This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Books won’t stay banned. They won’t burn. Ideas won’t go to jail. In the long run of history, the censor and the inquisitor have always lost. The only sure weapon against bad ideals is better ideas. The source of better ideas is wisdom. The surest path of wisdom is a liberal education.
Better | Books | Censor | Education | History | Ideals | Ideas | Wisdom |
Almost all new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are first produced.
Ideas |
Could Hamlet have been written by a committee, or the Mona Lisa painted by a club? Could the New Testament have been composed as a conference report? Creative ideas do not spring from groups. They spring from individuals. The divine spark leaps from the finger of God to the finger of Adam, whether it takes ultimate shape in a law of physics or a law of the land, a poem or a policy, a sonata or a mechanical computer.
Computer | God | Ideas | Land | Law | Policy | God | New Testament | Poem |
Civilization is a slow process of adopting the ideas of minorities.
Civilization | Ideas |
To laugh is to risk appearing the fool. To weep is to risk appearing sentimental. To reach out for another is to risk involvement. To expose our feelings is to risk exposing our true self. To place your ideas and dreams before the crowd is to risk loss. To love is to risk not being loved in return. To hope is to risk despair. To try at all is to risk failure. But risk we must, because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing. The man, the woman who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing.
Despair | Dreams | Failure | Feelings | Hazard | Hope | Ideas | Life | Life | Love | Man | Nothing | Risk | Self | Woman |
The will is the only permanent and unchangeable element in the mind… it is the will which… gives unity to consciousness and holds together all its ideas and thoughts, accompanying them like a continuous harmony.
Joy and sorrow are not ideas of the mind but affections of the will, and so they do not lie in the domain of memory. We cannot recall our joys and sorrows; by which I mean we cannot renew them. We can recall only the ideas that accompanied them; and, in particular, the things we were led to say; and these form a gauge of our feelings at the time. Hence our memory of joys and sorrows is always imperfect, and they become a matter of indifference to us as soon as they are over.
Feelings | Ideas | Indifference | Joy | Memory | Mind | Sorrow | Time | Will |
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
One should conquer the world, not to enthrone a man, but an idea; for ideas exist forever.
A drunken man who falls out of a cart, though he may suffer, does not die. His bones are the same as other people’s; but he meets his accident in a different way. His spirit is in a condition of security. He is not conscious of riding in the cart; neither is he conscious of falling out of it. Ideas of life, death, fear and the like cannot penetrate his breast; and so he does not suffer from contact with objective existence. If such security; is to be got from wine, how much more is it to be got from God?
Accident | Death | Existence | Fear | God | Ideas | Life | Life | Man | People | Security | Spirit |
There is a community of hatred. Hatred floods your mind with the ideas of the one you hate. Your thought reflects his, and you act in his spirit. If you wish to be like your enemy, to be wholly his, open your mind and hate him.
Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
The noble person tries to create harmony in the human heart by a rediscovery of human nature, and tries to promote music as a means to the perfection of human culture. When such music prevails and the people’s minds are led toward the right ideas and aspirations, we may see the appearance of a great nation. Character is the backbone of our human nature, and music is the flowing of character... The poem gives expression to our heart, the song gives expression to our voice, and the dance gives expression to our movements. these three arts take their rise from the human soul, and then are given further expressions by means of musical instruments.
Appearance | Character | Culture | Harmony | Heart | Human nature | Ideas | Means | Music | Nature | People | Perfection | Right | Soul | Poem |
The link between ideas and action is rarely direct. There is almost always an intermediate step in which the idea is overcome. De Tocqueville points out that it is at times when passions start to govern human affairs that ideas are most obviously translated into political action. The translation of ideas into action is usually in the hands of people least likely to follow rational motives. Hence, it is that action is often the nemesis of ideas, and sometimes of the men who formulate them. One of the marks of the truly vigorous society is the ability to dispense with passion as a midwife of action - the ability to pass directly from thought to action.
Ability | Action | Ideas | Men | Motives | Passion | People | Society | Thought | Society | Govern | Thought |
The teacher is one who makes two ideas grow where only one grew before.