This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Too many people spend money they haven’t earned, to buy things they don’t want, to impress people they don’t like." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
"Trouble with American transportation is that you can get somewhere quicker than you can think of a reason for going there. What we need now is a new excuse to go somewhere." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
"We do more talking progress than we do progressing." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
"We had a great lunch. (Senator) Capper paid for it. The Republican pays, as usual. And everything that the Democrats are doin' now, the Republicans pay for it. Everybody asks me, Will, how long is this going to go on, spending all this money and everything going like this? I says, Well, it will go on just as long as the Republicans has got any money. That's all I know about it." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
"We have been just going like a house afire, and we couldn’t see any reason why we shouldn’t keep right on burning. Our tastes were acquired on credit, and we wanted to keep on enjoying 'em on credit." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
"You can’t have a picnic unless the party carrying the basket comes." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
"You would be surprised what there is to see in this great country within 200 miles of where any of us live. I don’t care what state or what town." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
"Forget mistakes. Forget failure. Forget everything except what you’re going to do now and do it. Today is your lucky day." - Will and Ariel Durant
"I shall proceed as rapidly as time and circumstances will permit, hoping that a few of my contemporaries will care to grow old with me while learning." - Will and Ariel Durant
"The political machine works because it is a united minority acting against a divided majority." - Will and Ariel Durant
"Political freedom is a political reading of the Bible." - Whittaker Chambers, born Jay Vivian Chambers, aka Jay David Whittaker Chambers
"Saw a film on cancer yesterday, shown by the English delegation. No doubt about it. I'm right. Migratory cancer cells are amoebic formations. They are produced from disintegrating tissue and thus demonstrate the law of tension and charge in its purest form - as does the orgastic convulsion. Now money is a must - cancer the main issue - in every respect, even political. It was a staggering experience. My intuition is good. I depend on it. Was absolutely driven to buy a microscope. The sight of the cancer cells was exactly as I had previously imagined it, had almost physically felt it would be. Cancer is an autoinfection of the body, of an organ. And researchers have no idea of what, hor, or where!!" - Wilhelm Reich
"Scientific theory is a contrived foothold in the chaos of living phenomena." - Wilhelm Reich
"Today we are aware of the high price that had to be paid for it [material progress] and that we will continue to have to pay, and we are by no means still certain that the price is not too high. We distrust the optimistic assertion that technology and the machine are completely innocent of all this and that the blame rests squarely on man alone who is using them in the wrong way and will just have to learn the right one...The problem of the machine - which happens to be something else than just a highly developed tool - is not merely one of its use, but also one of the machine itself, which, following its own laws and imposing them on man, extracts its tribute from him." - Wilhelm Röepke
"Born of necessity, the little fellow [Mickey Mouse] literally freed us of immediate worry. He provided the means for expanding our organization to its present dimensions and for extending the medium cartoon animation towards new entertainment levels. He spelled production liberation for us." - Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney
"I don't want the public to see the world they live in while they're in the Park [Disneyland]. I want to feel they're in another world." - Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney
"I’ve been selfishly indulging myself as an American… as a United States citizen… enjoying all privileges that one has as a citizen, and it’s only times like this that you sort of wake up to … what it really means to be a citizen." - Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney
"My business is making people, especially children, happy. I have dedicated much of my time to a study of the problems of children." - Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney
"People still think of me as a cartoonist, but the only thing I lift a pen or pencil for these days is to sign a contract, a check, or an autograph." - Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney
"We felt that the public, and especially the children, like animals that are cute and little. I think we are rather indebted to Charlie Chaplin for the idea. We wanted something appealing, and we thought of a tiny bit of a mouse that would have something of the wistfulness of Chaplin- a little fellow trying to do the best he could." - Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney
"Sing on dearest brother, warble your reedy song, loud human song, with voice of uttermost woe. O liquid and free and tender! O wild and loose to my soul—O wondrous singer! You only I hear—yet the star holds me, (but will soon depart,) yet the lilac with mastering odor holds me." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
"Business is really more agreeable than pleasure: it interests the whole mind . . . but it does not look as if it did." - Walter Bagehot
"The most intellectual of men are moved quite as much by the circumstances which they are used to as by their own will. The active voluntary part of a man is very small, and if it were not economized by a sleepy kind of habit, its results would be null." - Walter Bagehot
"On An Eclipse Of The Moon - Struggling, and faint, and fainter didst thou wane, O Moon! and round thee all thy starry train came forth to help thee, with half-open eyes, and trembled every one with still surprise, that the black Spectre should have dared assail their beauteous queen and seize her sacred veil." - Walter Savage Landor
"I have sailed the River of Yellow Flowers, borne by the channel of a green stream, rounding ten thousand turns through the mountains on a journey of less than thirty miles... Rapids hum over heaped rocks; but where light grows dim in the thick pines, the surface of an inlet sways with nut-horns and weeds are lush along the banks… Down in my heart I have always been as pure as this limpid water is... Oh, to remain on a broad flat rock and to cast a fishing-line forever!" - Wang Wei, aka Wang Youcheng
"An investor cannot obtain superior profits from stocks, by simply committing to a specific investment category or style." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"I don’t measure my life by the money I’ve made. Other people might, but certainly don’t." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"I don't have a problem with guilt about money. The way I see it is that my money represents an enormous number of claim checks on society. It is like I have these little pieces of paper that I can turn into consumption. If I wanted to, I could hire 10,000 people to do nothing but paint my picture every day for the rest of my life. And the GNP would go up. But the utility of the product would be zilch, and I would be keeping those 10,000 people from doing AIDS research, or teaching, or nursing. I don't do that though. I don't use very many of those claim checks. There's nothing material I want very much. And I'm going to give virtually all of those claim checks to charity when my wife and I die." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"I have pledged – to you, the rating agencies and myself – to always run Berkshire with more than ample cash. We never want to count on the kindness of strangers in order to meet tomorrow’s obligations. When forced to choose, I will not trade even a night’s sleep for the chance of extra profits." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"I never buy anything unless I can fill out on a piece of paper my reasons. I may be wrong, but I would know the answer to that. “I’m paying $32 billion today for the Coca Cola Company because...” If you can’t answer that question, you shouldn’t buy it. If you can answer that question, and you do it a few times, you’ll make a lot of money." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"I personally would increase the taxable base above the present ninety thousand. I pay very, very little in the way of social security taxes because I make a lot more than ninety thousand and the people in my office pay the full tax." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"Managers thinking about accounting issues should never forget one of Abraham Lincoln's favorite riddles: `How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg?' The answer: `Four, because calling a tail a leg does not make it a leg'." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"Our stay-put behavior reflects our view that the stock market serves as a relocation center at which money is moved from the active to the patient." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"Over that time we've been happy with that investment but I've got to tell you I'm happier today. It's a dream deal." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"The managers at fault periodically report on the lesson they have learned from the latest disappointment. They then usually seek out future lessons." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"The policies that we're following are likely to lead to a weaker dollar over a long period of years. It's not a forecast for next week, or next month or even next year." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"The stock market serves as a relocation center, at which money is moved from the active, to the patient." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"The strategy we've adopted precludes our following standard diversification dogma. Many pundits would therefore say the strategy must be riskier than that employed by more conventional investors. We disagree. We believe that a policy of portfolio concentration may well decrease risk if it raises, as it should, both the intensity with which an investor thinks about a business and the comfort-level he must feel with its economic characteristics before buying into it. In stating this opinion, we define risk, using dictionary terms, as "the possibility of loss or injury."" - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"Time is the friend of the wonderful company, the enemy of the mediocre." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"We will reject interesting opportunities rather than over-leverage our balance sheet." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"Writing a check separates a commitment from a conversation." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"As the vine which has long twined its graceful foliage about the oak, and been lifted by it into sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is rifted by the thunderbolt, cling round it with its caressing tendrils, and bind up its shattered boughs; so it is beautifully ordered by Providence, that woman, who is the mere dependent and ornament of man in his happier hours, should be his stay and solace when smitten with sudden calamity; winding herself into the rugged recesses of his nature, tenderly supporting the drooping head, and binding up the broken heart." - Washington Irving
"I will grow. I will become something new and grand, but no grander than I now am. Just as the sky will be different in a few hours, its present perfection and completeness is not deficient, so am I presently perfect and not deficient because I will be different tomorrow. I will grow and I am not deficient." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
"If you're always in a hurry, always trying to get ahead of the other guy, or someone else's performance is what motivates you, then that person is in control of you." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
"Take responsibility for your own feelings about prosperity and you will eliminate any and all suffering that you experience in this context." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
"You are as capable as you need to be to fulfill your purpose." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
"You are not a human being having a spiritual experience. You are a spiritual being having a human experience." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer