less set strategy for a company or for a human life. Nothing is more practical than for people to deepen themselves. The more you understand the human condition, the more effective you are as a businessperson. Human depth makes business sense.
Business | Decision | Destiny | Goals | Nothing | People | Tomorrow | Business | Understand |
Phyllis Diller, born Phyllis Ada Driver
My husband once worked for a company that had a merit pay system. After six months they told him that he owed the company money.
Imagine that the keeper of a huge, strong beast notices what makes it angry, what it desires, how it has to be approached and handled, the circumstances and the conditions under which it becomes particularly fierce or calm, what provokes its typical cries, and what tones of voice make it gentle or wild. Once he's spent enough time in the creature's company to acquire all this information, he calls it knowledge, forms it into a systematic branch of expertise, and starts to teach it, despite total ignorance, in fact, about which of the creature's attitudes and desires is commendable or deplorable, good or bad, moral or immoral. His usage of all these terms simply conforms to the great beast's attitudes, and he describes things as good or bad according to its likes and dislikes, and can't justify his usage of the terms any further, but describes as right and good the things which are merely indispensable, since he hasn't realized and can't explain to anyone else how vast a gulf there is between necessity and goodness.
Circumstances | Enough | Good | Justify | Necessity | Right | Teach | Time |
R. D. Laing, fully Ronald David Laing
If you have passion for what you do, the company you keep, the life you live, it will be reflected in whatever you create. Passion is like that; it springs out, jumps, unpredictable and unplanned, into everything we touch. If it doesn't, others know. Passion can't be faked and it can't be manufactured. Which is why it is so priceless.
People are stunned to hear that one company has data files on 185 million Americans.
Microsoft doesn't respect the antitrust laws, and it has amply demonstrated that it can't be trusted. The company has shown its contempt for any court-imposed changes in its conduct. If the government ends the antitrust case by seeking changes in its conduct, but not in its structure, Microsoft can be expected to creatively evade the thrust of such agreements.
Contempt | Ends | Government | Respect | Government | Respect |
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
A man cannot comprehend spiritual things with his ordinary intelligence. To understand them he must live in the company of holy persons. You learn to feel the pulse by living with a physician.
Man | Learn | Understand |
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
Whenever you have leisure, go into solitude for a day or two. At that time don't have any relations with the outside world and don't hold any conversation with worldly people on worldly affairs. You must live either in solitude or in the company of holy men.