This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The passions that most of all cause the difference of wit, are principally, the more or less desire of power, of riches, of knowledge, and of honour. All which may be reduced to the first, that is, desire of power. For riches, knowledge, and honour, are but several sorts of power. - Thomas Hobbes. Leviathan. 1651.
Legal force to the government must stop at curbing harmful acts toward others citizens only. No harm to Gary that I said there is one God, or there are twenty machine. This act is not to steal his wallet or break for his
Authority | Control | Government | Industry | Selfishness | Government |
Ours is a policy of not embarking the public in enterprises better managed by individuals, and which might occupy as much of our time as those political duties for which the public functionaries are particularly instituted. Some money could be lent them [the New Orleans Canal Co.], but only on an assurance that it would be employed so as to secure the public objects.
In our university [of Virginia] you know there is no Professorship of Divinity. A handle has been made of this, to disseminate an idea that this is an institution, not merely of no religion, but against all religion. Occasion was taken at the last meeting of the Visitors, to bring forward an idea that might silence this calumny, which weighed on the minds of some honest friends to the institution.
The same prudence which in private life would forbid our paying our own money for unexplained projects, forbids it in the dispensation of the public moneys.
Control | Industry | People | Rights | Selfishness |
To talk of immaterial existences is to talk of nothings. To say that the human soul, angels, god, are immaterial, is to say they are nothings, or that there is no god, no angels, no soul. I cannot reason otherwise: but I believe I am supported in my creed of materialism by Locke, Tracy, and Stewart. At what age of the Christian church this heresy of immaterialism, this masked atheism, crept in, I do not know. But heresy it certainly is.
Association | Guarantee | Industry | Order | Thought | Association | Thought |
If there must be trouble, let it be in my day so my child may have peace.
Difficulty | Extravagance | Government | Industry | Nothing | People | Principles | Rights | Society | World | Society | Government |
What are the present governments of Europe, but a scene of iniquity and oppression? What is that of England? Do not its own inhabitants say, It is a market where every man has his price, and where corruption is common traffic, at the expense of a deluded people? No wonder, then, that the French Revolution is traduced.
Government | Industry | Invention | Prosperity | Government |
There are times when minds need to turn to simple things. Perhaps for a few of these nights all of us might do well to leave the briefcases at the office and to read again the pages of the Bible, and to re-read the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States. We might do well to stay home a few days and walk over the fields, or to stand in the shelter of the barn door and reflect upon the relentless and yet benevolent forces of Mother Nature. The laws of nature are relentless. They can never be disobeyed without exacting a penalty. Yet they are benevolent, for when they are understood and obeyed, nature yields up the abundance that blesses those who understand and obey.
Children | Freedom | Good | Happy | Honor | Industry | Labor | Land | Liberty | Magic | Men | Miracles | People | Work | World |
Hearses coffins, long funeral processions, and all the dark emblems of mortality, were reflected, as it were, on the sky, from the terrible works of pestilence and famine which were going on the earth beneath it.
Blessings | Creed | God | Happy | Heart | Ignorance | Industry | Knowledge | Order | People | Principles | Progress | Religion | Right | Society | Spirit | Vengeance | Worship | Youth | Society | Youth | God |
From reveries so airy, from the toil of dropping buckets into empty wells, and growing old in drawing nothing up.
Industry | Occupation |
Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
Our stay-put behavior reflects our view that the stock market serves as a relocation center at which money is moved from the active to the patient.
Competition | Industry | Money |
Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
The .350 hitter expects, and also deserves, a big payoff for his performance - even if he plays for a cellar-dwelling team. And a .150 hitter should get no reward - even if he plays for a pennant winner. [speaking of managers and executive compensation]
Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
The less prudence with which others conduct their affairs, the greater the prudence with which we should conduct our own affairs.