This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
It is in prison … that one becomes a real revolutionary.
Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
While the scientist sees everything that happens in one point of space, the poet feels everything that happens in one point of time.
Darkness | Day | Death | Ends | Life | Life | Panic | Progress | Suicide | Thought | Time | Afraid | Old | Thought |
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
The public is a ferocious beast -- one must either chain it up or flee from it.
Virginia Woolf, nee Stephen, fully Adeline Virginia Woolf
If the best of one's feelings means nothing to the person most concerned in those feelings, what reality is left us?
Better | Civilization | Progress | Time | World |
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
Do not resist or complain or fight. Let truth win. If we no longer value our resistance, something new will break through.
The quantity of civilization is measured by the quality of imagination.
The cause of all this young man’s crimes was his desire to be well dressed. The first grisette who had said to him, you are handsome, had spattered a stain of darkness into his heart and had made a Cain of this Abel.
Human race | Progress | Race |
Progress is the life-style of man. The general life of the human race is called Progress, and so is its collective march. Progress advances, it makes the great human and earthly journey towards what is heavenly and divine; it has its pauses, when it rallies the stragglers, its stopping places when it meditates, contemplating some new and splendid promised land that has suddenly appeared on its horizon. It has its nights of slumber; and it is one of the poignant anxieties of the thinker to see the human spirit lost in shadow, and to grope in the darkness without being able to awake sleeping progress.
Darkness | Human race | Journey | Life | Life | Progress | Race |
What is grace? It is the inspiration from on high: it is love; it is liberty. Grace is the spirit of law. This discovery of the spirit of law belongs to Saint Paul; and what he calls "grace" from a heavenly point of view, we, from an earthly point, call "rigtheousness."
Some chant in meditation, some practice deep, austere meditation; some worship Him in adoration, some practice daily rituals. Some live the life of a wanderer.
Progress |
Knowledge not only helps us material success but it also enhances our spiritual growth.
Progress |
We should always try to acquire as much knowledge as possible but at the same time we should be careful not to let pseudo-knowledge influence us.
Upton Sinclair, fully Upton Beall Sinclair, Jr.
A new burst of rage swept over him — What did it matter whether it was true or not — whether anything was true or not? What did it matter if anybody had done all the hideous and loathsome things that everybody else said they had done? It was what everybody was saying! It was what everybody believed — what everybody was interested in! It was the measure of a whole society — their ideals and their standards! It was the way they spent their time, repeating nasty scandals about each other; living in an atmosphere of suspicion and cynicism, with endless whispering and leering, and gossip of low intrigue.
Scientific progress on a broad front results from the free play of free intellects, working on subjects of their own choice, in the manner dictated by their curiosity for exploration of the unknown. Freedom of inquiry must be preserved under any plan for Government support of science.
Achievement | Peace | Progress | Security |
Science has a simple faith, which transcends utility. Nearly all men of science, all men of learning for that matter, and men of simple ways too, have it in some form and in some degree. It is the faith that it is the privilege of man to learn to understand, and that this is his mission. If we abandon that mission under stress we shall abandon it forever, for stress will not cease. Knowledge for the sake of understanding, not merely to prevail, that is the essence of our being. None can define its limits, or set its ultimate boundaries.
Achievement | Peace | Progress | Security |
That the threat is now intense is not a reason to abandon our quest for knowledge. It is a reason to hold it more tightly, in spite of the need for action to preserve our freedom, in spite of the distractions of living in turmoil, that it may not be lost or brushed aside by the demands of the hour. We would not neglect our duty to our country and our fellows to strive mightily to preserve our ways and our lives. There is an added duty, not inconsistent, not less. It is the duty to so live that there may be a reason for living, beyond the mere mechanisms of life. It is the duty to carry on, under stress, the search for understanding.
Curiosity | Freedom | Government | Inquiry | Plan | Play | Progress | Government |