This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
When we would prepare the mind by a forcible appeal, an opening quotation is a symphony precluding on the chords those tones we are about to harmonize.
Mind |
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
Nurture your mind with great thoughts. To believe in the heroic makes heroes.
Mind |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
The average man's opinions are much less foolish than they would be if he thought for himself.
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth- even more than death. Thought is subversive, and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; though its merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless to the well-trained wisdom of ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid... Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world and the chief glory of man. But if thought is to become the possession of the many, and not the privilege of the few, we must have done with fear. It is fear that holds man back - fear that their cherished beliefs should prove delusions, fear lest the institutions by which they live should prove harmful, fear least they themselves prove less worthy to the respect they have supposed themselves to be.
Authority | Death | Earth | Fear | Glory | Hell | Light | Looks | Man | Men | Nothing | Respect | Thought | Wisdom | World | Respect | Privilege | Thought |
Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what it loves.
A thinking reed. It is not from space that I must seek my dignity, but from government of my thought. I shall have no more if I possess worlds. By space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; by thought I comprehend the world.
Dignity | Government | Space | Thinking | Thought | Universe | World | Government | Thought |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
The contention that time is unreal and that the world of sense is illusory must, I think, be regarded as based upon fallacious reasoning... Both in thought and in feeling, to realize the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom.
Contention | Sense | Thought | Time | Wisdom | World | Thought |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
Matter is less material and the mind less spiritual than is generally supposed. The habitual separation of physics and psychology, mind and matter, is metaphysically indefensible.
Mind | Psychology |
In proportion as our own mind is enlarged we discover a greater number of men of originality. Commonplace people see no difference between one man and another.
Man | Men | Mind | Originality | People |
The infinite distance between body and mind is a symbol of the infinitely more infinite distance between mind and charity; for charity is supernatural.
The highest order of mind is accused of folly, as well as the lowest. Nothing is thoroughly approved but mediocrity. The majority has established this, and it fixes its fangs on whatever gets beyond it either way.
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
The value of philosophy is to be sought largely in its very uncertainty. He who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the cooperation or consent of his deliberate reason. As soon as we begin to philosophize, on the contrary, we find that even the most everyday things lead to problems to which only very incomplete answers can be given. Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thought and free them from the tyranny of custom.
Age | Common Sense | Convictions | Cooperation | Custom | Life | Life | Mind | Philosophy | Problems | Reason | Sense | Thought | Tyranny | Uncertainty | Thought | Value |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
Almost all education has a political motive: It aims at strengthening some group, national or religious or even social, in the competition with other groups. It is the motive, in the main, which determines the subjects taught, the knowledge offered and the knowledge withheld, and also decides what mental habits the pupils are expected to acquire. Hardly anything is done to foster the inward growth of mind and spirit; in fact, those who have most education are very often atrophied in their mental and spiritual life.
Aims | Competition | Education | Growth | Knowledge | Life | Life | Mind | Spirit |
Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt.
Action | Doubt | Freedom of speech | Freedom of thought | Freedom | Speech | Thought | Thought |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and fears, his loves and beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual beyond the grave; that all the laborers of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man’s achievements must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins – all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.
Death | Devotion | Dispute | Genius | Grave | Growth | Hope | Individual | Inspiration | Man | Philosophy | System | Thought | Universe | Thought |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man.
Glory | Habit | Hell | Light | Looks | Man | Thought | World | Thought |