This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
I am continually fascinated at the difficulty intelligent people have in distinguishing what is controversial from what is merely offensive.
Difficulty | People |
Trouble, difficulty and hardship are three great teachers. Fortunate is the person who in keeping company with them keeps his eyes, his ears and, better still, his mind open; they can teach him valuable things.
Better | Difficulty | Mind | Teach | Hardship |
[In the cave allegory] those whose who are destitute of philosophy may be compared to prisoners in a cave, who are only able to look in one direction because they are bound, and who have a fire behind them and a wall in front. Between them and the wall there is nothing; all that they see are shadows of themselves, and of objects behind them, cast on the wall by the light of the fire. Inevitably they regard these shadows as real, and have no notion of the objects to which they are due. At last some man succeeds in escaping from the cave to the light of the sun; for the first time he sees real things, and becomes aware that he had hitherto been deceived by shadows. If he is the sort of philosopher who is fit to become a guardian, he will feel it his duty to those who were formerly his fellow prisoners to go down again into the cave, instruct them as to the truth, and show them the way up. But he will have difficulty in persuading them, because, coming out of the sunlight, he will see shadows less clearly than they do, and will seem to them stupider than before his escape.
Difficulty | Duty | Light | Man | Nothing | Philosophy | Regard | Time | Truth | Will |
Peter McWilliams, fully Peter Alexander McWilliams
Acceptance is not a state of passivity or inaction. I am not saying you can't change the world, right wrongs, or replace evil with good. Acceptance is, in fact, the first step to successful action. If you don't fully accept a situation precisely the way it is, you will have difficulty changing it. Moreover, if you don't fully accept the situation, you will never really know if the situation should be changed.
Acceptance | Action | Change | Difficulty | Evil | Good | Right | Will | World |
The greatest difficulty is that men do not think enough of themselves, do not consider what it is that they are sacrificing when they follow in a herd, or when they cater for their establishment.
Difficulty | Enough | Men | Think |
Thomas Henry Huxley, aka T.H. Huxley and Darwin's Bulldog
I find no difficulty in imagining that, at some former period, this universe was not in existence, and that it made its appearance in consequence of the volition of some pre-existing Being.
Appearance | Difficulty | Existence | Universe |
The great difficulty in philosophy is to come to every question with a mind fresh and unshackled by former theories, though strengthened by exercise and information.
Difficulty | Mind | Philosophy | Question | Theories |
A person who is goal oriented will be able to overcome difficulties that others are unable to cope with. The stronger one is motivated to reach a certain goal, the easier it is for him to tolerate and even ignore difficulties. Hence a person who is strongly goal oriented to do good deeds will easily be able to minimize the amount of difficulty he experiences in doing those deeds.
Deeds | Difficulty | Good | Will | Deeds |
An empty head is not really empty; it is stuffed with rubbish. Hence the difficulty of forcing anything into an empty head.
Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger
We must therefore not be discouraged by the difficulty of interpreting life by the ordinary laws of physics. For that is just what is to be expected from the knowledge we have gained of the structure of living matter. We must also be prepared to find a new type of physical law prevailing in it. Or are we to term it a non-physical, not to say a super-physical, law?
Difficulty | Knowledge | Law | Life | Life |
George Marshall, fully George Catlett Marshall, Jr.
I need not tell you that the world situation is very serious. That must be apparent to all intelligent people. I think one difficulty is that the problem is one of such enormous complexity that the very mass of facts presented to the public by press and radio make it exceedingly difficult for the man in the street to reach a clear appraisement of the situation. Furthermore, the people of this country are distant from the troubled areas of the earth and it is hard for them to comprehend the plight and consequent reactions of the long-suffering peoples, and the effect of those reactions on their governments in connection with our efforts to promote peace in the world.
Difficulty | Earth | Man | Need | Peace | People | Public | World | Think |
Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke
It is a very easy thing to devise good laws; the difficulty is to make them effective. The great mistake is that of looking upon men as virtuous, or thinking that they can be made so by laws; and consequently the greatest art of a politician is to render vices serviceable to the cause of virtue.
Art | Cause | Difficulty | Good | Men | Mistake | Thinking | Art |
The difficulty is not that great to die for a friend, the hard part is finding a friend worth dying for.
Difficulty | Friend | Worth |
Time is but the measure of the difficulty of a conception. Pure thought has scarcely any need of time, since it perceives the two ends of an idea almost at the same moment.
Difficulty | Ends | Need | Thought | Thought |
J. P. Morgan, fully John Pierpont Morgan
No problem can be solved until it is reduced to some simple form. The changing of a vague difficulty into a specific, concrete form is a very essential element in thinking.