This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
There is a mistaken notion prevailing among some parents that discipline is the same thing as punishment. It is not. Discipline comes from a Latin word meaning "to teach." The best discipline is that which teaches, not the kind that hurts.
Character | Discipline | Meaning | Parents | Punishment | Teach |
Dada Vaswani, born Jashan Pahalraj Vaswani
What is the meaning of life? The meaning may not be expressed in words. It transcends the mind and the intellect. The meaning is to be experienced, realized... It is open to everyone who would live according to certain disciplines... The discipline of duty. Life is a field of duty, not a dance of desires... The discipline of service... We are here to help others... The opposite of love is not hate but apathy... The discipline of silence... The meaning of life is to love God and to give the service of love to the suffering children of God. And to the birds and animals who are God’s children as well.
Apathy | Character | Children | Discipline | Duty | God | Hate | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Mind | Service | Silence | Suffering | Words | God |
Bernard Baruch, fully Bernard Mannes Baruch
In the last analysis, our only freedom is the freedom to discipline ourselves.
Discipline | Freedom | Wisdom |
Live more closely to the rhythms of nature... To keep our priorities straight, it is helpful to live more deliberately, with enough discipline to evoke and sustain a sensitivity to the inner life. To honor the rhythms and requirements of your life, be sure that the pattern you adopt is organic and flexible, rather than arbitrary and artificial... Live each day mindfully. Spiritual life requires no strongman acts, no glittering achievements or spectacular successes, but it does require passionate fidelity to the hundred little things of mundane life.
Day | Discipline | Enough | Fidelity | Honor | Life | Life | Little | Nature | Organic | Wisdom |
Calvin Coolidge, fully John Calvin Coolidge, Jr.
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. It may not be difficult to store up in the mind a vast quantity of facts within a comparatively short time, but the ability to form judgments requires the severe discipline of hard work and the tempering heat of experience and maturity.
Ability | Discipline | Experience | Knowledge | Mind | Time | Wisdom | Work |
Every serious-minded person knows that a large part of the effort required in moral discipline consists in the courage needed to acknowledge the unpleasant consequences of one's past and present acts.
Consequences | Courage | Discipline | Effort | Past | Present | Wisdom |
I believe that the political significance of the problem of sex is due to the fact that sex is located at the point of intersection of the discipline of the body and the control of the population.
Body | Control | Discipline | Wisdom |
George Mogridge, aka "Old Humphrey"
How can man be intelligent, happy, or useful, without the culture and discipline of education? It is this that unlocks the prison-house of his mind, and releases the captive.
Culture | Discipline | Education | Happy | Man | Mind | Prison | Wisdom |
The artisan or scientist or the follower of whatever discipline who has the habit of comparing himself not with other followers but with the discipline itself will have a lower opinion of himself, the more excellent he is.
Discipline | Habit | Opinion | Will | Wisdom |
The practice of perseverance is the discipline of the noblest virtues. To run well, we must run to the end. It is not the fighting but the conquering that gives a hero his title to renown.
Discipline | Fighting | Hero | Perseverance | Practice | Title | Wisdom |
Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
Knowledge is all-knowing, understanding, forgiving; it takes up no position, sets no store by form. It has compassion with the abyss - it is the abyss. So we reject it, firmly, and henceforward our concern shall be with beauty only. And by beauty we mean simplicity, largeness, and renewed severity of discipline; we mean a return to detachment and to form.
Beauty | Compassion | Detachment | Discipline | Knowing | Knowledge | Position | Simplicity | Understanding | Wisdom | Beauty |
Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
The severity of laws prevents their execution. When the penalty is excessive, one is forced to prefer impunity.
Wisdom |
John Morley, 1st Viscount Morely of Blackburn, Lord Morley
Excess of severity is not the path to order. On the contrary, it is the path to the bomb.
The pedagogical method of observation has for its base the liberty of the child, and liberty is activity... Discipline must come through liberty.
Discipline | Liberty | Method | Observation | Wisdom |
Max Nordau, fully Max Simon Nordau, born Simon Maximilian Südfeld
Whoever preaches absence of discipline is an enemy of progress.
Absence | Discipline | Enemy | Progress | Wisdom |
Lydia Sigourney, fully Lydia Huntley Sigourney, née Lydia Howard Huntley
Language is slow; the mastery of wants doth teach it to the infant, drop by drop, as brooklets gather. Yet there is a love, simple and sure, that asks no discipline of weary years, the language of the soul, told through the eye. The stammering lip oft mars the perfect thought; but the heart's lightning hath no obstacle. Quick glances, like the thrilling wires, transfuse the telegraphic look.
Discipline | Heart | Language | Love | Soul | Teach | Thought | Wants | Wisdom |
William E. Blatz, fully William Emet Blatz
Parenting: Affection without sentiment, authority without cruelty, discipline without aggression, humor without ridicule, sacrifice without obligation, companionship without possessiveness.
Aggression | Authority | Cruelty | Discipline | Humor | Obligation | Ridicule | Sacrifice | Sentiment | Companionship |
Kenneth Hanson, aka Ken Hanson
To study is to live… The discipline of learning provides cohesion, a clear and compelling reason for being.
Discipline | Learning | Reason | Study |
You never will be the person you can be if pressure, tension and discipline are taken out of your life.
Discipline | Life | Life | Will |