This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
All happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappily in its own way.
Francis Xavier, fully Francis Xavier, born Francisco de Jasso y Azpilicueta
He who does not become perfect in small things will never be so in the great things.
Will |
Pachacutec Inca Yupanqui, sometimes referred to as Pachacuti
Governors must never forget that he who is unable to run his own house and family is still less competent to be entrusted with public matters.
Jerome Bruner, fully Jerome Seymour Bruner
To create consists precisely in not making unclear combinations and in making those which are useful and which are only a small minority. Invention is discernment, choice. If not a brute algorithm, then it must be a heuristic that guides us to a fruitful combination. What is the heuristic?
Choice | Discernment | Invention |
To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to study hard, think quietly, talk gently, act frankly; to listen to stars and birds, to babes and sages, with open heart; to bear all cheerfully, do all bravely, await occasions, hurry never. This is to be my symphony.
Elegance | Heart | Hurry | Luxury | Means | Refinement | Study | Think |
Computational irreducibility tends to make infinite questions undecidable. The presence of universality implies that there must at some level be computational irreducibility… This means that today’s mathematics will be viewed as small and surprisingly uncharacteristic sample of what is possible. If a system is computationally irreducible this means that there is in effect a tangible separation between the underlying rules for the system and its overall behavior associated with the irreducible amount of computational work needed to go from one to the other. And it is this separation that the basic origin of the apparent freedom we see in all sorts of system lie – whether those systems are abstract cellular automata or actual living brains.
Abstract | Behavior | Freedom | Mathematics | Means | System | Will | Work |
Character may be manifested in the great moments, but it is made in the small ones.
Philippa Foot, fully Philippa Ruth Foot, née Bosanquet
One of the things a wise man knows and a foolish man does not is that such things as social position, wealth, and the good opinion of the world, are too dearly bought at the cost of health or friendship or family ties.
Cost | Family | Good | Health | Man | Opinion | Position | Wealth | Wise | World | Friendship |
Maxim Gorky, pen name of Alexei Maximovich Peshkov
Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you'll learn at how precious it is.
The seduction of war is insidious because so much of what we are told about it is true; It does create a sense of comradeship, which obliterates our alienation and makes us, for perhaps the only time of our life, feel we belong. War allows us to rise above our small stations in life. We find nobility in a cause and feelings of selflessness and even bliss. And at a time of soaring deficits and financial scandals and the very deterioration of our domestic fabric, war is a fine diversion. War, for those who enter into combat, has a dark beauty, filled with the monstrous and the grotesque. The Bible calls it the "lust of the eye" and warns believers against it. War gives us a distorted sense of self; it gives us meaning.
Alienation | Beauty | Bible | Cause | Diversion | Feelings | Life | Life | Lust | Meaning | Nobility | Self | Sense | Time | War | Bible |
Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
A man can't make a place for himself in the sun if he keeps taking refuge under the family tree.