This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Logicians distinguish two kinds of operations of the mind: the first kind produces no effect without the mind; the last does. The first they call immanent acts, the second transitive. Conceiving, as well as projecting or resolving, are what the schoolmen called immanent acts of the mind, which produce nothing beyond themselves. But painting is a transitive act, which produces an effect distinct from the operation, and this effect is the picture.
The widespread recognition of the severe improbability that self-replicating organisms could have formed from purely random interactions has led to a great deal of speculation---speculation that some organizing principle must have been involved... The weakest point in this explanation of life's origin is the great complexity of the initial entity which must form, apparently by random fluctuations, before natural selection can take over. In essence this theory postulates the chance formation of the "metabolic motor" which will subsequently be capable of channeling energy flow through the system. Thus harnessed by coupling through the metabolic motor, the energy flow is imagined to supply not only chemical and thermal entropy work, but also the configurational entropy work of selecting the appropriate chemicals and then coding the resultant polymer into an aperiodic, specified, biofunctioning polymer. As a minimum, this system must carry in its structure the information for its own synthesis, and control the machinery which will fabricate any desired copy. It is widely agreed that such a system requires both protein and nucleic acid.7 This view is not unanimous, however. A few have suggested that a short peptide would be sufficient. [Co-written with Charles B. Thaxton and Roger L. Olsen]
Wang Fuzhi or Fu-chih or Fuchih, pseudonym Chuanshan, courtesy name Ernong
For the best way of government, there is nothing better than to examine the :Book of History" and modify it with the words of Confucius. The but centrla point is whether the ruler's heart is serious or dissolute.
To those who are His all things are not only easy to be borne, but even to be gladly chosen. Their will is united to that will which moves heaven and earth, which gives laws to angels, and rules the courses of the world.
Wang Fuzhi or Fu-chih or Fuchih, pseudonym Chuanshan, courtesy name Ernong
What is meant by the Way [Dao] is the management of concrete things... Lao-zi was blind to this and said that the Way existed in emptiness... Buddha was blind to this and said that the Way existed in silence... One may keep on uttering such extravagant words endlessly, but no-one can ever escape from concrete things.
Heaven |
Willard Quine, fully Willard Van Orman Quine
Our argument is not flatly circular, but something like it. It has the form, figuratively speaking, of a closed curve in space.
Acceptance | Experience | System |
Werner Heisenberg, fully Werner Karl Heisenberg
The more precise the measurement of position, the more imprecise the measurement of momentum, and vice versa.
No matter whose lips that would speak, they must be free and ungagged. The community which dares not protect its humblest and most hated member in the free utterance of his opinions, no matter how false or hateful, is only a gang of slaves. If there is anything in the universe that can’t stand discussion, let it crack.
The old Hindoo saw, in his dream, the human race led out to its various fortunes. - First, men were in chains that went back to an iron hand - then he saw them led by threads from the brain, which went upward to an unseen hand. The first was despotism, iron, and ruling by force. - The last was civilization, ruling by ideas.
Werner Heisenberg, fully Werner Karl Heisenberg
This has also appeared in the alternate form: What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of questioning.
Consequences | Knowledge | Nothing | System | Theoretical |
Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson
The world knows the perfect tune for harmony and peace among people. There is no secret about it. It is as old as the ages. Seers, prophets and sages have extolled it. The perfect tune is the expression of love and good will. All that is needed is that people transcend their differences so that the perfect tune may be played on the heartstrings of all people everywhere.
The function of news is to signalize an event, the function of truth is to bring to light the hidden facts, to set them in relation with each other, and make a picture of reality on which men can act.
Power |
Walter Gropius, fully Walter Adolph Georg Gropius
Since art is dead in the actual life of civilized nations, it has been relegated to these grotesque morgues, museums.
Design |
The principles of the good society call for a concern with an order of being -- which cannot be proved existentially to the sense organs -- where it matters supremely that the human person is inviolable, that reason shall regulate the will, that truth shall prevail over error.
Democracy | Force | Majority | Rule | Sacred | War | Trouble |
Advertising, in fact, is the effort of business men to take charge of consumption as well as production. They are not content to supply a demand, as the text-books say; they educate the demand as well. In the end, advertising rests upon the fact that consumers are a fickle and superstitious mob, incapable of any real judgment as to what it wants or how it is to get what it thinks it would like. A bewildered child in a toy shop is nothing to the ultimate consumer in the world market of today. To say, then, that advertising is merely a way of calling attention to useful goods is a gorgeous piece of idealization. Advertising is in fact the weed that has grown up because the art of consumption is uncultivated.
Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
When you combine ignorance and leverage, you get some pretty interesting results.