This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant
To the geologic eye all the surface of the earth is a fluid form, and man moves upon it as insecurely as Peter walking on the waves to Christ.
Harmony |
Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant
Philosophy is harmonized knowledge making a harmonious life; it is the self-discipline which lifts us to serenity and freedom. Knowledge is power, but only wisdom is liberty.
Cause | Civilization | Harmony | Hate | History | Men | Peace | Pessimism | Wisdom |
Wilhelm von Humboldt, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Christian Karl Ferdinand von Humboldt
All merit ceases the moment we perform an act for the sake of its consequences. Truly, in this respect "we have our reward."
Growth | Perfection |
Will Durant, fully William James "Will" Durant
Science gives us knowledge, but only philosophy can give us wisdom.
Admiration | Control | Harmony | Knowledge | Nothing | World |
Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather
How terrible it was to love people when you could not really share their lives!
Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather
It is scarcely exaggeration to say that if one is not a little mad about Balzac at twenty, one will never live; and if at forty one can still take Rastignac and Lucien de Rubempre at Balzac's own estimate, one has lived in vain.
Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
You see, all these laws that they are having so much trouble wondering if they are constitutional, they were all drawn up by lawyers. For almost two-thirds of the membership of the House and Senate are lawyers.
Credit | Harmony | Little | Means | Taste | Thought | Time | Old | Think | Thought |
Werner Heisenberg, fully Werner Karl Heisenberg
Probability in mathematics or in statistical mechanics means a statement about our degree of knowledge of the actual situation. In throwing dice we do not know the fine details of the motion of our hands which determine the fall of the dice and therefore we say that the probability for throwing a special number is just one in six. The probability wave of Bohr, Kramers, Slater, however, meant more than that; it meant a tendency for something. It was a quantitative version of the old concept of `potentia’ in Aristotelian philosophy. It introduced something standing in the middle between the idea of an event and the actual event, a strange kind of physical reality just in the middle between possibility and reality.
Existence | Experiment | Harmony | Important | Language | Life | Life | Means | Nature | Wisdom | Work | Old |
I contend to be a fighter for pureness and truth. I hesitate, because I am afraid of you and your attitude towards truth. To say the truth about you is dangerous to life.
Art | Better | Error | Existence | Insight | Labor | Meaning | Nature | Perfection | Research | Thought | Will | Work | World | Art | Learn | Think | Thought |
Only too often do we thoughtlessly follow a fashion which favors mass produced commodities, and only slowly do we come to realize that these also have great disadvantages.
Character | Competition | Harmony | Important | Order | Principles | Society | Society |
Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney
The fun is in always building something. After it's built, you play with it awhile and then you're through. You see, we never do the same thing twice around here. We're always opening up new doors.
Era |
You differ from a great man in only one respect: the great man was once a very little man, but he developed one important quality: he recognized the smallness and narrowness of his thoughts and actions. Under the pressure of some task that meant a great deal to him, he learned to see how his smallness, his pettiness endangered his happiness. In other words, a great man knows when and in what way he is a little man. A little man does not know he is little and is afraid to know. He hides his pettiness and narrowness behind illusions of strength and greatness, someone else's strength and greatness. He's proud of his great generals but not of himself. He admires an idea he has not had, not one he has had. The less he understands something, the more firmly he believes in it. And the better he understands an idea, the less he believes in it.
Aliveness | Better | Children | Freedom | Good | Harmony | Important | Life | Life | Love | Man | Marriage | Public | Respect | Security | Thinking | Will | Woman | Respect | Happiness |
No man-made law ever, no matter whether derived from the past or projected onto a distant, unforeseeable future, can or should ever be empowered to claim that it is greater than the Natural Law from which it stems and to which it must inevitably return in the eternal rhythm of creation and decline of all things natural. This is valid, no matter whether we speak in terms such as “God,” “Natural Law,” “Cosmic Primordial Force,” “Ether” or “Cosmic Orgone Energy.”
Achievement | Culture | Instinct | Man | Morality | Time | Unity | Will | Work |
Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
I exist as I am, that is enough, If no other in the world be aware I sit content, And if each and all be aware I sit content. One world is aware, and by the far the largest to me, and that is myself, And whether I come to my own today or in ten thousand or ten million years, I can cheerfully take it now, or with equal cheerfulness, I can wait.