This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman
The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool.
Richard Feynman, fully Richard Phillips Feynman
The third aspect of my subject is that of science as a method of finding things out. This method is based on the principle that observation is the judge of whether something is so or not. All other aspects and characteristics of science can be understood directly when we understand that observation is the ultimate and final judge of the truth of an idea. But prove used in this way really means test, in the same way that a hundred-proof alcohol is a test of the alcohol, and for people today the idea really should be translated as,
Means | Method | Observation | People | Science | Truth | Understand |
Richard Wagner, fully Wilhelm Richard Wagner
Property has acquired an almost greater sacredness in our social conscience than religion: for offence against the latter there is lenience, for damage to the former no forgiveness. Since Property is deemed the base of all stability, the more's the pity that not all are owners, that in fact the greater proportion of Society comes disinherited into the world. Society is manifestly thus reduced by its own principle to such a perilous inquietude, that it is compelled to reckon all its laws for an impossible adjustment of this conflict; and protection of property
Conscience | Pity | Property | Society | Society |
Morality, distinguished from and independent of Christian faith, is nothing; but Christian morality is of the very essence; it is the true fruit, the sure testimony, the faithful companion, the glory and perfection, yea, the very life and soul of true Christian faith. Let us beware, that we do not confound things so different as worldly and Christian morality; as the works of the natural man and those of the disciples of Christ.
Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon
This administration has proved that it is utterly incapable of cleaning out the corruption which has completely eroded it and reestablishing the confidence and faith of the American people in the morality and honesty of their government employees.
Administration | Confidence | Corruption | Faith | Government | Honesty | Morality | People | Government |
Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon
We shall support vigorously the principle that no country has the right to impose its will or rule on another by force.
The first principle, when you don't know anything about the subject of a thesis, is to let the candidate talk, nodding now and then with an ambiguous smile. He thinks you know, and are counting his mistakes, and it unnerves him... the second principle of conducting an oral, ... is to pretend ignorance, and ask for explanations of very simple points. Of course your ignorance is real, but the examinee thinks you are being subtle, and that he is making an ass of himself, and this rattles him.
Robert Bork, fully Robert Heron Bork
In a constitutional democracy the moral content of law must be given by the morality of the framer or legislator, never by the morality of the judge.
Robert Bork, fully Robert Heron Bork
If we recognize reward according to race, ethnicity, and sex as aspects or analogues of the blood principle, it is obvious how far the achievement principle has been discarded in America today in the name of equality.
Achievement | Reward |
The first principle of success is desire -- knowing what you want. Desire is the planting of your seed.
Samuel ha-Nagid, born Samuel ibn Naghrela or Naghrillah
I crossed through a souk where the butchers hung oxen and sheep at their sides, there were birds and herds of fatlings like squid, their terror loud as blood congealed over blood and slaughterers’ knives opened veins. In booths alongside them the fishmongers, and fish in heaps, and tackle like sand; and beside them the Street of the Bakers —whose ovens are fired through dawn. They bake, they eat, they lead their prey; they split what’s left to bring home. · And my heart understood how they did it and asked: Who are you to survive? What separates you from these beasts, which were born and knew waking and labor and rest? If they hadn’t been given by God for your meals, they’d be free. If He wanted this instant He’d easily put you in their place. They’ve breath, like you, and hearts, which scatter them over the earth; there was never a time when the living didn’t die, nor the young that they bear not give birth. Pay attention to this, you pure ones, and princes so calm in your fame, know if you’d fathom the worlds of the hidden: THIS IS THE LAW OF MAN.
Shoghí Effendi, fully Shoghí Effendí Rabbání
It unequivocally maintains the principle of equal rights, opportunities, and privileges for men and women, insists on compulsory education, eliminates extremes of poverty and wealth, abolishes the institution of priesthood, prohibits slavery, asceticism, mendicancy, and monasticism, prescribes monogamy, discourages divorce, emphasizes the necessity of strict obedience to one's government, exalts any work performed in the spirit of service to the level of worship, urges either the creation or the selection of a auxiliary international language, and delineates the outlines of those institutions that must establish and perpetuate the general peace of mankind.
Duty | Faith | Harmony | Necessity | Oneness | Prejudice | Progress | Purpose | Purpose | Religion | Search | Unity | Wholeness |
Shoghí Effendi, fully Shoghí Effendí Rabbání
The long ages of infancy and childhood, through which the human race has to pass, have receded into the background. Humanity is now experiencing the commotions invariably associated with the most turbulent stage of its evolution, the stage of adolescence, when the impetuosity of youth and its vehemence reach their climax, and must gradually be superseded by the calmness, the wisdom, and the maturity that characterize the stage of adulthood. Mankind, in these fateful years... is... being simultaneously called upon to give account of its past actions, and is being purged and prepared for its future mission. It can neither escape the responsibilities of the past, nor shirk those of the future. Then will a world civilization be born, flourish, and perpetuate itself, a civilization with a fullness of life such as the world has never seen nor can as yet conceive... Then will the promise enshrined in all the books of God be redeemed, and all the prophecies uttered by the prophets of old come to pass, and the vision of seers and poets be realized. Then will the planet, galvanized through the universal belief of its dwellers in one God, and their allegiance to one common revelation... be acclaimed as the earthly heaven, capable of fulfilling that ineffable destiny fixed for it from time immemorial by the love and wisdom of its Creator.
Accomplishment | Confidence | Contemplation | Decision | Determination | Faith | Power | Prayer | Right | Silence | Spirit | Will | Words | Contemplation |
Sen T’Sen, aka Seng T'San, Jianzhi Sengcan, Kanchi Sosan, Third Chinese Patriarch of Zen
The Perfect Way knows no difficulties, Except that it refuses to make preferences. Only when freed from hate and love Does it reveal itself fully and without disguise. A tenth of an inch's difference, And heaven and earth are set apart. If you wish to see it before your own eyes, Have no fixed thoughts either for or against it. To set up what you like against what you dislike - This is the disease of the mind. When the deep meaning of the Way is not understood, Peace of mind is disturbed to no purpose... Pursue not the outer entanglements, Dwell not in the inner void; Be serene in the oneness of things, And dualism vanishes of itself. When you strive to gain quiescence by stopping motion, The quiescence so gained is ever in motion. So long as you tarry in such dualism, How can you realize oneness? And when oneness is not thoroughly grasped, Loss is sustained in two ways: The denying of external reality is the assertion of it, And the assertion of Emptiness (the Absolute) is the denying of it... Transformations going on in the empty world that confronts us Appear to be real because of Ignorance. Do not strive to seek after the True, Only cease to cherish opinions. The two exist because of the One; But hot not even to this One. When a mind is not disturbed, The ten thousand things offer no offense... If an eye never falls asleep, All dreams will cease of themselves; If the Mind retains its absoluteness, The ten thousand things are of one substance. When the deep mystery of Suchness is fathomed, All of a sudden we forget the external entanglements; When the ten thousand things are viewed in their oneness, We return to the origin and remain where we have always been... One in all, All in One - If only this is realized, No more worry about not being perfect! When Mind and each believing mind are not divided, And undivided are each believing mind and Mind, This is where words fail, For it is not of the past, present or future.
Church | Commitment | Dignity | Duty | Experience | Grace | Individual | Life | Life | Openness | Understand |
Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan
They don't worship at the altar of forced busing and mandatory quotas. They don't believe you can remedy past discrimination by mandating new discrimination. (Defending his nominees for Civil Rights Commission)
Rudolf Steiner, fully Rudolf Joseph Lorenz Steiner
Goethe's thinking was mobile. It followed the whole growth process of the plant and followed how one plant form is a modification of the other. Goethe's thinking was not rigid with inflexible contours; it was a thinking in which the concepts continually metamorphose. Thereby his concepts became, if I may put it this way, intimately adapted to the process that plant nature itself goes through.
Capability | Earth | Impulse | Life | Life | Man | Morality | Receive | Understanding | Will |
Rosa Luxemburg, aka Rosalia Luxemburg, "Bloody Rosa"
Without general elections, without unrestricted freedom of press and assembly, without a free struggle of opinion, life dies out in every public institution, becomes a mere semblance of life, in which only the bureaucracy remains as the active element. Public life gradually falls asleep, a few dozen party leaders of inexhaustible energy and boundless experience direct and rule. Such conditions must inevitably cause a brutalization of public life: attempted assassinations, shootings of hostages, etc.