This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
What matters, therefore, is not the meaning of life in general, but rather the specific meaning of a person's life at a given moment.
Achievement | Change | Guilt | Opportunity | Optimism | Reason | Suffering | Tragedy |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
Take the fate of the sick--especially those who are incurable. I once read a letter written by a young invalid, in which he told a friend that he had just found out he would not live for long, that even an operation would be of no help. He wrote further that he remembered a film he had seen in which a man was portrayed who waited for death in a courageous and dignified way. The boy had thought it a great accomplishment to meet death so well. Now--he wrote--fate was offering him a similar chance.
Achievement | Men |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
After all, man is that being who has invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who has entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or Shema Yisrael on his lips.
Achievement | Angels | Belief | Contemplation | Life | Life | Love | Man | Meaning | Nothing | Poetry | Position | Right | Salvation | Thought | Time | Truth | Wisdom | World | Contemplation | Thought | Understand |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
I was lying on the hard boards in an earthen hut where about seventy of us were 'taken care of.' We were sick and did not have to leave camp for work; we did not have to go on parade. We could lie all day in our little corner in the hut and doze and wait for the daily distribution of bread (which . . . was reduced for the sick) and for the daily helping of soup (watered down and also decreased in quantity). But how content we were; happy in spite of everything. While we cowered against each other to avoid any unnecessary loss of warmth, and were too lazy and disinterested to move a finger unnecessarily, we heard shrill whistles and shouts from the square where the night shift had just returned and was assembling for roll call. The door was flung open, and the snowstorm blew into our hut. An exhausted comrade, covered with snow, stumbled inside to sit down for a few minutes. But the senior warden turned him out again. It was strictly forbidden to admit a stranger to a hut while a check-up on the men was in progress. How sorry I was for that fellow and how glad not to be in his skin at that moment, but instead to be sick and able to doze on in the sick quarters! What a lifesaver it was to have two days there, and perhaps even two extra days after those!
Achievement | Contemplation | Man | Nothing | Position | Right | World | Contemplation |
All are equal in birth and in death. Differences arise only during the interval. The Emperor and the beggar are both born naked; they sleep equally silently; they bow out without even leaving their new address. Then how can their reality be different? There can be no doubt on this score. All are basically the same.
Achievement | Adventure | Anxiety | Anxiety | Cruelty | Cruelty |
Scientific progress on a broad front results from the free play of free intellects, working on subjects of their own choice, in the manner dictated by their curiosity for exploration of the unknown. Freedom of inquiry must be preserved under any plan for Government support of science.
Achievement | Peace | Progress | Security |
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
The story - from Rumplestiltskin to War and Peace - is one of the basic tools invented by the human mind, for the purpose of gaining understanding. There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.
Achievement | Appetite | Fulfillment | Power | Will |
Science has a simple faith, which transcends utility. Nearly all men of science, all men of learning for that matter, and men of simple ways too, have it in some form and in some degree. It is the faith that it is the privilege of man to learn to understand, and that this is his mission. If we abandon that mission under stress we shall abandon it forever, for stress will not cease. Knowledge for the sake of understanding, not merely to prevail, that is the essence of our being. None can define its limits, or set its ultimate boundaries.
Achievement | Peace | Progress | Security |
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
The hatred is no less fickle than friendship.
Achievement | Spirit |
Words are both better and worse than thoughts; they express them, and add to them; they give them power for good or evil; they start them on an endless flight, for instruction and comfort and blessing, or for injury and sorrow and ruin.
Brotherhood | Prayer | Race |
Tom Lehrer, fully Thomas Andrew Lehrer
For there is surely nothing more beautiful in this world than the sight of a lone man facing single-handedly a half a ton of angry pot roast!
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
Tell me what is right and I will fight for it.
Achievement | Heart | Man |
William Howells, fully William Dean Howells, aka The Dean of American Letters
Some people can stay longer in an hour than others can in a week.
Popular beliefs on essential matters must be examined in order to discover the original thought.
War comes today as the result of one of three causes: either actual or threatened wrong by one country to another, or suspicion by one country that another intends to do it wrong ... or, from bitterness of feeling, dependent in no degree whatever upon substantial questions of difference. . . . The least of these three causes of war is actual injustice.
Brotherhood | Charity | Desire | Duty | Individual | Judgment | Love | Malice | People | Progress | Prosperity | Regard | Sentiment | Happiness |
Scientific research is based on the idea that everything that takes place is determined by laws of nature, and therefore this holds for the actions of people. For this reason, a research scientist will hardly be inclined to believe that events could be influenced by a prayer, i.e. by a wish addressed to a supernatural Being.
Achievement | Beauty | Conduct | Good | Harmony | Important | Thought | Beauty | Old | Thought |
Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL
I declare before you all that my whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong.
Brotherhood | Devotion | Heart | Justice | Old |
The spirit of militarism has already permeated all walks of life. Indeed, I am convinced that militarism is a greater danger here than anywhere else, because of the many bribes capitalism holds out to those whom it wishes to destroy.
Brotherhood | Dignity | Equity | Justice | Liberty | Love | Sense | Society | Society |
Whether our reformers admit it or not, the economic and social inferiority of women is responsible for prostitution.