This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"People in our culture have a morbid tendency to avoid blame, because they do not wish to take the trouble to change their conduct in any way: blame-avoidance and blame-transference are therefore endemic amongst us. These are substitutes for repentance and renewal." - Behavior Research Project NULL
"People are only as good as what they love." - Saul Bellow
"There’s a scheme of evasion that has gotten into everybody. It’s as though people were to say: “I get home dog tired after a terrible day out in that jungle, and then I don’t want to think about it. Enough! I want to be brainwashed. I’m going to have my dinner and drink some beer, and I’m going to sit watching TV until I pass out – because that’s how I feel.” That means people are not putting up a struggle for the human part of themselves." - Saul Bellow
"Leaders are people who focus attention on a vision. They know what they want and are very results-oriented. It’s their intense focus on worthwhile outcomes that draws others to them and to their cause." - Warren Bennis, fully Warren Gamaliel Bennis
"People are more important than ideas." - Martha Berry, fully Martha McChesney Bery
"The myth of integration as propounded under the banner of the liberal ideology must be cracked because it makes people believe that something is being achieved when in reality the artificially integrated circles are a sophomoric to the blacks while salving the consciences of the few guilt-stricken whites." - Steve Biko, fully Stephen "Steve" Bantu Biko
"That you may retain your self-respect, it is better to displease the people by doing what you know is right, than to temporarily please them by doing what you know is wrong." - William J. H. Boetcker, fully William John Henry Boetcker
"The good of the people is the ultimate and true end of government… Now, the greatest good of the people is their liberty." - Henry St John, Lord Bolingbroke, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke
"Always in everything let there be reverence; with the deportment grave as when one is thinking (deeply), and with speech composed and definite. This will make the people tranquil. Pride should not be allowed to grow; the desires should not be indulged; the will should not be gratified to the full; pleasure should not be carried to excess." - Book of Li, aka Book of Rites or Record of Rites or Classic Rites NULL
"Saturate yourself with your subject and the camera will all but take you by the hand." - Margaret Bourke-White
"Peace is more than simply the absence of aggression and war. Peace transcends the end of a conflict or a statement of policy. While we may force the outward appearance of peace upon a people or a nation, it is the underlying thinking that must change to create a true and lasting peace." - Gregg Braden
"The possibilities of our future are actually determined by collective choices in the present. The evidence simply states that the choice of many people, focused in a specific manner, has a direct and measurable effect on our quality of life. Quantum physics suggests that by redirecting our focus – where we place our attention – we bring a new course of events into focus while at the same time releasing an existing course of events that may no longer serve us." - Gregg Braden
"Change occurs when something new starts or something old stops, and it takes place at a particular point in time. But transition cannot be localized in time that way, since it is the gradual . . . process through which individuals and groups reorient themselves. Change often starts with a new beginning, but transition must start with an ending--with people letting go of old attitudes and behaviors." - William Bridges, fully Sir William Throsby Bridges
"Education makes a people easy to lead, but difficult to drive; easy to govern but impossible to enslave." - Henry Peter Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux
"Most people want to feel that issues are simple rather than complex, want to have their prejudices confirmed, want to feel that they “belong” with the implication that others do not, and need to pinpoint an enemy to blame for their frustrations. This being the case, the propagandist is likely to find that his suggestions have fallen on fertile soil so long as he delivers his message with an eye to the existing attitudes and intellectual level of his audience." - J. A. C. Brown, fully James Alexander Campbell Brown
"Birds settle on a tree for a while, and then go their separate ways again. The meeting of all living beings must likewise inevitably end in their parting. This world passes away and disappoints the hopes of everlasting attachment. It is therefore unwise to have a sense of ownership for people who are united with us as in a dream - for a short while only and not in fact." -
"The wise do not rate themselves with the distinguished, nor with the lowest, nor with ordinary people; calm and unselfish, they are free from possessiveness, they hold on to nothing as theirs and reject nothing as not theirs." - Buddhist Discourses NULL
"The wise do not rate themselves with the distinguished, nor with the lowest, nor with ordinary people; calm and unselfish, they are free from possessiveness, they hold on to nothing as theirs and reject." - Sutta Nipata
"At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope it can't be done. They hope it can't be done because it means seeing the garden in a whole new way. Then they see it can be done. Then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries before." - Frances Hodgson Burnett, fully Frances Eliza Hodgson Burnett
"If you were to go around asking people what would make them happier, you’d get answers like “a new car,” a bigger house,” “a raise in pay,” or “winning the lottery.” Probably not one in a hundred would say “a chance to help people,” and yet that is what brings about the most happiness of all." - George Burns, born Nathan Birnbaum
"Never lose sight of the fact that the most important yardstick of your success will be how you treat other people." - Barbara Bush, fully Barbara Pierce Bush
"People in general are equally horrified at hearing the Christian religion doubted, and at seeing it practiced." - Samuel Butler
"Always seek out interesting people." - Tom Butler-Bowdon
"Few people do know what they want. Humans may be a bundle of wishes and wants, but unless we hone these hankerings to a sharp point we will forever drift in a sea of unfulfillment." - Tom Butler-Bowdon
"Measuring your life daily against written goals is a fundamental of success. Fewer than 3 percent of people have written goals, and fewer than 1 percent regularly review them." - Tom Butler-Bowdon
"Misfortune is a point of view. Successful people see things less in terms of good or bad, but as results. The result is the fact, not your emotional response to it. Your response is your choice." - Tom Butler-Bowdon
"Most people accept life scripts from the environment (family, society) into which they have grown. However, there is always the opportunity to write a new script." - Tom Butler-Bowdon
"The seven traits of successful people: passion, belief, strategy, clarity of values, energy, bonding power, and mastery of communication." - Tom Butler-Bowdon
"In the kind of world that I see in history there is one sin that locks people up in all their other sins… the sin of self-righteousness." - Herbert Butterfield, fully Sir Herbert Butterfield
"People are driven from the church not so much by stern truth that makes them uneasy, as by weak nothings that make them contemptuous." - George Arthur Buttrick
"Always remember that the people are not fighting for ideas, nor for what is in men’s minds. The people fight and accept the sacrifices demanded by the struggle in order to gain material advantages, to live better and in peace, to benefit from progress, and for the better future of their children. National liberation, the struggle against colonialism, the construction of peace, progress and independence are hollow words devoid of any significance unless they can be translated into real improvement of living conditions." - Amilcar Cabral
"The enemy is brownness and whiteness, maleness and femaleness. The enemy is our urgent need to stereotype and close off people, places, and events into isolated categories. Hatred, distrust, irresponsibility, unloving, classism, sexism, and racism, in their myriad forms, cloud our vision and isolate us… We close off avenues of communication and vision so that individual and communal trust, responsibility, loving, and knowing are impossible." -
"The Buddhist point of view takes the function of work to at least three-fold: to give a man a chance to utilize and develop his faculties; to enable him to overcome his ego-centredness by joining with other people in a common task; and to bring forth the goods and services needed for becoming existence." -
"In a Nutshell: Six Ways to Make People Like You – Principle 1: Become genuinely interested in other people. Principle 2: Smile. Principle 3: Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language. Principle 4: Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves. Principle 5: Talk in terms of the other person’s interests. Principle 6: Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely." -
"People generally know us as we are." - S. Truett Cathy
"Idolatry is the denial of all hope for the future. The idols of the past were worshipped by people who were afraid of change, who wanted things to remain the same, who did not want a future that was different, who found their security in the status quo. The same is true today." - Center of Concern NULL
"It was for the sake of security that the people of ancient ties turned to the Baals and other idols. Today, our oppressors turn to money and military power and to the so-called security forces. But their security is insecurity. We experience their security as intimidation and repression, terror, rape and murder. Those who turn to the idols for security demand our insecurity as the price that must be paid." - Center of Concern NULL
"Fifty percent of the people in the world are homesick all the time… You don’t really long for another country. You long for something in yourself that you don’t have, or haven’t been able to find." - John Cheever, fully John William Cheever
"If one loves other people, he himself becomes worthy of love; if one hates people, he himself deserves hatred." - Cheng Panch’iao
"If you plan for a year, plant a seed. If for ten years, plant a tree. If for a hundred year, teach the people. When you sow a seed once, you will reap a single harvest. When you teach the people, you will reap a hundred harvests." - Kuan Chung
"There is such a thing as hell on earth. For the most part, it is populated by people who fear so deeply that they cannot love." - Frank Forrester Church III