This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"If you wait for the perfect moment when all is safe and assured, it may never arrive Mountains will not be climbed, races won, or lasting happiness achieved." - Maurice Chevalier, fully Maurice Auguste Chevalier
"Genuine intellectual integrity is found in experimental knowing. Until this lesson is fully learned, it is not safe to dissociate knowledge from experiment nor experiment from experience." - John Dewey
"Neutrality in things good or evil is both odious and prejudicial; but in matters of an indifferent nature is safe and commendable. Herein taking of parts maketh sides, and breaketh unity. In an unjust cause of separation, he that favoreth both parts may perhaps have least love of either side, but hath most charity in himself." - Robert Hall
"Remember that God will not be mocked; that it is the heart of the worshiper which He regards. We are never safe till we love Him with our whole heart whom we pretend to worship." - John Henshaw, fully Bishop John Prentiss Kewley Henshaw
"We hate virtue when it is safe; when removed from our sight we diligently seek it." - Horace, full name Quintus Horatius Flaccus NULL
"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education." - Thomas Jefferson
"Men are naturally divided into two parties: (1) those who fear and distrust the people... (2) those who identify themselves with people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider than as the most honest and safe." - Thomas Jefferson
"Among all my patients... over thirty-five... there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age had given to their followers, and none of them has really been healed who did not regain his religious outlook." - Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
"Happy is the man who, by continually effacing all images and through introversion and the lifting up of his mind to God, at last forgets and leaves behind all such hindrances... If, therefore, thou desirest a safe stair and short path to arrive at the end of true bliss, then, with an intent mind, earnestly desire and aspire after continual cleanness of heart and purity of mind. Add to this a constant calm and tranquillity of the senses, and a recollecting of the affections of the heart, continually fixing them above. Work to simplify the heart, that being immovable and at peace from any invading vain phantasms... Thus continue, until thou becomest immutable and dost arrive at any vicissitude of space or time, reposing in that inward quiet and secret mansion of the deity." - Albertus Magnus, known as Albert the Great and Albert of Cologne
"No one is safe from slander. The best way is to pay no attention to it, but live in innocence and let the world talk." - Molière, pen name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin NULL
"All truth is safe and nothing else is safe, and he who keeps back the truth, or withholds it from men, from motives of expediency, is either a coward or a criminal or both." - Prentice Mulford
"He is most free from danger, who, even when safe, is on his guard." - Publius Syrus
"He is safe from danger who is on guard even when safe." - Publius Syrus
"The way to be safe is never to be secure." - Francis Quarles
"Moral disarmament is to safe-guard the future; material disarmament is to save the present, that there may be a future to safeguard." - Elihu Root
"No virtue is safe that is not enthusiastic." - John Robert Seeley, fully Sir John Robert Seeley
"A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for." - William Greenough Thayer Shedd
"Though not always called upon to condemn ourselves, it is always safe to suspect ourselves." - Richard Whately
"It is the modest, not the presumptuous inquirer, who makes a real and safe progress in the discovery of divine truths." - Henry Bolingbroke, Henry IV of England
"Universities should be safe havens where ruthless examination of realities will not be distorted by the aim to please or inhibited by the risk of displeasure." - Kingman Brewster, Jr.
"It's an old adage that the way to be safe is never to be secure... Each one of us requires the spur of insecurity to force us to do our best." - Harold Willis Dodds
"Enthusiasm is the dynamics of your personality. Without it whatever you may possess lies dormant: and it is safe to say that nearly every man has more latent power than he ever learns to use. You may have knowledge, sound judgment, good reasoning faculties; but no one - not even yourself - will know it until you discover how to put your heart into thought and action. When a man dies, if he can pass enthusiasm along to his children he has left them an estate of incalculable value." -
"One intellectual excitement has, however, been denied me. Men wiser and more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following another as wave follows upon wave, only one great fact with respect to which, since it is unique, there can be no generalizations, only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen." - Herbert Albert Laurens Fisher
"Democracy is always a beckoning goal, not a safe harbor. For freedom is an unremitting endeavor, never a final achievement." - Felix Frankfurter
"He that's secure is not safe." - Benjamin Franklin
"It is never safe to look in to the future with eyes of fear." - E.H. (Edward Henry) Harriman, fully Edward Henry "Ned" Harriman
"The practical man is the adventurer, the investigator, the believer in research, the asker of questions, the man who refuses to believe that perfection has been attained... There is no thrill or joy in merely doing that which any one can do... It is always safe to assume, not that the old way is wrong, but that there may be a better way." - Henry Robert Harrower
"Never speak by superlatives; for in so doing you will be likely to wound either truth or prudence. Exaggeration is neither thoughtful, wise, nor safe. It is a proof of the weakness of the understanding, or the want of discernment of him that utters it, so that even when he speaks the truth, he soon finds it is received with partial, or even utter disbelief." - David Hume
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rules of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories." - Thomas Jefferson
"In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover, and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate and improve. Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories." - Thomas Jefferson
"A mind that is safe, secure, is a bourgeois mind, a shoddy mind. Yet that is what all of us want: to be completely safe." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
"Let the people know the truth and the country is safe." - Abraham Lincoln
"Be silent and safe - silence never betrays you." - John Boyle O'Reilly
"A beggar is safe in risking anything." - Petronius, fully Gaius Petronius Arbiter Gasus , aka Petronius Arbiter NULL
"He guards his own property who wishes the common property to be safe." - Publius Syrus
"Make philosophy thy journey, theology thy journey’s end: philosophy is a pleasant way, but dangerous to him that either tires or retires; in this journey it is safe neither to loiter nor to rest, till thou hast attained thy journey’s end; he that sits down a philosopher rises up an atheist." - Francis Quarles
"“It is not safe to be alone,” nor can all which the cold-hearted, pedant stuns our ears with upon the subject ever give one answer of satisfaction to the mind; in the midst of the loudest vauntings of philosophy, nature will have her yearnings for society and friendship. A good heart wants something to be kind to; and the best parts of our blood, and the purest of our spirits suffer most under the destitution." - Lawrence Sterne, alternatively Laurence Sterne
"Of all the qualities of a theologian must possess, a devotional spirit is the chief. For the soul is larger than the mind, and the religious emotions lay hold on the truths to which they are related, on many sides at once. A powerful understanding, on the other hand, seizes on single points, and however enlarged in its own sphere, is never safe from its narrowness of view." - Henry Benjamin Whipple
"Has America become a country where classroom discussion of the Ten Commandments is impermissible, but teacher instructions in safe sodomy be to be mandatory?" - Pat Buchanan, fully Patrick Joseph "Pat" Buchanan
"Men wiser and more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following upon another as wave follows upon wave, only one great fact with respect to which, since it is unique, there can be no generalizations, only one safe rule for the historian: that they should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen." - H.A.L. Fisher, fully Herbert Albert Laurens Fisher
"America, settled by peoples of many regions, races, religions, colors, creeds and cultures, should by moral example, lead the way in helping “to make the world safe for differences.”" - Frank Porter Graham
"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education." - Thomas Jefferson
"Men by their constitutions are naturally divided into two parties: 1. Those who fear and distrust the people, and wish to draw all powers from them into the hands of the higher classes. 2. Those who identify themselves with the people, have confidence in them, cherish and consider them as the most honest and safe, although not the most wise depository of the pubic interests… Call them… Whigs and Tories, Republicans and Federalists, Aristocrats and Democrats, or whatever name you please, they are the same parties still, and pursue the same object." - Thomas Jefferson
"We can flow along with the mainstream of a culture that does not serve us well – does not really make us comfortable, does not really make us safe; but only offers illusions of happiness, comfort, safety – or we can begin the oftentimes prickly work of searching our own hearts, of asking who and what we love, who and what we feel strongly enough about to change our lives for, to fight for, to live for." - Derrick Jensen