This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"What we call the contagious force of an idea is the force of the people who have embraced it." - George Santayana
"Government is not reason, it is not eloquence, it is force; like fire, a troublesome servant and a fearful master. Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action." - George Washington
"What is the Infinite? It is that silent, small force? It isn't the outer physical contacts. No, it isn't that. The infinite is not confined in the visible world. It is not in the earthquake, the wind, or the fire. It is that still small voice that calls up the fairies." - George Washington Carver
"The release of atomic energy constitutes a new force too revolutionary to consider in the framework of old ideas." - Harry S. Truman
"Against the formidable array of cumulative evidence for Determinism, there is but one argument of real force: the immediate affirmation of consciousness in the moment of deliberate action." - Henry Sidgwick
"Where wisdom is called for, force is of little use." - Herodotus NULL
"The force of union conquers all." - Homer NULL
"Preserve your conscience always soft and sensitive. If but one sin force its way into that tender part of the soul and dwell thee, the road is paved for a thousand iniquities." - Isaac Watts
"Man masters nature not by force but by understanding. This is why science has succeeded where magic failed: because it has looked for no spell to cast on nature." - Jacob Bronowski
"Man masters nature not by force but by understanding." - Jacob Bronowski
"The soul of man is not a thing which comes and goes, is builded and decays like the elemental frame in which it is set to dwell, but a very living force, a very energy of God’s organic will, which rules and moulds this universe." - James Froude, fully James Anthony Froude
"All the strength and force of man comes from his faith in things unseen. He who believes is strong; he who doubts is weak. Strong convictions precede great actions. The man strongly possessed of an idea is master of all who are uncertain or wavering. Clear, deep, living convictions rule the world." - James Freeman Clarke
"Of all the evils to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes. And armies, and debts, and taxes, are the known instruments for bringing the many under the dominion of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied; and all the means of seducing the minds are added to those of subduing the force of the people! No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." - James Madison
"Crises and deadlocks, when they occur, have at least this advantage: that they force us to think." - Jawaharlal Nehru
"In the end, the meaning of life is a matter of faith. Faith is less a set of beliefs than your willingness to surrender to a mysterious force of love and guidance that helps you find your way." - Joan Borysenko
"In the end, the meaning of life is a matter of faith… faith is less a set of beliefs than your willingness to surrender to a mysterious force of love and guidance that helps you find your way." - Joan Borysenko
"Force is no remedy." - John Bright
"If we continually try to force a child to do what he is afraid to do, he will become more timid, and will use his brains and energy, not to explore the unknown, but to find ways to avoid the pressures we put on him. If, however, we are careful not to push a child beyond the limits of his courage, he is almost sure to get braver." - John Holt, fully John Caldwell Holt
"Who overcomes by force hath overcome but half his foe." - John Milton
"Whatever crushes individuality is despotism... I am not aware that any community has a right to force another to be civilized." - John Stuart Mill
"Customs are made for customary circumstances; even in what people do for pleasure, conformity is the first thing thought of; they live in crowds: they exercise choice only among things commonly done: peculiarity of taste, eccentricity of conduct, are shunned equally with crimes: until by dint of not following their own nature they have not nature to follow. Whatever crushes individuality is despotism. [And] I am not aware that any community has a right to force another to be civilized." - John Stuart Mill
"Justice is a name for certain moral requirements, which, regarded collectively, stand higher in the scale of social utility, and are therefore of more paramount obligation, than any others; though particular cases may occur in which some other social duty is so important, as to overrule any one of the general maxims of justice. Thus, to save a life, it may not only be allowable, but a duty, to steal, or take by force, the necessary food or medicine, or to kidnap, and compel to officiate, the only qualified medical practitioner. In such cases, as we do not call anything justice which is not a virtue, we usually say, not that justice must give way to some other moral principle, but that what is just in ordinary case is, by reason of that other principle, not just in the particular case. By this useful accommodation of language, the character of indefeasibility attributed to justice is kept up, and we are saved from the necessity of maintaining that there can be laudable injustice." - John Stuart Mill
"One person with a belief is equal to a force of ninety-nine who have only interests." - John Stuart Mill
"Civilization is nothing else but the attempt to reduce force to being the last resort." - José Ortega y Gasset
"Reason, ruling alone, is a force confining; and passion, unattended, is a flame that burns to its own destruction." - Kahlil Gibran
"Listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force. The friends who listen to us are the ones we move toward, and we want to sit in their radius. When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand." - Karl Menninger, fully Karl Augustus Menninger
"Evolution... is comprehensible only if we admit that it is dominated by a finality, a precise and distant goal... telefinality orients the march of evolution as a whole and has acted, ever since the appearance of life on earth, as a distant directing force tending to develop a being endowed with a conscience, a spiritually and morally perfect being. To attain this goal, this force acts on the laws of the unorganized world in such a way that the normal play of the second law of thermodynamics is always deflected in the same direction." - Pierre Lecomte du Noüy
"Force is only a desire for flight: it lives by violence and dies from liberty." - Leonardo da Vinci, fully Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
"There is a force that somehow pushes us to choose the more difficult path whereby we can transcend the mire and muck into which we are son often born. Despite all that resists the process, we do become better human beings." - M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
"Business is religion, and religion is business. The man who does not make a business of religion has a religious life of no force, and the man who does not make a religion of his business has a business life of no character." - Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
"Our business in life is not to get ahead of other people, but to get ahead of ourselves. To break our own record, to outstrip our yesterdays by todays, to bear our trials more beautifully than we ever dreamed we could, to whip the tempter inside and out as we never whipped him before, to give as we have never given, to do our work with more force and a finer finish than ever, - this is the true idea, - to get ahead of ourselves... to play a better game of life." - Maltbie Babcock, fully Maltbie Davenport Babcock
"Are we so devoid of spiritual and moral force and intellectual ingenuity that we cannot possibly prevent war by any means other than military preparedness?" - Margaret Chase Smith
"Love unites the mind more quickly, more closely, and more stably with God than does knowledge, because the force of knowledge consists more in distinction, that of love in union." - Marsilio Ficino
"There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost." - Martha Graham
"No burden is so heavy for a man to bear as a succession of happy days." - Max Planck, fully Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck
"Than love no greater force exists." - Menander, aka Menander of Athens NULL
"When one subdues men by force, they do not submit to him in heart, but because they are not strong enough to resist. When one subdues men by virtue, they are pleased to the heart's core, and sincerely submit." - Mencius, born Meng Ke or Ko NULL
"It is true that water will flow indifferently to east and west, but will it flow equally well up and down? Human nature is disposed toward goodness, just as water tends to flow downwards. There is no water but flows downwards, and no man but shows his tendency to be good. Now, by striking water hard, you may splash it higher than your forehead, an by damming it, you may make it go uphill. But, is that the nature of water? It is external force that causes it to do so. Likewise, if a man is made to do what is not good, his nature is being similarly forced." - Mencius, born Meng Ke or Ko NULL
"One difficulty about achieving social improvement is that we tend to uncritically regard any advance in either differentiation or in integration as a good thing. If a new law increases freedom, it must be progress, as is a new movement that fosters the feeling of solidarity among people. yet neither of these programs is likely to improve matters without the complementary contribution of the other. Complexity requires the synergy of these dialectically opposed force; a gain in only one is likely to promote confusion and chaos. We think of social entropy as being caused by a loss of liberty or a loss of common values; but gains in either at the expense of its complement are just as dangerous." - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
"A society that puts equality – in the sense of equality of outcome – ahead of freedom will end up with neither equality nor freedom. The use of force to achieve equality will destroy freedom, and the force, introduced for good purposes, will end up in the hands of people who use it to promote their own interests." -
"Do you know what amazes me more than anything else - the impotence of force to organize anything? There are only two powers in the world - the spirit and the sword; and in the long run the sword will always be conquered by the spirit." - Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I
"No two minds ever come together in a spirit of harmony without, thereby, creating a third, invisible, intangible force which may be likened to a third mind." - Napoleon Hill
"As people with their freedom, the elites recognize that they cannot control the masses by force anymore; they have to control public opinions and attitudes. The more freedom you win, the more ways privileged groups—usually an amalgam of state and private powers—devise to control you." - Noam Chomsky, fully Avram Noam Chomsky
"I am told that nothing that we do on earth, and nothing that we make on earth, is in as great abundance as force. We now have 30,000 pounds of destructive force, TNT equivalent, available for every human being on earth. We don't have 30,000 pounds of food or medicine or art or books or any of the things that ennoble life, but we have 30,000 pounds of instant force for every human being on earth." - Norman Cousins
"What a man really says when he says that someone else can be persuaded by force, is that he, himself is incapable of more rational means of communication." - Norman Cousins
"A weak mind does not accumulate force enough to hurt itself; stupidity often saves a man from going mad." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
"In the universal sense, love is the divine power of attraction in creation that harmonizes, unites, binds together... Those who live in tune with the attractive force of love achieve harmony with nature and their fellow beings, and are attracted to blissful reunion with God." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh