This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Colin Powell, fully Colin Luther Powell
Avoid having your ego so close to your position that when your position falls, your ego goes with it.
What is a rebel? A man who says no: but whose refusal does not imply a renunciation. He is also a man who says yes as soon as he begins to think for himself... He rebels because he categorically refuses to submit to conditions that he considers intolerable and also because he is confusedly convinced that his position is justified, or rather, because in his own mind he thinks that he ‘has the right to...’ Rebellion cannot exist without the feeling that somewhere, in some way, you are justified.
The man who has been born into a position of wealth comes to look upon it as something without which he could no more live than he could live without air; he guards it as he does his very life; and so he is generally a lover of order, prudent and economical. But the man who has been born into a poor position looks upon it as the natural one, and if by any chance he comes in for a fortune, he regards it as a superfluity, something to be enjoyed or wasted, because, if it comes to an end, he can get on just as well as before, with one anxiety the less.
Anxiety | Anxiety | Chance | Fortune | Life | Life | Looks | Man | Order | Position | Wealth |
Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
Theology is an incubus that a humanist can never shake off. He may seek refuge from theism in atheism or from animism in materialism. But after each desperate twist and turn he will find himself committed to some theological position or other. Theology is inescapable, and it is dynamite.
Atheism | Materialism | Position | Theology | Will |
Virtue in a rich person is the ability to give, in a poor man it is the refusal to beg, in a man of high position it is a humble attitude towards fellowmen, and in a man of low position it is the ability to see through life.
Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower
You must not retain for one instant any man in a responsible position where you have become doubtful of his ability to do the job… This matter frequently calls for more courage than any other thing you will have to do, but I expect you to be perfectly cold-blooded about it.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, fully Franklin Delano Roosevelt, aka FDR
In the future days, which we seek to make secure, we look forward to a world founded upon four essential human freedoms. The first freedom is speech and expression – everywhere in the world. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way – everywhere in the world. The third is freedom from want – which, translated into world-terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants – everywhere in the world. The fourth is freedom from fear – which, translated into world-terms, means a worldwide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor – anywhere in the world. That is no vision of a distant millennium. It is a definite basis for a kind of world attainable in our own time and generation.
Aggression | Fear | Freedom from fear | Freedom | Future | God | Life | Life | Means | Position | Speech | Time | Vision | Will | World | Worship | God |
The mind-expanding discovery of quantum mechanics is that Newtonian physics does not apply to subatomic phenomena... We cannot know both the position and the momentum of a particle with absolute precision... This is Werner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.
Absolute | Discovery | Mind | Phenomena | Position | Precision | Uncertainty | Discovery |
[Paraphrase] The professional artist is morally suspect, even socially dangerous, conman, who from a deliberately chosen position of spiritual alienation, yet offers the ambiguous, self-serving products of his art, in expectation not only of support and remuneration, but also of social approval and even adoration as genius.
Alienation | Art | Expectation | Genius | Position | Remuneration | Self | Approval | Expectation |
To be surprised, to wonder, is to begin to understand. This is the sport, the luxury, special to the intellectual man... If anyone in a discussion with us is not concerned with adjusting himself to truth, if he has no wish to find the truth, he is intellectually a barbarian. That, in fact, is the position of the mass-man when he speaks, lectures or writes... The man who discovers a new scientific truth has previously had to smash to atoms almost everything he had learnt, and arrives at the new truth with hands bloodstained from the slaughter of a thousand platitudes.
Discussion | Luxury | Man | Platitudes | Position | Truth | Wonder |
A man is most accurately judged by how he treats those who are not in a position either to retaliate or to reciprocate.
He who is in a position to intercede on behalf of his fellow, but does not, is considered a sinner.
Position |
For the educator, complacent in his ivory tower, to scorn affiliation with a cause he considers to be noble, to refuse to attempt to win disciples from the ranks of students he is in a position to influence, is unmistakably to forswear a democratic responsibility, and to earn for himself the contemptible title of dilettante and solipsist.
Cause | Influence | Position | Responsibility | Title |