This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The heritage of the past is the seed that brings forth the harvest of the future.
He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much; who has gained the respect of intelligent men and the love of little children; who has filled his niche and accomplished his task; who has left the world better than he found it, whether by an improved poppy, a perfect poem, or a rescued soul; who has never lacked appreciation of earth's beauty or failed to express it; who has always looked for the best in others and given the best he had; whose life was an inspiration; whose memory a benediction.
Appreciation | Beauty | Better | Children | Earth | Inspiration | Life | Life | Little | Love | Memory | Men | Respect | Soul | Success | World | Appreciation | Respect | Beauty |
Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
In an age in which mankind’s collective power has suddenly been increased, for good or evil, a thousand-fold through the tapping of atomic energy, the standard of conduct demanded from ordinary human beings can be no lower than the standard attained in times past by rare saints.
Age | Conduct | Energy | Evil | Good | Mankind | Past | Power |
Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr., born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger
Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response. Expelled from individual consciousness by the rush of change, history finds its revenge by stamping the collective unconscious with habits, values, expectations, dreams. The dialectic between past and future will continue to form our lives.
Change | Consciousness | Dreams | Future | History | Individual | Memory | Myth | Past | Revenge | Science | Technology | Tradition | Will |
Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
In an age in which mankind’s collective power has suddenly been increased, for good or evil, a thousandfold through the tapping of atomic energy, the standard of conduct demanded from ordinary human beings can be no lower than the standard in times past by rare saints.
Age | Conduct | Energy | Evil | Good | Mankind | Past | Power |
To the man who studies to gain a thorough insight into science, books and study are merely the steps of the ladder by which he climbs to the summit; as soon as a step has been advanced he leaves it behind. The majority of mankind, however, who study to fill their memory with facts do not use the steps of the ladder to mount upward, but take them off and lay them on their shoulders in order that they may take them along, delighting in the weight of the burden they are carrying. They ever remain below because they carry what should carry them.
Books | Insight | Majority | Man | Mankind | Memory | Order | Science | Study |
The value of anything is what the next days' memory of it shall be.
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
A great city whose image dwells on the memory of man is the type of some great idea. Rome represents conquest; faith hovers over Jerusalem; and Athens embodies the pre-eminent quality of the antique world-art.
There is a past which is gone for ever; but there is a future which is still our own work.
Let any man examine his thoughts, and he will find them ever occupied with the past or the future. We scarcely think at all of the present; or if we do, it is only to borrow the light which it gives for regulating the future. The present is never our object; the past and the present we use as means; the future only is our end. Thus, we never live, we only hope to live.
Future | Hope | Light | Man | Means | Object | Past | Present | Will | Think |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
It is because modern education is so seldom inspired by a great hope that it so seldom achieves a great result. The wish to preserve the past rather than to hope of creating the future dominates the minds of those who control the teaching of the young.
To eternity itself there is no other handle than the present moment. Let any man examine his thoughts and he will find them ever occupied with the past or the future. We scarcely think at all of the present; or if we do, it is only to borrow the light which it gives for regulating the future. The present is never our object; the past and the present we use as means; the future only is our end. Thus, we never live, we only hope to live; and always hoping to be happy, it is inevitable that we will never be so. All the miseries of mankind come from one thing, not knowing how to remain alone.
Eternity | Future | Happy | Hope | Inevitable | Knowing | Light | Man | Mankind | Means | Object | Past | Present | Will | Think |
Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Weizsäcker
There is not even a meaning to the word experience which would not presuppose the distinction between past and future.
Distinction | Experience | Future | Meaning | Past |
To have sinned means that you are convinced that, in some mysterious way, what you have done will bring misfortune on you in the future; that it has broken some mysterious law of harmony, and is a link in a chain of past and future discords.
Future | Harmony | Law | Means | Misfortune | Past | Will | Misfortune |
Of all the faculties of the mind, memory is the first that flourishes, the first that dies.