This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
I think the definition of an artist is not necessarily tied into excellence or talent; an artist is somebody who, if you took away their freedom to make art, would lose their mind.
Excellence | Freedom | Excellence | Think |
The definition that I want comes from G. C. Williams. A gene is defined as any portion of chromosomal material that potentially last for enough generations to serve as a unit of natural selection.
Enough |
Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman
If there is something very slightly wrong in our definition of the theories, then the full mathematical rigor may convert these errors into ridiculous conclusions.
Wrong |
I suspect that they continued to experience leadership as an activity performed without authority, beyond expectations.
Authority | Power | Will | Leadership |
S. I. Hayakawa, fully Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa
Ever since man began to till the soil and learned not to eat the seed grain but to plant it and wait for the harvest, the postponement of gratification has been the basis of a higher standard of living and civilization.
A drunkard would not give money to sober people. He said they would only eat it, and buy clothes and send their children to school with it.
The birthplace of success for each person is in his Inner-Consciousness. The Inner-Consciousness will use whatever it is given. If constructive thoughts are planted positive outcomes will be the result. Plant the seeds of failure and failure will follow. And since the only real freedom a person has is the choice of what thoughts he will feed to his Inner-Consciousness he is totally responsible for the outcomes he gets.
Blame | Circumstances | Consequences | Means | People | Responsibility | Society | Will | Society |
Truth is sought not because it is truth but because it is good.
Independent derivation meshed beautifully with the triumph, from the 1930's on, of a strict version of Darwinism based on the near ubiquity of adaptive design built by natural selection... Arthropods and vertebrates do share several features of functional design. But those similarities only reflect the power of natural selection to craft optimal structures independently in a world of limited biomechanical solutions to common functional problems - an evolutionary phenomenon called convergence.
Ability | Intelligence | Invention | Literature | Little | Nature | Receive | Story | World |
We must [it has been argued] go beyond reductionism to a holistic recognition that biology and culture interpenetrate in an inextricable manner.
If you think it is hard to get humans to follow traffic laws, imagine convincing an asteroid to move along an ellipse.
Theodore Dreiser, fully Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser
The mystery of life--its inexplicability, beauty, cruelty, tenderness, folly . . . has occupied the greater part of my waking thoughts; and in reverence or rage or irony, as the moment or situation might dictate, I have pondered and even demanded of cosmic energy to know Why.
World |
We might well believe that the law of universal gravitation whereby each physical reality attracts and is attracted to every other physical reality has its correspondence in the hidden or overt attraction of all human beings and all human societies to each other. This attraction takes place within a functional balance of tensions whereby each is sustained in its existence by all the others even as each sustains the others in existence. This seems to be demonstrated in the extensive and continuing efforts of humans to encounter each other and to establish a universal network of communication throughout the human order.
Absurd | Authority | Balance | Better | Children | Desolation | Destiny | Determination | Earth | Education | Future | Giving | Glory | Judgment | Life | Life | Need | Order | Present | Religion | Right | Rights | Sense | Thinking | Will | Work | World |
The constitution of most of the states (and of the United States) assert that all power is inherent in the people; that they may exercise it by themselves; that it is their right and duty to be at all times armed and that they are entitled to freedom of person, freedom of religion, freedom of property, and freedom of the press.
Will |
The concentrating [of powers] in the same hands is precisely the definition of despotic government. It will be no alleviation that these powers will be exercised by a plurality of hands, and not by a single one.
Will |
Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
This was love at first sight, love everlasting a feeling unknown, unhoped for, unexpected--in so far as it could be a matter of conscious awareness it took entire possession of him, and he understood, with joyous amazement, that this was for life.