This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Place is a rich and complex reality and the more nature is apparent in place, the more distinct the influence.
Consciousness | Culture | Hope | Philosophy | Tenets | World | Think |
Throughout his last half-dozen books, for example, Arthur Koestler has been conducting a campaign against his own misunderstanding of Darwinism. He hopes to find some ordering force, constraining evolution to certain directions and overriding the influence of natural selection. […] Darwinism is not the theory of capricious change that Koestler imagines. Random variation may be the raw material of change, but natural selection builds good design by rejecting most variants while accepting and accumulating the few that improve adaptation to local environments.
Culture | Important | Life | Life | Perception | Question | Resolution | Thought | Truth | World | Thought |
Stephen Vizinczey, born István Vizinczey
When too many things are taken for granted, it is next to impossible to perceive the truth.
Theodor W. Adorno, born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund
The first and only principle of sexual ethics: the accuser is always in the wrong.
Culture | Dehumanization | Joy |
Theodor Herzl, born Benjamin Ze’ev Herzl
We have an important task before us. We have met here to lay the foundation-stone of the house that will someday shelter the Jewish people. . . We have to aim at securing legal, international guarantees for our work.
Culture |
Theodor W. Adorno, born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund
The darkening of the world makes the irrationality of art rational: radically darkened art.
Theodor W. Adorno, born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund
The ideology of cultural conservatism which sees enlightenment and art as simple antitheses is false, among other reasons, in overlooking the moment of enlightenment in the genesis of beauty. Enlightenment does not merely dissolve all the qualities that beauty adheres to, but posits the quality of beauty in the first place.
Theodor W. Adorno, born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund
What has become alien to men is the human component of culture, its closest part, which upholds them against the world. They make common cause with the world against themselves, and the most alienated condition of all, the omnipresence of commodities, their own conversion into appendages of machinery, is for them a mirage of closeness. -
Ted Sorensen, fully Theodore Chalkin "Ted" Sorensen
We have treated our most serious adversaries, such as Iran and North Korea, in the most juvenile manner - by giving them the silent treatment. In so doing, we have weakened, not strengthened, our bargaining position and our leadership.
I want to meet my God awake.
Accuracy | Circumstances | Culture | Duty | Omnipotence |
The Great Man's sincerity is of the kind he cannot speak of, is not conscious of: nay, I suppose, he is conscious rather of insincerity; for what man can walk accurately by the law of truth for one day? No, the Great Man does not boast himself sincere, far from that; perhaps does not ask himself if he is so: I would say rather, his sincerity does not depend on himself; he cannot help being sincere!
When a body is once in motion, it moveth, unless something else hinder it, eternally; and whatsoever hindereth it cannot in an instant, but in time and by degrees, quite extinguish it; and, as we see in the water though the wind cease the waves give not over rolling for a long time after: so also it happeneth in that motion which is made in the internal parts of a man, then, when he sees, dreams, etc. For, after the object is removed, or the eye shut, we still retain an image of the thing seen, though more obscure than when we see it. And this is it the Latins call ‘imagination,’ from the image made in seeing; and apply the same, though improperly, to all the other senses. But the Greeks call it ‘fancy,’ which signifies ‘appearance,’ and is as proper to one sense as to another. ‘Imagination,’ therefore, is nothing but ‘decaying sense,’ and is found in men, and many other living creatures, as well sleeping as waking.
Culture | Danger | Enemy | Invention | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Men | Time | Danger |
I have often thought that nothing would do more extensive good at small expense than the establishment of a small circulating library in every county, to consist of a few well-chosen books, to be lent to the people of the country under regulations as would secure their safe return in due time.
Choice | Culture | Failure | Family | Good | Heaven | Occupation | Position | Success | Thought | Failure | Old | Thought |
No one has a natural right to the trade of a money lender, but he who has the money to lend. Let those then among us who have a moneyed capital and who prefer employing it in loans rather than otherwise, set up banks and give cash or national bills for the notes they discount. Perhaps, to encourage them, a larger interest than is legal in the other cases might be allowed them, on the condition of their lending for short periods only.
Culture | Occupation | Old |
Too old to plant trees for my own gratification, I shall do it for my posterity.
Culture |
It is true that we are called to create a better world. But we are first of all called to a more immediate and exalted task: that of creating our own lives. In doing this, we act as co-workers with God. We take our place in the great work of mankind, since in effect the creation of our own destiny, in God, is impossible in pure isolation.
Body | Culture | Desire | Evil | Order | Policy | Society | World | Society |