This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
The most important thing to remember is this: To be ready at any moment to give up what you are for what you might become.
Ability | Determination | Will | Understand |
Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL
Even peasants wholly without knowledge of the quarters of the sky believe that oxen ought to face only in the direction of the sunrise.
Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL
Let the stone be taken from the quarry two years before building is to begin, and not in winter, but in summer. Then let it lie exposed in an open place. Such stone as been damaged by the two years of exposure should be used in the foundations. The rest, which remains unhurt, has passed the test of nature and will endure in those parts of the building which are above ground.
Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL
Next I must tell about the machine of Ctesibius, which raises water to a height.
Ability | Instruction |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The basic mistake made by those who now criticize “What Is To Be Done?” is to treat the pamphlet apart from its connection with the concrete historical situation of a definite, and now long past, period in the development of our Party.
Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL
The design of a temple depends on symmetry, the principles of which must be most carefully observed by the architect.
Ability | Authority | Design | Judgment | Knowledge | Men | Object | Position | Practice | Principles | Skill | Study | Theories | Work | Child |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Human child birth is an act which transforms the woman into an almost lifeless, bloodstained heap of flesh, tortured, tormented and driven frantic by pain.
Ability | Correctness | Devotion | Discipline | Self-sacrifice | Leadership |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Thanks to the political emigration caused by tsarism, revolutionary Russia acquired a wealth of international links and excellent information on the forms and theories of the world revolutionary movement, such as no other country possessed.
Ability | Energy | Indignation | Opportunity | Struggle |
There have been superficial blendings, as spiritual groups take up social service work and social activists join religious organizations, but a real integration of social action and spirituality at a deep, innovative level has not yet happened to any significant degree. The history of human development has been fragmentary, and the majority of people have been content with the fragmentation. It has the sanction of society. Each fragment of society has its own set of values. Among many social activists, anger, hatred, violence, bitterness, and cynicism are accepted norms, even though the effectiveness of these motivations for peaceful living has been seriously put in doubt. And indifference to the needs of the poor has had shocking acceptance among generations of spiritual people who considered higher states of consciousness much more significant than the misery of the starving millions.
I have often thought had there been somebody like me around, something might have been able to be done. I also think I don't see how I could have done what I've done in the world had I been married. And when I decided — because I've been on the verge of marriage many times — I said no, because if I wanted to roam the globe like I did, it wouldn't be fair. It wouldn't be fair to me, it wouldn't be fair to the people. At the point, I really feel it was a kind of destiny because I've been able to get to places. There are some people in the world who have other jobs to do.
Ability | Adolescence | Beginning | Purpose | Purpose | Sense | Will |
Vine Deloria, fully Vine Victor Deloria, Jr.
The white man is problem-solving. His conceptualizations merge into science and then emerge in his social life as problems, the solutions of which are the adjustments of his social machine. Slavery, prohibition, Civil Rights, and social services are all important adjustments of the white man's social machine. No solution he has reached has proven adequate. Indeed, it has often proven demonic.
Ability | Distinguish | Man | Sacred |
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
Fighting inner darkness in the wrong way is the same as submitting to it. Truth will show you how to truly fight for light.
Ends | Insecurity | Journey | People | Security | Following |
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
Always stay on the path of seeing what is wrong, then you will see what is right.
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
The last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way.
Ability |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
To draw an analogy: a man's suffering is similar to the behavior of a gas. If a certain quantity of gas is pumped into an empty chamber, it will fill the chamber completely and evenly, no matter how big the chamber. Thus suffering completely fills the human soul and conscious mind, no matter whether the suffering is great or little. Therefore the size of human suffering is absolutely relative.
Ability | Art | Day | Enough | Friend | Humor | Life | Life | Promise | Sense | Smile | Story | Weapons | Will | Work | Art |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.
Ability | Accident | Day | Growth | Life | Life | Meaning | Power | Psychology | Television | Time | Will |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
Just as a small fire is extinguished by the storm whereas a large fire is enhanced by it-likewise a weak faith is weakened by predicament and catastrophes whereas a strong faith is strengthened by them.
Ability |
The Encyclopoedia Britannica could be reduced to the volume of a matchbox. A library of a million volumes could be compressed into one end of a desk. If the human race has produced since the invention of movable type a total record, in the form of magazines, newspapers, books, tracts, advertising blurbs, correspondence, having a volume corresponding to a billion books, the whole affair, assembled and compressed, could be lugged off in a moving van. Mere compression, of course, is not enough; one needs not only to make and store a record but also to be able to consult it, and this aspect of the matter comes later. Even the modern great library is not generally consulted; it is nibbled by a few.
Ability | Difficulty | Experience | Important | Means | Present |