This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Doubt is the vestibule which all must pass before they can enter the temple of wisdom. When we are in doubt and puzzle out the truth by our own exertions, we have gained something that will stay by us and will serve us again. But if to avoid the trouble of the search we avail ourselves of the superior information of a friend, such knowledge will not remain with us; we have not bought, but borrowed it.
Doubt | Friend | Knowledge | Search | Truth | Will | Wisdom | Trouble |
Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey
I know with a conviction beyond all doubt that the biggest problem you and I have to deal with - in fact, almost the only problem we have to deal with - is choosing the right thoughts. If we can do that, we will be on the highroad to solving all our problems.
Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey
Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.
Unhappiness is in not knowing what we want and killing ourselves to get it.
Knowing | Unhappiness |
Jealousy lives upon doubts. It becomes madness or ceases entirely as soon as we pass from doubt to certainty.
If we could have ended the war by showing the power of science without killing a single person, all of us would be much happier, more reasonable, and much safer.
No body of men can be induced to do another man’s killing for him unless he can convince them that they may honorably do so. The percentage of blackguards and sadists who enjoy cruelty for its own sake have to pretend that they are patriots and ministers of justice to secure the toleration of their fellow citizens.
Body | Cruelty | Justice | Man | Men | Toleration | Cruelty |
Henrik Ibsen, aka Henrik Johan Ibsen
If you doubt yourself, then indeed you stand on shaky ground.
Doubt |
To establish the principles of the Declaration of Independence, we are going to need to go outside the law, to stop obeying the laws that demand killing or that allocate wealth the way it has been done, or that put people in jail for petty technical offense and keep other people out of jail for enormous crimes.
Not only are moral laws with their principles essentially distinguished from every other kind of practical knowledge in which there is anything empirical, but all moral philosophy rests wholly on its pure part. When applied to man, it does not borrow the least thing from the knowledge of man himself (anthropology), but gives laws a priori to him as a rational being. No doubt these laws require a judgment sharpened by experience, in order on the one hand to distinguish in what cases they are applicable, and on the other to procure for them access to the will of the man and effectual influence on conduct; since man is acted on by so many inclinations that, though capable of the idea of a practical pure reason, he is not so easily able to make it effective in concreto in his life.
Conduct | Distinguish | Doubt | Experience | Influence | Judgment | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Order | Philosophy | Principles | Reason | Will |
There is no flag large enough to cover the shame of killing innocent people.
James Froude, fully James Anthony Froude
Philosophy goes no further than probabilities, and in every assertion keeps doubt in reserve.
Assertion | Doubt | Philosophy | Reserve |
John Lubbock, 1st Baron Avebury, 4th Baronet, Sir John Lubbock
Religion is full of difficulties, but if we are often puzzled what to think, we need seldom be in doubt what to do.
There can be no doubt but that everything in the world, by the beauty of its order, and the evidence of a determinate and beneficial purpose which pervades its, testifies that some supreme efficient Power must have pre-existed, by which the whole was ordained for a specific end.
Beauty | Doubt | Evidence | Order | Power | Purpose | Purpose | World | Beauty |
John W. Gardner, fully John William Gardner
Creativity requires the freedom to consider "unthinkable" alternatives, to doubt the worth of cherished practices. Every organization, every society is under the spell of assumptions so familiar that they are never questioned, least of all by those most intimately involved.
Creativity | Doubt | Freedom | Organization | Society | Worth | Society |