This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The wise men of old have sent most of their morality down to the stream of time in the light skiff of apothegm or epigram; and the proverbs of nations, which embody the common sense of nations, have the brisk concussion of the most sparkling wit.
Character | Common Sense | Light | Men | Morality | Nations | Proverbs | Sense | Time | Wise | Wit | Old |
To say that people have a moral sense is not the same thing as saying that they are innately good. A moral sense must compete with other senses that are natural to humans - the desire to survive, acquire possessions, indulge in sex, or accumulate power - in short, with self-interest narrowly defined. How that struggle is resolved will differ depending on our character, our circumstances, and the cultural and political tendencies of the day. But saying that a moral sense exists is the same thing as saying that humans, by their nature, are potentially good.
Character | Circumstances | Day | Desire | Good | Nature | People | Possessions | Power | Self | Self-interest | Sense | Struggle | Will |
I have felt a presence that disturbs me with the joy of elevated thought; a sense sublime of something far more deeply interfused, whose dwelling is the light of setting suns, and the round ocean of the living air, and the blue sky, and in the mind of man - a motion and a spirit, that impels all thinking things, all objects of all thought, and rolls through all things.
Character | Joy | Light | Man | Mind | Sense | Spirit | Thinking | Thought |
François Arago, fully François Jean Dominique Arago
A time will come when the science of destruction shall bend before the arts of peace; when the genius which multiplies our powers, which creates new products, which diffuses comfort and happiness among the great mass of the people, shall occupy in the general estimation of mankind that rank which reason and common sense now assign to it.
Comfort | Common Sense | Estimation | Genius | Mankind | Peace | People | Rank | Reason | Science | Sense | Time | Will | Wisdom | Happiness |
Victor Weisskopf, fully Victor "Viki" Frederick Weisskopf
Most forms of human creativity have one aspect n common: the attempt to give some sense to the various impressions, emotions, experiences, and actions that fill our lives, and thereby to give some meaning and value to our existence... The crisis of our time in the Western world is that the search for meaning has become meaningless for many of us.
Character | Creativity | Emotions | Existence | Meaning | Search | Sense | Time | World | Crisis | Value |
There is no evil that we cannot either face or fly from but the consciousness of duty disregarded. A sense of duty pursues us ever.
Character | Consciousness | Duty | Evil | Sense |
Unless there is a recovery of the true dualism or, what amounts to the same thing, a reaffirmation of the truths of the inner life in some form - traditional or critical, religious or humanistic - civilization in any sense that has been attached to that term hitherto is threatened at its base.
Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson
From our point of view, life appears in its entirety as an immense wave... which rises, and which is opposed by the descending movement of matter.. this rising wave is consciousness... running through human generations, subdividing itself into individuals. This subdivision was vaguely indicated in it, but could not have been made clear without matter. Thus souls are continually being created, which, nevertheless, in a certain sense pre-existed. They are nothing else than the little rills into which the great river of life divides itself, flowing through the body of humanity. The movement of the stream is distinct from the river bed, although it must adopt its winding course. Consciousness is distinct from the organism it animates, although it must undergo its vicissitudes... the brain underlines at ever instant the motor indications of the state of consciousness; but the interdependence of consciousness and brain is limited to this... consciousness is essentially free.
Body | Consciousness | Humanity | Life | Life | Little | Nothing | Sense | Wisdom |
If all the gold in the world were melted down into a solid cube, it would be about the size of an eight-room house. If a man got possession of all that gold - billions of dollars' worth, he could not buy a friend, character, peace of mind, clear conscience, or a sense of eternity.
Character | Conscience | Eternity | Friend | Gold | Man | Mind | Peace | Sense | Size | Wisdom | World | Worth |
Common sense is nature’s gift, but reason is an art.