This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Most of us spend too much time on the last twenty-four hours and too little on the last six thousand years.
Most history is guessing, and the rest is prejudice.
Ability | History | Revolution | Strength | Wealth |
Werner Heisenberg, fully Werner Karl Heisenberg
Any concepts or words which have been formed in the past through the interplay between the world and ourselves are not really sharply defined with respect to their meaning: that is to say, we do not know exactly how far they will help us in finding our way in the world. We often know that they can be applied to a wide range of inner or outer experience, but we practically never know precisely the limits of their applicability. This is true even of the simplest and most general concepts like existence and space and time. Therefore, it will never be possible by pure reason to arrive at some absolute truth. The concepts may, however, be sharply defined with regard to their connections... a group of connected concepts may be applicable to a wide field of experience and will help us to find our way in this field. But the limits of the applicability will in general not be known, at least not completely.
Ideas |
Wernher von Braun, fully Wernher Magnus Maximilian, Freiherr von Braun
It [space travel] will free man from his remaining chains, the chains of gravity which still tie him to this planet. It will open to him the gates of heaven.
Age | Bible | Destroy | Enough | God | Good | History | Knowledge | Law | Moral law | Nature | Power | Question | Revelation | Science | Space | God | Bible | Learn |
Werner Heisenberg, fully Werner Karl Heisenberg
In the philosophy of Democritus the atoms are eternal and indestructible units of matter, they can never be transformed into each other. With regard to this question modern physics takes a definite stand against the materialism of Democritus and for Plato and the Pythagoreans. The elementary particles are certainly not eternal and indestructible units of matter; they can actually be transformed into each other. As a matter of fact, if two such particles, moving through space with a very high kinetic energy, collide, then many new elementary particles may be created from the available energy and the old particles may have disappeared in the collision. Such events have been frequently observed and offer the best proof that all particles are made of the same substance: energy. But the resemblance of the modern views to those of Plato and the Pythagoreans can be carried somewhat further. The elementary particles in Plato's Timaeus are finally not substance but mathematical forms. All things are numbers is a sentence attributed to Pythagoras. The only mathematical forms available at that time were such geometric forms as the regular solids or the triangles which form their surface. In modern quantum theory there can be no doubt that the elementary particles will finally also be mathematical forms but of a much more complicated nature. The Greek philosophers thought of static forms and found them in the regular solids. Modern science, however, has from its beginning in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries started from the dynamic problem. The constant element in physics since Newton is not a configuration or a geometrical form, but a dynamic law. The equation of motion holds at all times, it is in this sense eternal, whereas the geometrical forms, like the orbits, are changing. Therefore, the mathematical forms that represent the elementary particles will be solutions of some eternal law of motion for matter. This is a problem which has not yet been solved.
Consciousness | Doubt | Famous | History | Life | Life | Reality | Relationship | Thinking | Truth | Trial |
We cannot, with good conscience, expect the British to set up an orderly schedule for the liberation of India before we have decided for ourselves to make all who live in America free.
Ideas | Imperialism | War |
Werner Heisenberg, fully Werner Karl Heisenberg
I think that the discovery of antimatter was perhaps the biggest jump of all the big jumps in physics in our century.
Willard Gibbs, fully Josiah Willard Gibbs
I had no sense of the value of time, of my own or others, when I wrote it.
History |
Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather
?The idea of you is a part of my mind; you influence my likes and dislikes, all my tastes, hundereds of times when I don’t realize it. You really are a part of me.
Werner Heisenberg, fully Werner Karl Heisenberg
After these conversations with Tagore some of the ideas that had seemed so crazy suddenly made much more sense. That was a great help for me.
Ideas |
We have become a more juvenile culture. We have become a childish me, me, me culture with fifteen-second attention spans. The global village that television was supposed to bring is less a village than a playground.
Computer | Ideas | Organization | Philosophy | Qualities |
The observations in the dark were somehow weird. After the eyes adapted to the darkness, the room did not appear black but grey blue. There were fog like formations and bluish dots and lines of light, violet light phenomena seemed to emanate from the walls as well as from the various objects in the room.
Correctness | Ideas | Knowing | Little | Man | Strength | Thought | Afraid | Thought |
Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers
At issue in the Hiss Case was the question whether this sick society, which we call Western civilization, could in its extremity still cast up a man whose faith in it was so great that he would voluntarily abandon those things which men hold good, including life, to defend it.
Control | Enemy | Hate | History | Motives | Remorse | Revenge | Story | Tragedy | Old |
Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers
The Wizard of Oz (M. G. M.) should settle an old Hollywood controversy: whether fantasy can be presented on the screen as successfully with human actors as with cartoons.
Enemy | Hate | History | Motives | Remorse | Revenge | Story | Tragedy | Old |
Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson
You are a bundle of mysteries. Finding and conquering yourself is a lifetime task. There are unplumbed depths in you full of the rich ore of personal discovery. Explore yourself! There is power in you--the power to change yourself and to change the world; the power to create plans, projects, movements for the common good; the power to inspire and serve.
Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney
I always like to look on the optimistic side of life, but I am realistic enough to know that life is a complex matter. With the laugh comes the tears and in developing motion pictures or television shows, you must combine all the facts of life — drama, pathos and humor.