This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
There is nobody so weak of invention that he cannot make up some little stories to vilify his enemy.
If anything could testify to the magical powers of the priesthood of science and their technical acolytes, or declare unto mankind the supreme qualifications for absolute rulership held by the Divine Computer, this new invention alone should suffice. So the final purpose of life in terms of the megamachine at last becomes clear: it is to furnish and process an endless quantity of data, in order to expand the role and ensure the domination of the power system.
Absolute | Computer | Invention | Life | Life | Mankind | Order | Power | Purpose | Purpose | Science | System |
Love is the invention of a few high cultures… it is cultural artifact. To make love the requirement of a lifelong marriage is exceedingly difficult, and only a few people can achieve it. I don’t believe in setting universal standards that a large portion of people can’t reach.
Love is the invention of a few high cultures, independent, in a sense, of marriage - although society can make it a requisite for marriage, as we periodically attempt to do... But in terms of a personal, highly intense choice, it is a cultural artifact.
Choice | Invention | Love | Marriage | Sense | Society | Society |
Benjamin Collins Brodie, fully Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, 1st Baronet
It is attention, more than any difference between minds and men.—In this is the source of poetic genius, and of the genius of discovery in science.—It was this that led Newton to the invention of fluxions, and the discovery of gravitation, and Harvey to find out the circulation of the blood, and Davy to those views which laid the foundation of modern chemistry.
Discovery | Genius | Good | Invention | Nothing | Usefulness | World | Discovery |
Benjamin Collins Brodie, fully Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, 1st Baronet
Our minds are so constructed that we can keep the attention fixed on a particular object until we have, as it were, looked all around it; and the mind that possesses this faculty in the highest degree of perfection will take cognizance of relations of which another mind has no perception. It is this, much more than any difference in the abstract power of reasoning, which constitutes the vast difference between the minds of different individuals. This is the history alike of the poetic genius and of the genius of discovery in science. “I keep the subject,” said Sir Isaac Newton, “constantly before me, and wait until the dawnings open by little and little into a full light.” It was thus that after long meditation he was led to the invention of fluxions, and to the anticipation of the modern discovery of the combustibility of the diamond. It was thus that Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood, and that those views were suggested by Davy which laid the foundation of that grand series of experimental researches which terminated in the decomposition of the earths and alkalies.
Abstract | Age | Ambition | Anticipation | Attention | Contentment | Death | Discovery | Disease | Ennui | Failure | Genius | History | Indolence | Intelligence | Invention | Little | Meditation | Men | Mind | Object | Old age | Perfection | Power | Will | Discovery |
The more we can squeeze out of nature by invention and discoveries and improved organization of labour, the more uncertain our existence seems to be. It's not we who lord it over things, it seems, but thinks which lord it over us.
Existence | Invention | Lord | Nature | Organization |
Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus, sometimes known as Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam
His eloquent tongue so well seconds his fertile invention that no one speaks better when suddenly called forth. His attention never languishes; his mind is always before his words; his memory has all its stock so turned into ready money that, without hesitation or delay, it supplies whatever the occasion may require.
Attention | Better | Delay | Invention | Memory | Mind | Money | Words |
An invention that is quickly accepted will turn out to be a rather trivial alteration of something that has already existed.
The march of invention has clothed mankind with powers of which a century ago the boldest imagination could not have dreamt.
Imagination | Invention | Mankind |
Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
No feats of heroism are needed to achieve the greatest and most important changes in the existence of humanity; neither the armament of millions of soldiers, nor the construction of new roads and machines, nor the arrangement of exhibitions, nor the organization of workmen's unions, nor revolutions, nor barricades, nor explosions, nor the perfection of aerial navigation; but a change in public opinion. And to accomplish this change no exertions of the mind are needed, nor the refutation of anything in existence, nor the invention of any extraordinary novelty; it is only needful that we should not succumb to the erroneous, already defunct, public opinion of the past, which governments have induced artificially; it is only needful that each individual should say what he really feels or thinks, or at least that he should not say what he does not think.
Change | Existence | Important | Individual | Invention | Mind | Opinion | Organization | Perfection | Public |
Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
It is often said that the invention of terrible weapons of destruction will put an end to war. That is an error. As the means of extermination are improved, the means of reducing men who hold the state conception of life to submission can be improved to correspond. They may slaughter them by thousands, by millions, they may tear them to pieces, still they will march to war like senseless cattle. Some will want beating to make them move, others will be proud to go if they are allowed to wear a scrap of ribbon or gold lace.
Gold | Invention | Life | Life | Means | Men | Submission | War | Weapons | Will |
Leonardo da Vinci, fully Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
The eye, which is called the window of the soul, is the principal means by which the central sense can most completely and abundantly appreciate the infinite works of nature; and the ear is the second, which acquires dignity by hearing of the things the eye has seen. If you, historians, or poets, or mathematicians had not seen things with your eyes you could not report of them in writing. And if you, O poet, tell a story with your pen, the painter with his brush can tell it more easily, with simpler completeness and less tedious to be understood. And if you call painting dumb poetry, the painter may call poetry blind painting. Now which is the worse defect? to be blind or dumb? Though the poet is as free as the painter in the invention of his fictions they are not so satisfactory to men as paintings; for, though poetry is able to describe forms, actions and places in words, the painter deals with the actual similitude of the forms, in order to represent them. Now tell me which is the nearer to the actual man: the name of man or the image of the man. The name of man differs in different countries, but his form is never changed but by death.
Dignity | Invention | Man | Means | Men | Order | Poetry | Sense | Similitude | Story |
Henry St John, Lord Bolingbroke, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke
No religion ever appeared in the world whose natural tendency was so much directed to promote the peace and happiness of mankind. It makes right reason a law in every possible definition of the word. And therefore, even supposing it to have been purely a human invention, it had been the most amiable and the most useful invention that was ever imposed on mankind for their good.
Invention | Law | Mankind | Peace | Reason | Religion | Right | World | Happiness |
Nothing has changed the nature of man so much as the loss of silence. The invention of printing techniques, compulsory education - nothing has changed man so much as this lack of relationship with silence; this fact that silence is no longer taken for granted, as something as natural as the sky above or the air we breathe. Man who has lost silence has not merely lost human quality, but his whole structure has been changed thereby.
Education | Invention | Man | Nature | Nothing | Relationship | Silence | Loss |
Michelangelo, aka Michaelangelo Buonarroti, fully Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni NULL
But if it so happens ... a work ... under pain of otherwise becoming shameful or false, requires fantasy ... [and that] certain limbs or elements of a figure are altered by borrowing from other species, for example transforming into a dolphin the hinder end of a griffon or a stag ... these alterations will be excellent and the substitution, however unreal it may seem, deserves to be declared a fine invention in the genre of the monstrous. When a painter introduces into this kind of work of art chimerae and other imaginary beings in order to divert and entertain the senses and also to captivate the eyes of mortals who long to see unclassified and impossible things, he shows himself more respectful of reason than if he produced the usual figures of men or of animals.
Art | Borrowing | Example | Invention | Men | Order | Pain | Reason | Will | Work | Art |