This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Alexis de Tocqueville, fully Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
Aristocracies are infinitely more expert in the science of legislation than democracies ever can be. They are possessed of a self-control that protects them fro the errors of temporary excitement.
Control | Excitement | Science | Self | Self-control | Wisdom |
The chief aim of this science is to impart a knowledge of God, not only as existing in Himself, but also as the origin and end of all things, and especially of rational creatures.
Peter L. Berger, fully Peter Ludwig Berger
In science as in love, too much concentration on technique can often lead to impotence.
Prayer transcends imposing our will upon others. Prayer represents opportunity to become more than such cycles by employing our science of feeling to bring new possibilities to an existing situation… Prayer is a concrete, measurable, and directive force in creation. Prayer is real. To pray is to do “something!
Force | Opportunity | Prayer | Science | Will |
Rachel Carson, fully Rachel Louise Carson
The control of nature is a phrase conceived in arrogance, born of the Neanderthal age of biology and philosophy, when it was supposed that nature exists for the convenience of man. The concepts and practices of applied entomology for the most part date from that Stone Age of science. It is our alarming misfortune that so primitive a science has armed itself with the most modem and terrible weapons, and that in turning them against the insects it has also turned them against the earth.
Age | Arrogance | Control | Man | Misfortune | Nature | Science | Misfortune |
In spite of the fact that religion looks backward to revealed truth while science looks forward to new vistas and discoveries, both activities produce a sense of awe and a curious mixture of humility and arrogance in practitioners. All great scientists are inspired by the subtlety and beauty of the natural world that they are seeking to understand. Each new subatomic particle, every unexpected object, produces delight and wonderment. In constructing their theories, physicists are frequently guided by arcane concepts of elegance in the belief that the universe is intrinsically beautiful.
Arrogance | Awe | Beauty | Belief | Elegance | Humility | Looks | Object | Religion | Science | Sense | Theories | Truth | Universe | World | Beauty |
Cultures can mix with one another. Explicit design is introduced to promote, improve, advance, and accelerate the evolutionary process of culture. A change brought about by a science and technology of behavior would correspond to a `biological mutation’ towards the better… Yet the final determining cause, whether genetic or cultural, is never an ethical or moral one, but always leads back to the environment. The world is a large-scale laboratory. Both the controller and the controlled are subject to conditioning. All life is conditioning.
Behavior | Better | Cause | Change | Culture | Design | Life | Life | Science | Technology | World |
Uncontrolled technology can certainly bring down disaster, perhaps irreparable, as our race. The only protection against it is a growth in man’s spiritual and moral maturity proportionate to his growth in technical skill and power.
Every great advance in science has been issued from a new audacity of imagination.
Audacity | Imagination | Science |
Rudolf Diesel, fully Rudolf Christian Karl Diesel
The hope that technology will save us or will miraculously effect our moral improvement is a kind of modern idolatry.
Hope | Improvement | Technology | Will |
Thomas Edison, fully Thomas Alva Edison
There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death in order to inflict torture and death, will be appalled, and so abandon war forever. What man's mind can create, man's character can control.
Character | Day | Death | Force | Man | Mind | Order | Science | Torture | War | Will |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
Words can become idols, and machines can become idols; leaders, the state, power, and political groups may also serve. Science and the opinion of one’s neighbors can become idols, and God has become an idol for many.
The science of government becomes simply a science of how to keep the people working and how to keep them quiet.
Government | People | Quiet | Science | Government |