This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
Wow,' said Zaphod Beeblebrox to the Heart of Gold. There wasn't much else he could say. He said it again because he knew it would annoy the press. 'Wow.' The crowd turned their faces back toward him expectantly. He winked at Trillian, who raised her eyebrows and widened her eyes at him. She knew what he was about to say and thought him a terrible show-off. 'That is really amazing.' he said. 'That really is truly amazing. That is so amazingly amazing I think I'd like to steal it.' A marvelous presidential quote, absolutely true to form. The crowd laughed appreciativley, the newsman gleefully punched buttons on their Sub-Etha News-Matics and the President grinned. As he grinned his heart screamed unbearably and he fingered the small Paralyso-Matic bomb that nestled quietly in his pocket. Finally he could bear it no more. He lifted his heads up to the sky, let out a wild whoop in major thirds, threw the bomb to the ground and ran forward through the sea of suddenly frozen beaming smiles.
Good |
The challenge of reporting is to continually come up with new information on the issues on which you’re reporting. This can be extremely difficult if not impossible when dealing with sudden emergencies. Most terrorist attacks fit this pattern. Initially, the media is blindsided by the event. Eyewitness reports start coming in, the vast majority of which are inaccurate. Media outlets don’t have the option to remain silent about breaking news, so having nothing else to talk about, they repeat the rumors. Unfortunately, they don’t realize that people take rumor as fact from mainstream news outlets, or they do realize it but feel they have plausible deniability by reporting rumors as rumor rather than fact.
Government | Right | Thought | Government | Thought |
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
They wouldn’t even lift a finger to save their own grandmothers from the Ravenous Bugblatter Beast of Traal without orders signed in triplicate, sent in, sent back, queried, lost, found, subjected to public inquiry, lost again, and finally buried in soft peat for three months and recycled as firelighters.
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
There's always a moment when you start to fall out of love, whether it's with a person or an idea or a cause, even if it's one you only narrate to yourself years after the event: a tiny thing, a wrong word, a false note, which means that things can never be quite the same again.
White House pressrooms (no matter which political party is in charge) toss out a huge dump of bad news around 5:00 PM every Friday. Which as far as I can tell is at least five hours after the media corps has clocked out for a three-martini lunch with no intention of coming back to work until Monday.
What we call generosity is for the most part only the vanity of giving; and we exercise it because we are more fond of that vanity than of the thing we give.
Generosity | Order |
Now my love is thaw'd; which, like a waxen image 'gainst a fire, bears no impression of the thing it was.
Duke Ellington, fully Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington
I’m sure critics have their purpose, and they’re supposed to do what they do, but sometimes they get a little carried away with what they think someone should have done, rather than concerning themselves with what he did.
Time |
Murasaki Shikibu, aka Lady Murasaki
An attendant came up, bowing deeply. The white flowers far off yonder are known as 'evening faces, he said. A very human sort of name--and what a shabby place they have picked to bloom in.It was as the man said. The neighborhood was a poor one, chiefly of small houses. Some were leaning precariously, and there were evening faces at the sagging eaves. A hapless sort of flower. Pick one off for me, will you? The man went inside the raised gate and broke off a flower. A pretty little girl in long, unlined yellow trousers of raw silk came out through a sliding door that seemed too good for the surroundings. Beckoning to the man, she handed him a heavily scented white fan. Put it on this. It isn't much of a fan, but then it isn't much of a flower either.
Man | Order | Public | Resentment | Will |
If you steal, steal a camel, and if you love, love someone as beautiful as the moon.
In the first place, when there is a policy of intentional aggression, inspired by a desire to get possession of the territory or the trade of another country, right or wrong, a pretext is always sought.
Individual | Man | Men | Order | Theories |
No matter who, what part of the world we live, live, until a sense of a lack of deep down we are moving. It's a basic thing we are afraid of not getting lost it in the back. Bilenimizde what is missing very little indeed.
Change | Childhood | Life | Life | Religion | Sense | Time | Truth | Understanding | Woman | World |
Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen
Jocelyn’s bedroom curtains swelled a little over the noisy window. The room was stuffy and – insupportable, so that she did not know where to turn. The house, fingered outwardly by the wind that dragged unceasingly past the walls, was, within, a solid silence: silence heavy as flesh. Jocelyn dropped her wrap to the floor, then watched how its feathered edges crept a little. A draught came in, under her bathroom door.
Friend |
Nearly the entire Republican Congressional delegation has taken money from Tom DeLay, Washington's leading influence peddler. He's ground zero in Congress' culture of corruption. Apparently this hasn't dawned on them yet, or they don't care. Most of them are still hanging on to the money.
Need | People | Philosophy | Position | Search |
Elizabeth Bowen, Full name Elizabeth Dorothea Cole Bowen
The chocolate gates were streaked a bright green from neglect and opened reluctantly, leaving green dust on the hands. In autumn when the new tenants arrived the drive was matted over with lime leaves that sent up a sodden odor, deadening the footsteps.
But, on the other hand, everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe -- a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is indeed quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive.
Conscience | Reading |
Elizabeth Dole, fully Mary Elizabeth Alexander Hanford "Liddy" Dole
Women share with men the need for personal success, even the taste of power, and no longer are we willing to satisfy those needs through the achievements of surrogates, whether husbands, children, or merely role models.