This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
For where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns; or can say that he has examined to the bottom all his own, or other men's opinions? The necessity of believing without knowledge, nay often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of action and blindness we are in, should make us more busy and careful to inform ourselves than constrain others
For where is the man that has incontestable evidence of the truth of all that he holds, or of the falsehood of all he condemns; or can say that he has examined to the bottom all his own, or other men's opinions? The necessity of believing without knowledge, nay often upon very slight grounds, in this fleeting state of action and blindness we are in, should make us more busy and careful to inform ourselves than constrain others.
John Wooden, fully John Robert Wooden
You can't let praise or criticism get to you. It's a weakness to get caught up in either one.
Nothing is more certain than the indispensable necessity of government, and it is equally undeniable, that whenever and however it is instituted, the people must cede to it some of their natural rights in order to vest it with requisite powers.
Indispensable | Necessity | Order | People | Rights |
John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury
In matters of great concern, and which must be done, there is no surer argument of a weak mind than irresolution - to be undetermined where the case is plain, and the necessity urgent. To be always intending to live a new life, but never to find time to set about it, this is as if a man should put off eating, drinking, and sleeping, from one day and night to another, till he is starved and destroyed.
Argument | Day | Irresolution | Man | Mind | Necessity | Time |
Affirmation from others is fickle and fleeting. If you want to make an impact during your lifetime, you have to trade the praise you could receive from others for the things of value that you can accomplish. You can’t be ‘one of the boys’ and follow your destiny at the same time.
When the accumulation of wealth is no longer of high social importance, there will be great changes in the code of morals. We shall be able to rid ourselves of many of the pseudo-moral principles which have hag-ridden us for two hundred years, by which we have exalted some of the most distasteful of human qualities into the position of the highest virtues. We shall be able to afford to dare to assess the money-motive at its true value. The love of money as a possession — as distinguished from the love of money as a means to the enjoyments and realities of life — will be recognised for what it is, a somewhat disgusting morbidity, one of those semi-criminal, semi-pathological propensities which one hands over with a shudder to the specialists in mental disease ... But beware! The time for all this is not yet. For at least another hundred years we must pretend to ourselves and to everyone that fair is foul and foul is fair; for foul is useful and fair is not. Avarice and usury and precaution must be our gods for a little longer still. For only they can lead us out of the tunnel of economic necessity into daylight.
Avarice | Disease | Life | Life | Little | Love of money | Love | Means | Money | Necessity | Position | Principles | Qualities | Time | Wealth | Will |
The scheme of philosophical necessity has been shewn to imply a chain of causes and effects, established by infinite wisdom, and terminating in the greatest good of the whole universe; evils of all kinds natural and moral being admitted, as far as they contribute to that end, or may be in the nature of things inseparable from it.
Civilized man has been more ruthlessly wasteful and grasping in his attitude toward the natural world than has served even his most material best interests. Possibly - as some hope - a mere enlightened selfishness will save it in time. Even if we should learn just in the nick of time not to destroy what is necessary for our own preservation, the mere determination to survive is not sufficient to save very much of the variety and beauty of the natural world. They can e preserved only if man feels the necessity of sharing the earth with at least some of his fellow creatures to be a privilege rather han an irritation. And he is not likely to feel that without something more than intellectual curiosity - that something more you may call love, fellow-feeling, or reverence for life. Without reverence or love the increasing awareness of what the science of ecology teaches us can come to be no more than a shrewder exploitation of what it would be better to admire, to enjoy, and to share in.
Awareness | Beauty | Better | Curiosity | Destroy | Determination | Earth | Hope | Love | Man | Necessity | Reverence | Science | Selfishness | Time | Will | World | Beauty | Awareness | Learn | Privilege |
Henri Poincaré, fully Jules Henri Poincaré
In one word, to draw the rule from experience, one must generalize; this is a necessity that imposes itself on the most circumspect observer.
Kurt Hahn, fully Kurt Martin "the rod" Hahn
As our society has become information rich, it has become action poor. It has become poor in the necessity and possibility for struggle against the environment. As affluence has increased, the young person's environment has become impoverished for responsible and productive action, or any action that tests and develops him.
Dōgen, aka Dōgen Kigen, Eihei Dōgen, titled as Dōgen Zenji NULL
What the worldly praise is not always wise, is not always holy; what the worldly disparage is not always wise, is not always holy.
Praise |
Lactantius, fully Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius NULL
For if God is a title of the highest power, He must be incorruptible, perfect, incapable of suffering, and subject to no other being; therefore they are not gods whom necessity compels to obey the one greatest God.
None strive to know their proper merit but strain for wisdom, beauty, spirit And lose the praise that is their due when they've the impossible in view.
Dōgen, aka Dōgen Kigen, Eihei Dōgen, titled as Dōgen Zenji NULL
Understand clearly that when a great need appears a great use appears also; when there is a small need there is small use; it is obvious, then, that full use is made of all things at all times according to the necessity thereof.
Krishna, also Kreeshna, Krsna, Lord Krishna NULL
Those who have conquered themselves...live in peace, alike in cold and heat, pleasure and pain, praise and blame...To such people a clod of dirt, a stone, and gold are the same...Because they are impartial, they rise to great heights.
Dōgen, aka Dōgen Kigen, Eihei Dōgen, titled as Dōgen Zenji NULL
To listen to the praise of the worldly is to take the unwise as the wise, to take the unintelligent as the intelligent, to take the disloyal as the loyal, to take the unfaithful as the faithful.
Praise |
I suspect it was...the old story of the implacable necessity of a man having honour within his own natural spirit. A man cannot live and temper his mettle without such honour. There is deep in him a sense of the heroic quest; and our modern way of life, with its emphasis on security, its distrust of the unknown and its elevation of abstract collective values has repressed the heroic impulse to a degree that may produce the most dangerous consequences.
Abstract | Distrust | Impulse | Man | Mettle | Necessity | Sense | Story | Temper | Old |
Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
Only people who are capable of loving strongly can also suffer great sorrow, but this same necessity of loving serves to counteract their grief and heals them.
Leon Trotsky, born Lev Davidovich Bronshtein
Learning carries within itself certain dangers because out of necessity one has to learn from one's enemies.