This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
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.
Cause | Conduct | Mankind | Means | Moderation | Nature | Wisdom | Moderation |
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
The sphere of poetry does not lie outside the world as a fantastic impossibility spawned by a poet’s brain: it desires to be just the opposite, the unvarnished expression of the truth, and must precisely for that reason discard the mendacious finery of that alleged reality of the man of culture. The contrast between this real truth of nature and the lie of culture that poses as if it were the only reality is similar to that between the eternal core of things, the thing-in-itself, and the whole world of appearances.
Contrast | Culture | Eternal | Impossibility | Man | Nature | Poetry | Reality | Reason | Truth | Wisdom | World |
To be able to live in strict conformity with nature is what the men of old defined as the end of happiness.
Conformity | Men | Nature | Wisdom | Old |
We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize-at least, the truth that is given us to understand...Nature and art, being two different things, cannot be the same thing. Through art we express our conception of what nature is not.
It would be correct to say that the world was not made in time, but that time was formed by means of the world, for it was heaven's movement that was the index of the nature of time.
When the righteous man searches for the nature of things, he makes his own admirable discovery: that everything is God's grace.
All nature is but art, unknown to thee; all chance, direction, which thou canst not see; all discord harmony, not understood; all partial evil, universal good: and, spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite, one truth is clear, “Whatever is, is Right.”
Art | Chance | Evil | Good | Harmony | Nature | Pride | Reason | Right | Truth | Wisdom |
Robert Oppenheimer, fully Julius Robert Oppenheimer
This world of ours is a new world, in which the unit of knowledge, the nature of human communities, the order of society, the order of ideas, the very notions of society and culture have changed, and will not return to what they have been in the past. What is new is new, not because it has never been there before, but because it has changed in quality.
Culture | Ideas | Knowledge | Nature | Order | Past | Society | Will | Wisdom | World | Society |
Human nature craves novelty.
Human nature | Nature | Novelty | Wisdom |
Hasty resolutions are of the nature of vows; and to be equally avoided.
Conservation is the application of common sense to the common problems for the common good. since its objective is the ownership, control, development, processing, distribution, and use of the natural resources for the benefit of the people, it is by its very nature the antithesis of monopoly.
Antithesis | Common Sense | Conservation | Control | Good | Nature | People | Problems | Sense | Wisdom |
This whole striving for brotherhood is somehow in the very nature of things. Once you affirm it, you're in the stream of existence.
Brotherhood | Existence | Nature | Wisdom |
Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon
In dealing with the environment we must learn now how to master nature but how to master ourselves, our institutions, and our technology.
Nature | Technology | Wisdom | Learn |