This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"American housewives have not had their brains shot away, nor are they schizophrenic in the clinical sense. But if... the fundamental human drive is not the urge for pleasure or the satisfaction of biological needs, but the need to grow and realize one’s full potential, their comfortable, empty, purposeless days are indeed cause for a nameless terror." - Betty Friedan
"Negative thinking is depriving people of their natural birthright of health. It is the prime cause in shortening the lives of so many of us. And yet it is so simple to live a healthier, longer and so much happier life. We have only to recognize how God works His wonders through laws governing nature and "human nature."" - Walter M. Germain
"The highest problem of any art is to cause by appearance the illusion of a higher reality." - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"The blind fanaticism of one foolish honest man may cause more evil than the united efforts of twenty rogues." - Friedrich Melchior, Baron von Grimm
"Every affection of the mind that is attended with either pain or pleasure, hope or fear, is the cause of an agitation whose influence extends to the heart, and there induces change from the natural constitution, in the temperature, the pulse and the rest, which impairing all nutrition in its source and abating the powers at large, it is no wonder that various forms of incurable disease in the extremities and in the trunk are the consequence, inasmuch as in such circumstances the whole body labors under the effects of vitiated nutrition and want of native heat." - William Harvey
"Beware of the beginnings of vice. Do not delude yourself with the belief that it can be argued against in the presence of the exciting cause. Nothing but actual flight can save you." - Benjamin R. Haydon
"To say the world was not created, but eternal, seeing that which is eternal has no cause, is to deny there is a God." - Thomas Hobbes
"It is universally allowed that nothing exists without a cause of its existence, and that chance, when strictly examined, is a mere negative word, and means not any real power which has anywhere a being in nature." - David Hume
"The only connexion or relation of objects, which can lead us beyond the immediate impression of our memory and senses, is that of cause and effect; and that because ‘tis the only one, on which we can found a just inference from one object to another." - David Hume
"To me, there appear to be only three principles of connection among ideas, namely, Resemblance, Contiguity in time or place, and Cause or Effect." - David Hume
"The Golden Rule exists in each of the world's major religions... Hinduism: Do naught to others which, if done to thee, would cause thee pain: this is the sum of duty. Buddhism: A clansman [should] minister to his friends and familiars... by treating them as he treats himself. Confucianism: The Master replied: "What you do not want done to yourself, do not do unto others." Taoism: To those who are good to me, I am good; and to those who are not good to me, I am also good. And thus all get to be good. To those who are sincere with me, I am sincere; and to those who are not sincere with me, I am also sincere. And thus all get to be sincere. Zorastrianism: Whatever thou dost not approve for thyself, do not approve for anyone else. When thou hast acted in this manner, thou art righteous. Judaism: Take heed to thyself, my child, in all thy works; and be discreet in all thy behavior. And what thou thyself hatest, do to no man. Christianity: All things therefore whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, even so do ye also unto them. Greek Philosophy: Do not do to others what you would not wish to suffer yourself. Treat your friends as you would want them to treat you." - Robert Ernest Hume
"The problem of our purpose is a religious problem... Our purpose is derived from faith and is imposed onto reality by our own souls. But faith and religious truth themselves are not absolute. They are relative. Thus the answers one gives to questions about the purpose of life must necessarily be relative to a time, a place, a tradition... To know and worship God means, in Baha’ullah’s words, to promote the unity of the human race and to foster the spirit of love and fellowship amongst men”... Someday there will be a global society in which humanity will realize its spiritual and moral potential... The destiny of mankind, actually, is the ultimate creation of the world civilization. It is only in the service of such a cause that I find the meaning and purpose of life." - Firuz Kazemzadeh
"A generation without a cause in its youth has no legacy in its old age." - Ted Kennedy, fully Edward Moore "Ted" Kennedy
"We need to teach the highly educated person that it is not a disgrace to fail and that he must analyze every failure to find its cause. He must learn how to fail intelligently, for failing is one of the greatest arts in the world." - Charles F. Kettering, fully Charles Franklin Kettering
"All coming into existence takes place with freedom, not by necessity. Nothing comes into existence by virtue of a logical ground, but only by a cause. Every cause terminates in a freely effecting cause." - Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
"Philanthropy is commendable, but it must not cause the philanthropist to overlook the circumstances of economic injustice which make philanthropy necessary." - Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Nations have passed away and left no traces, And history gives the naked cause of it - One single simple reason in all cases; They fell because their peoples were not fit." - Rudyard Kipling
"We are a great deal more certain that our will is free than that everything that happens is bound to have a cause. This being the case, could we not for once in a way reverse the argument, and say: our ideas of cause and effect must be very inaccurate, for were they right, our will could not be free?" - Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
"If you would win a man to your cause, first convince him that you are his sincere friend." - Abraham Lincoln
"Of no day can the retrospect cause pain to a good man, nor has one passed away which he is unwilling to remember: the period of his life seems prolonged by his good acts; and we may be said to live twice, when we can reflect with pleasure on the days that are gone." - Martial, full name Marcus Valarius Martialis NULL
"It doesn’t take a majority to make a rebellion; it takes only a few determined leaders and a sound cause." - H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
"O, how full of error is the judgment of mankind. They wonder at results when they are ignorant of the reasons. They call it fortune when they know not the cause, and thus worship their own ignorance changed into a deity." - Metastasio, aka Pietro Petastasio, pseudonymn for Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi NULL
"The immediate cause of World War III is the preparation of it." - C. Wright Mills, fully Charles Wright Mills
"Mankind must not be governed with too much severity; we ought to make a prudent use of the means which nature has given us to conduct them. If we inquire into the cause of all human corruptions, we shall find that they proceed form the impunity of criminals, and not from the moderation of punishments." - Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
"Evolution is not a force but a process, not a cause but a law." - John Morley, 1st Viscount Morely of Blackburn, Lord Morley
"Visible creation in time, or nature... does not exist of itself. It is not the cause of itself, but is an ever-changing copy of something which lies behind appearances. The recipient, or mother, is three-dimensional space, which must be empty of all properties in order to receive the impress of the model. The copy is in time. The model (idea) is outside our space and time." - Maurice Nicoll
"What is the standpoint of materialism?... We look outwards (via the senses) for the explanation and cause of everything. We start from phenomena as absolute truth... Materialism gives sense and physical matter priority over mind or idea... The customary standpoint of scientific materialism is that primary matter is dead - and the universe is dead and nature is dead - and a dead nature can, of course, aim at nothing. It cannot be teleological." - Maurice Nicoll
"Cause and effect: such a duality probably never occurs - in reality there lies before us a continuum out of which we isolate a couple of pieces." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
"The preponderance of pain over pleasure is the cause of our fictitious morality and religion." - Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
"If the cause and end of war be justifiable, all the means that appear necessary to the end are justifiable also." - William Paley, Archdeacon of Saragossa
"Luxury is the first, second and third cause of the ruin of republics. It is the vampire which soothes us into a fatal slumber while it sucks the life-blood out of our veins." - Edward Payson
"Every person in the world may not become a personage. But every person may become a personality. The happiest people are those who think the most interesting thoughts. Interesting thoughts can live only in cultivated minds. Those who decide to use leisure as a means of mental development, who love good music, good books, good pictures, good plays at the theater, good company, good conversation - what are they? They are the happiest people in the world; and they are not only happy in themselves, they are the cause of happiness in others." - William Lyon Phelps
"We should honor our teachers more than our parents, because while our parents cause us to live, our teachers cause us to live well." - Philoxenus of Mabbug, aka Aksnāyā NULL
"Judge not of actions by their mere effect; dive to the centre, and the cause detect; great deeds from meanest springs may take their course, and smallest virtues from a mighty source." - Alexander Pope
"A good cause fears no judge." - Publius Syrus
"The laws of nature are the rules according to which the effects are produced; but there must be a cause which operates according to these rules. The rules of navigation never navigated a ship; the rules of architecture never built a house." - Paul Reichmann
"If one should tell of a telescope so exactly made as to have the power of seeing; of a whispering gallery that had the power of haring; of a cabinet so nicely framed as to have the power of memory; or of a machine so delicate as to feel pain when it was touched - such absurdities are so shocking to common sense that they would not find belief even among savages; yet it is the same absurdity to think that the impressions of external objects upon the machine of our bodies can be the real efficient cause of thought and perception." - Paul Reichmann
"No more by the law of reason than by the law of nature can anything occur without a cause." - Jean-Jacques Rousseau
"It is a very easy thing to devise good laws; the difficulty is to make them effective. The great mistake is that of looking upon men as virtuous, or thinking that they can be made so by laws; and consequently the greatest art of a politician is to render vices serviceable to the cause of virtue." -
"Even in a righteous cause force is a fearful thing; God only helps when men can help no more." - Friedrich Schiller, fully Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
"Evolutionism, purporting to explain all and everything solely and exclusively by natural selection for adaption and survival, is the most extreme product of the materialistic utilitarianism of the nineteenth-century. The inability of twentieth-century thought to rid itself of this imposture is a failure which may well cause the collapse of the Western civilization." -
"The great secret of success is to go through life as a man who never gets used up. That is possible for him who never argues and strives with men and facts, but in all experiences retires upon himself, and looks for the ultimate cause of things in himself." - Albert Schweitzer
"Teachers should be held in the highest honor. They are the allies of legislators; they have agency in the prevention of crime; they aid in regulating the atmosphere, whose incessant action and pressure cause the life-blood to circulate, and to return pure and healthful to the heart of the nation." - Lydia Sigourney, fully Lydia Huntley Sigourney, née Lydia Howard Huntley