This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
Science fiction is not predictive; it is descriptive.... Prediction is the business of prophets, clairvoyants, and futurologists. It is not the business of novelists. A novelist's business is lying.... Open your eyes; listen, listen. That is what the novelists say. But they don't tell you what you will see and hear. All they can tell you is what they have seen and heard, in their time in this world, a third of it spent in sleep and dreaming, another third of it spent in telling lies.
Enough | Ideas | Knowledge | Law | Respect | Society | Theories | Society | Respect |
If scientific reasoning were limited to the logical processes of arithmetic, we should not get far in our understanding of the physical world. One might as well attempt to grasp the game of poker entirely by the use of the mathematics of probability. The abacus, with its beads strung on parallel wires, led the Arabs to positional numeration and the concept of zero many centuries before the rest of the world; and it was a useful tool— so useful that it still exists.
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel... is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become.
Aid | Future | Government | Law | Nothing | People | Government | Child |
Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness a more humane society will not emerge.
Blame | Democracy | Duty | Freedom | Government | Obligation | Responsibility | Sin | Will | Wrong | Government | Understand |
I think the Anthropic Cosmological Principle brings to us an idea perhaps as old as humanity itself: that we are not at all just an accidental anomaly, the microscopic caprice of a tiny particle whirling in the endless depth of the universe. Instead, we are mysteriously connected to the entire universe; we are mirrored in it, just as the entire evolution of the universe is mirrored in us.
The main thing is, it seems to me, that these revolutionary changes will enable us to escape from the rather antiquated straitjacket of this bipolar view of the world, and to enter at last into an era of multi-polarity. That is, into an era in which all of us, large and small, former slaves and former masters, will be able to create what your great President Lincoln called the family of man
Tommaso Campanella, baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella
But the accusation and witnesses are produced in the presence of the judge and Power; the accused person makes his defense, and he is immediately acquitted or condemned by the judge; and if he appeals to the triumvirate, on the following day he is acquitted or condemned.
Tommaso Campanella, baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella
Self-love fools man with false opinion that earth, air, water, fire, the stars we see, though stronger and more beautiful than we, feel nought, love not, but move for us alone.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
The law cannot equalize mankind in spite of nature.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
The idea that science can and should be organized according to rules both fixed and universal is unrealistic and pernicious.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
It is not true that men are better in poverty than in wealth.
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
Women and young people develop their separate estimates of their tastes.
Appearance | Blame | Justice | Law | Order | Rights | Rule | Universe |
Duty performed is a moral tonic; if neglected, the tone and strength of both mind and heart are weakened, and the spiritual health undermined.
From the beginning of our history the country has been afflicted with compromise. It is by compromise that human rights have been abandoned.
Laws which are in advance of public sentiment are generally but a dead letter.
Law | Uncertainty |