This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The chief element in the art of statesmanship under modern conditions is the ability to elucidate the confused and clamorous interests which converge upon the seat of government. It is an ability to penetrate from the naive self-interest of each group to its permanent and real interest. Statesmanship consists in giving the people not what they want but what they will learn to want.
Great men too often have greater faults than little men can find room for.
Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
The more you see yourself as what you'd like to become, and act as if what you want is already there, the more you'll activate those dormant forces that will collaborate to transform your dream into your reality.
Achievement | Failure | Greatness | Learning | People | Teach | Failure |
Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
The fact that you are willing to say, "I do not understand, and it is fine," is the greatest understanding you could exhibit.
Ability | Circumstances | Fulfillment | Greatness |
As Gill says, every man is called to give love to the work of his hands. Every man is called to be an artist. The small family farm is one of the last places - they are getting rarer every day - where men and women (and girls and boys, too) can answer that call to be an artist, to learn to give love to the work of their hands. It is one of the last places where the maker - and some farmers still do talk about making the crops - is responsible, from start to finish, for the thing made. This certainly is a spiritual value, but it is not for that reason an impractical or uneconomic one. In fact, from the exercise of this responsibility, this giving of love to the work of the hands, the farmer, the farm, the consumer, and the nation all stand to gain in the most practical ways: They gain the means of life, the goodness of food, and the longevity and dependability of the sources of food, both natural and cultural. The proper answer to the spiritual calling becomes, in turn, the proper fulfillment of physical need.
What could be more superstitious than the idea that money brings forth food?
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
In those whom I like, I can find no common denominator; in those whom I love I can: they all make me laugh.
Nations |
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
Any marriage, happy or unhappy, is infinitely more interesting and significant than any romance, however passionate.
To live, we must daily break the body and shed the blood of Creation. When we do this knowingly, lovingly, skillfully, reverently, it is a sacrament. When we do it ignorantly, greedily, clumsily, destructively, it is a desecration. In such desecration we condemn ourselves to spiritual and moral loneliness, and others to want.
Distinction | Intention | Nations | Terror | Work |
W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
One ever feels his twoness - an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder
W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
When in this world a man comes forward with a thought, a deed, a vision, we ask not how does he look, but what is his message?. . . The world still wants to ask that a woman primarily be pretty. . . .
W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky
All over Europe the organs that represent dogmatic interests are in permanent opposition to the progressive tendencies around them, and are rapidly sinking into contempt. In every country in which a strong political life is manifested, the secularization of politics is the consequence. Each stage of that movement has been initiated and effected by those who are most indifferent to dogmatic theology, and each has been opposed by those who are most occupied with theology.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The art of any propagandist and agitator consists in his ability to find the best means of influencing any given audience, by presenting a definite truth, in such a way as to make it most convincing, most easy to digest, most graphic, and most strongly impressive.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Comrade Stalin, having become Secretary-General, has unlimited authority concentrated in his hands, and I am not sure whether he will always be capable of using that authority with sufficient caution.
Equality | Experience | Nations | Right | Rights | Teach | Unity |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The sole "property" of matter with whose recognition philosophical materialism is bound up is the property of being an objective reality, of existing outside the mind.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Napoleon, I think, wrote: “On s’engage et puis ... on voit.” rendered freely this means: “First engage in a serious battle and then see what happens. ” Well, we did first engage in a serious battle in October 1917. And now there can be no doubt that in the main we have been victorious.
Birth | Imperialism | Nations |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The government is tottering. We must deal it the death blow at any cost. To delay action is the same as death.
Determination | Government | Humanity | Nations | Peace | War | Government |