This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Grief or misfortune seems to be indispensable to the development of intelligence, energy and virtue. The proofs to which the people are submitted, as with individuals, are necessary then to draw them from their lethargy, to disclose their character." - Fearon NULL
"Real education belongs to the future; most of our education is a form of tribal conditioning, a pilgrimage in routine and premature adjustment. When education stirs our innermost feelings and loyalties, when it awakens us from the slumber of lethargy, when it brings individuals together through understanding and compassion, it becomes our foremost hope for lasting greatness." - Frederick Mayer
"If we had no motivation to be preoccupied with our sensations, the impressions that objects made on us would pass like shadows, and leave no trace. After several years, we would be the same as we were at our first moment, without having acquired any knowledge, and without having any other faculties than feeling. But the nature of our sensations does not let us remain enslaved in this lethargy. Since they are necessarily agreeable or disagreeable, we are involved in seeking the former, avoiding the latter; and the greater the intensity of difference between pleasure and pain, the more it occasions action in our souls. Thus the privation of an object that we judge necessary for our well-being, gives us disquiet, that uneasiness we call need, and from which desires are born. These needs recur according to circumstances, often quite new ones present themselves, and it is in this way that our knowledge and faculties develop." - Étienne Bonnot de Condillac
"Once conform, once do what others do because they do it, and a kind of lethargy steals over all the finer senses of the soul." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"With what scientific stoicism he walks through the land of wonders, unwondering." - Thomas Carlyle
"May God defend me from my friends; I can defend myself from my enemies." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
"Once she knows how to read there's only one thing you can teach her to believe in and that is herself." - Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf