This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
When the Sex War ended with the slaughter of the Grandmothers, they found a bachelor's baby suffocating under them; somebody called him George and that was the end of it: they hitched him up to the Army.
W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
The growing spirit of kindliness and reconciliation between the North and South after the frightful differences of a generation ago ought to be a source of deep congratulation to all, and especially to those whose mistreatment caused the war; but if that reconciliation is to be marked by the industrial slavery and civic death of those same black men, with permanent legislation into a position of inferiority, then those black men, if they are really men, are called upon by every consideration of patriotism and loyalty to oppose such a course by all civilized methods, even though such opposition involves disagreement with Mr. Booker T. Washington. We have no right to sit silently by while the inevitable seeds are sown for a harvest of disaster to our children, black and white.
W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
After the Egyptian and Indian, the Greek and Roman, the Teuton and Mongolian, the Negro is a sort of seventh son, born with a veil, and gifted with second-sight in this American world, — a world which yields him no true self-consciousness, but only lets him see himself through the revelation of the other world. It is a peculiar sensation, this double-consciousness, this sense of always looking at one's self through the eyes of others, of measuring one's soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness, — an American, a Negro; two warring souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder.
W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
Now what is the effect on a man or a nation when it comes passionately to believe such an extraordinary dictum as this? That nations are coming to believe it is manifest daily. Wave on wave, each with increasing virulence, is dashing this new religion of whiteness on the shores of our time. Its first effects are funny: the strut of the Southerner, the arrogance of the Englishman amuck, the whoop of the hoodlum who vicariously leads your mob.
Day | Future | Tomorrow | Usefulness | Work |
W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky
One of the most important lessons that experience teaches is that, on the whole, success depends more upon character than upon either intellect or fortune.
Aims | Attainment | Childhood | Happy | Leisure | Life | Life | Little | Pleasure | Purpose | Purpose | Right | Rule | Will | Work | Happiness |
The earth-self observing the Cosmos and trying to understand the Cosmos by scientific principles from which its self is excluded is, beyond doubt, the strangest phenomenon in all of the Cosmos, far stranger than the Ring Nebula in Lyra. It, the self, is in fact the only alien in the entire Cosmos.
W. Edwards Deming, fully William Edwards Deming
Choice of aim is clearly a matter of clarification of values, especially on the choice between possible options.
W. Edwards Deming, fully William Edwards Deming
The principle that where there is fear, there will be wrong figures.
Individual | Judgment | Meaning | Principles | Relationship | Style | System | Understanding | Will | Work | Understand |
W. Edwards Deming, fully William Edwards Deming
When a system is stable, telling the worker about mistakes is only tampering.
Individual | Need | System | Work | Learn |
The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
Age | Art | Beauty | Consciousness | Culture | Elegance | Evidence | Excitement | Failure | Family | Good | Hate | Health | Life | Life | Loneliness | Marriage | Past | People | Politics | Recreation | Reward | Science | Self | Talking | Time | Work | World | Failure | Loss | Art | Beauty |
A dirty house in a gutted world, a tatter of shadows peaked to white, smeared with the gold of the opulent sun.
W. Edwards Deming, fully William Edwards Deming
A system must be managed. It will not manage itself. Left to themselves in the Western world, components become selfish, competitive. We cannot afford the destructive effect of competition.
Interdependent | System | Work |
W. Edwards Deming, fully William Edwards Deming
Profit in business comes from repeat customers, customers that boast about your project or service, and that bring friends with them.
Work |
Losing hope is not so bad. There's something worse: losing hope and hiding it from yourself.
W. Edwards Deming, fully William Edwards Deming
What is the variation trying to tell us about a process, about the people in the process?
Interdependent | System | Talking | Work | Value |
W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer
The best way to learn geometry is to follow the road which the human race originally followed: Do things, make things, notice things, arrange things, and only then reason about things.
Children | Discussion | Need | Work |
W. Eugene Smith, fully William Eugene Smith
The purpose of all art is to cause a deep and emotion, also one that is entertaining or pleasing. Out of the depth and entertainment comes value.
Influence | Public | Responsibility | Thinking | Work |
W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
What do nations care about the cost of war, if by spending a few hundred millions in steel and gunpowder they can gain a thousand millions in diamonds and cocoa?
Ends | Glory | Men | Right | Righteousness | Search | Training | Truth | Work | Think |
Where there is chance of gain, there is also chance of loss. Whenever one courts great happiness, one also risks malaise.
Age | Man | Singularity | Work | Old |
W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
The world still wants to ask that a woman primarily be pretty and if she is not, the mob pouts and asks querulously, 'What else are women for?