This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Charles P. Steinmetz, fully Charles Proteus Steinmetz, born Karl August Rudolf Steinmetz
Spiritual power is a force which history clearly teaches has been the greatest force in the development of men... Some day people will learn that material things do not bring happiness, and are of little use in making people creative and powerful. Then the scientists of the world will turn their laboratories over to the study of spiritual forces which have hardly been scratched.
Day | Force | History | Little | Men | People | Power | Study | Will | Wisdom | World | Learn |
Benjamin Spock, fully Benjamin McLane Spock
The more people have studied different methods of bringing up children and the more they have come to the conclusion that what good mothers and fathers instinctively feel like doing for their babies is the best after all.
I. F. Stone, fully Isidor Feinstein Stone, born Isidor Feinstein
Funerals are always occasions for pious lying. A deep vein of superstition and a sudden touch of kindness always lead people to give the departed credit for more virtues than he possessed.
Credit | Kindness | Lying | People | Pious | Superstition | Wisdom |
Duane Elgin and Arnold Mitchell (1918-1985)
Proposed four consumption criteria for simple living. (1) Does what I own or buy promote activity, self-reliance, and involvement, or does it induce passivity and dependence? (2) Are my consumption patterns basically satisfying, or do I buy much that serves no real need? (3) How tied is my present job and lifestyle to installment payments, maintenance and repair costs, and the expectations of others? (4) Do I consider the impact of my consumption patterns on other people and on the Earth?
Dependence | Earth | Need | People | Present | Self | Self-reliance | Wisdom |
How awful to reflect that what people say of us is true!
Olaf Stapledon, fully William Olaf Stapledon
I should like to persuade religious people that some of us who reject their faith, nevertheless do have an experience which is at least very much like their essential religious experience. We feel, sometimes with remarkable intensity and clarity, our ‘at-oneness’ with something which might be the fundamental reality behind appearances.
Yakov Smirnoff, born Yakov Naumovich Pokhis
When Leo Tolstoy was an old man he was planting little apple trees. His neighbor laughed at him and called him a silly old man, because when the apples finally grew he wouldn’t be around to eat them. Tolstoy told him, “Yes, but other people will eat them and they will think of me.” It think that’s what we’re supposed to do: leave more than we’ve found, give more than we’ve received, love more than we’ve been loved.
Little | Love | Man | People | Will | Wisdom | Old | Think |
Teach the young people [a child] how to think, not what to think.
Booth Tarkington, born Newton Booth Tarkington
Arguments only confirm people in their own opinions.
Don't let young people confide in you their aspirations; when they drop them, they will drop you.
Too many people do not card what happens as long as it does not happen to them.
Igor Feodorovitch Stravinsky, or Fyodorovich
The trouble with music appreciation in general is that people are taught to have too much respect for music; they should be taught to love it instead.
Appreciation | Love | Music | People | Respect | Wisdom | Appreciation | Respect | Trouble |
Melvin Tolson, fully Melvin Beaunorus Tolson
The white man’s civilization with its inhuman economic competition and rugged individualism has produced millions of physical and mental wrecks. It has produced enough vices to fill Dante’s hell. Nine-tenths of the people who reach forty are suffering from shattered nerves.
Civilization | Competition | Enough | Hell | Man | People | Suffering | Wisdom |