This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Ignorance is a blank sheet, on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one, on which we must first erase.
When young, we trust ourselves too much and we trust others too little when old. Rashness is the error of youth, timid caution of age. Manhood is the isthmus between the two extremes; the ripe and fertile season of action, when alone we can hope to find the head to contrive, united with the hand to execute.
Action | Age | Caution | Error | Hope | Little | Rashness | Trust | Youth |
Error is always more busy than ignorance. Ignorance is a blank sheet on which we may write; but error is a scribbled one from which we must first erase.
God is another name for human intelligence raised above all error and imperfection, and extended to all possible truth.
Error | God | Imperfection | Intelligence | Truth |
Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
To error and not reform, this may indeed be called error.
No one... who lives in error is free. Do you wish to live in fear? Do you wish to live in sorrow? Do you wish to live in perturbation? “By no means.” No one... who is in a state of fear or sorrow or perturbation is free; but whoever is delivered from sorrows and fears and perturbations, he is at the same time also delivered from servitude.
One might equate growing up with a mistrust of words. A mature person trusts his eyes more than his ears. Irrationality often manifests itself in upholding the word against the evidence of the eyes. Children, savages and true believers remember far less what they have seen than what they have heard.
It is without all controversy that learning doth make the minds of men gentle, amiable, and pliant to government; whereas ignorance makes them churlish, thwarting, and mutinous; and the evidence of time doth clear this assertion, considering that the most barbarous, rude and unlearned times have been most subject to tumults, seditions, and changes.
Assertion | Controversy | Evidence | Government | Ignorance | Learning | Men | Time |
Without controversy, learning doth make the mind of men gentle, generous, amiable and pliant to government; whereas ignorance makes them curlish, thwarting, and mutinous; and the evidence of time doth clear this assertion, considering that the most barbarous, rude, and unlearned times have been most subject to tumults, seditions, and changes.
Assertion | Controversy | Evidence | Government | Ignorance | Learning | Men | Mind | Time |
George Berkeley, also Bishop Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne
Philosophy being nothing else but the study of wisdom and truth, it may with reason be expected that those who have spent most time and pains in it should enjoy a greater calm and serenity of mind, a greater clearness and evidence of knowledge, and be less disturbed with doubts and difficulties than other men.
Evidence | Knowledge | Men | Mind | Nothing | Philosophy | Reason | Serenity | Study | Time | Truth | Wisdom |
Be calm in argument; for fierceness makes error a fault, and truth discourtesy. Why should I feel another man’s mistakes more than his sicknesses or poverty? In love I should: but anger is not love, nor wisdom either; therefore gently move. Calmness is great advantage; he that lets another chafe may warm him at his fire, mark all his wand’rings and enjoy his frets, as cunning fencers suffer heat to tire.
Anger | Argument | Calmness | Cunning | Error | Fault | Love | Man | Poverty | Truth | Wisdom |
Gampopa, known as Sonam Rinchen from Gampo or Dagpo Lha-je from Gampo NULL
Unless the mind be trained to selflessness and infinite compassion, one is apt to fall into the error of seeking liberation for self alone.
Compassion | Error | Mind | Self |
If error is corrected whenever it is recognized as such, the path of error is the path of truth.
In the heat of speculation or of love there may come moments of equal perfection, but they are very unstable. The reason and the heart remain deeply unsatisfied. But the eye finds in nature, and in some supreme achievements of art, constant and fuller satisfaction. For the eye is quick and seems to have been more docile to the education of life than the heart or the reason of man, and able sooner to adapt itself to the reality. Beauty therefore seems to be the clearest manifestation of perfection, and the best evidence of its possibility.
Art | Beauty | Education | Evidence | Heart | Life | Life | Love | Man | Nature | Perfection | Reality | Reason | Speculation | Beauty |
The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce[s] them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.