This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Only two things are infinite the universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the former.
To be stupid, selfish, and have good health are three requirements for happiness, though if stupidity is lacking, all is lost.
F. A. Hayek, fully Friedrich August Hayek or von Hayek
Responsibility, not to a superior, but to one’s conscience, the awareness of a duty not exacted by compulsion, the necessity to decide which of the things one values are to be sacrificed to others, and to beat the consequences of one’s own decision, are the very essence of any morals which deserve the name.
Awareness | Conscience | Consequences | Decision | Duty | Necessity | Responsibility | Awareness |
Winwood Reade, fully William Winwood Reade
The history of morals is the extension of the reciprocal or selfish virtues from the clan to the tribe, from the tribe to the nation, from the nation to all communities living under the same government, civil or religious, then people of the same colour, and finally to all mankind.
Government | History | Mankind | People |
Just as you discover that stupidity and cruelty are the same everywhere, you find that the essential elements of humanism are the same everywhere, too.
The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.
Lazarus Long, fictional character created by Robert A. Heinlein
Stupidity cannot be cured with money, or through education, or by legislation. Stupidity is not a sin; the victim can't help being stupid. But stupidity is the only universal capital crime; the sentence is death, there is no appeal, and execution is carried out automatically and without pity.
Crime | Death | Education | Money | Pity | Sin | Stupidity | Victim |
As the grand discordant harmony of the celestial bodies may be explained by the simple principles of gravity and impulse, so also in that more wonderful and complicated microcosm the heart of man, all the phenomena of morals are perhaps resolvable into one single principle, the pursuit of apparent good; for although customs universally vary, yet man in all climates and countries is essentially the same.
Good | Harmony | Heart | Impulse | Man | Phenomena | Principles |
Genius may have its limitations, but stupidity is not thus handicapped.