This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
Why is [government] not more apt to anticipate and provide for reform? Why does it not cherish its wise minority? Why does it cry and resist before it is hurt? Why does it not encourage its citizens to be on the alert to point out faults… Why does it always crucify Christ, and excommunicate Copernicus and Luther, and pronounce Washington and Franklin rebels?
Government | Reform | Wise |
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
Water is the only drink for the wise man.
Heraclitus or Heraclitus of Ephesus NULL
Listening not to me but to the Logos it is wise to agree that all things are one.
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
Superfluous wealth can buy superfluities only. Money is not required to buy one necessary of the soul.
Money | Soul | Superfluities | Wealth |
A single conversation across the table with a wise man is better than ten years' mere study of books.
Very few men acquire wealth in such a manner as to receive pleasure from it. As long as there is the enthusiasm of the chase they enjoy it. But when they begin to look around and think of settling down, they find that that part by which joy enters in, is dead in them. They have spent their lives in heaping up colossal piles of treasure, which stand at the end, like the pyramids in the desert, holding only the dust of things.
Enthusiasm | Joy | Men | Pleasure | Receive | Wealth | Think |
Holbrook Jackson, fully George Holbrook Jackson
The possession of a great many things, even the best of things, tends to blind one to the real value of anything.
Value |
To establish the principles of the Declaration of Independence, we are going to need to go outside the law, to stop obeying the laws that demand killing or that allocate wealth the way it has been done, or that put people in jail for petty technical offense and keep other people out of jail for enormous crimes.
Isaac Asimov, born Isaak Yudovich Ozimov
Suppose that we are wise enough to learn and know -- and yet not wise enough to control our learning and knowledge, so that we use it to destroy ourselves? Even if that is so, knowledge remains better than ignorance. It is better to know -- even if the knowledge endures only for the moment that comes before destruction -- than to gain eternal life at the price of a dull and swinish lack of comprehension of a universe that swirls unseen before us in all its wonder. That was the choice of Achilles, and it is mine, too.
Better | Choice | Control | Destroy | Enough | Eternal | Ignorance | Knowledge | Learning | Life | Life | Price | Universe | Wise | Wonder | Learn |
Yes, we have in this country, dominated by corporate wealth and military power and two antiquated political parties, what a fearful conservative characterized as “a permanent adversarial culture” challenging the present, demanding a new future. It is a race in which we can all choose to participate, or to just watch. But we should know that our choice will help determine the outcome.
Choice | Culture | Future | Power | Present | Race | Wealth | Will |
It is well when the wise and the learned discover new truths; but how much better to diffuse the truths already discovered amongst the multitudes. Every addition to true knowledge is an addition to human power; and while a philosopher is discovering one new truth, millions of truths may be propagated amongst the people ... The whole land must be watered with the streams of knowledge.
Better | Knowledge | Land | People | Power | Truth | Wise | Truths |
Poetry (which owes its origin almost entirely to genius and is least willing to be led by precepts or example) holds the first rank among all the arts. It expands the mind by giving freedom to the boundless multiplicity of possible forms accordant with the given concept, to whose bounds it is restricted, that one which couples with the presentation of the concept a wealth of thought to which no verbal expression is completely adequate, and by thus rises aesthetically to ideas.
Example | Freedom | Genius | Giving | Ideas | Mind | Poetry | Rank | Thought | Wealth | Thought |
Men pursue riches under the idea that their possession will set them at ease, and above the world. But the law of association often makes those who begin by loving old as a servant finish by becoming themselves its slaves; and independence without wealth is at least as common as wealth without independence.
Association | Law | Men | Riches | Wealth | Will | World | Riches | Association | Old |