This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Eugene McCarthy, fully Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy
Conspicuous waste beyond the imagination of Thorstein Veblen has become the mark of American life. As a nation we find ourselves overbuilt, if not overhoused; overfed, although millions of poor people are undernourished; overtransported in overpowered cars; and also... overdefended or overdefensed.
The Imagination makes us transcendent of Time and we see what is gorgeous.
Imagination | Time | Wisdom |
N. Scott Momaday, fully Navarre Scott Momaday
We are what we imagine. Our very existence consists in our imagination of ourselves... The greatest tragedy that can befall us is to go unimagined.
Existence | Imagination | Tragedy | Wisdom |
Modern technology has lost its magic. No longer do people stand in awe, thrilled by the onward rush of science, the promise of a new day. Instead, the new is suspect. It arouses our hostility as much as it used to excite our fancy. With each breakthrough there are recurrent fears and suspicion. How will the advance further pollute our lives; modern technology is not merely what it first appears to be. Behind the whitecoats, the disarming jargon, the elaborate instrumentation, and a the core of what has often seemed an automatic process, one finds what Dorothy found in Oz: modern technology is human after all.
Awe | Day | Magic | People | Promise | Science | Suspicion | Technology | Will | Wisdom |
Pamela Oliver and Gerald Maxwell
Collective action usually entails the development of a critical mass - a small segment of the population that chooses to make big contributions to the collective action... that will tend to explode, to draw in the other less interested or less resourceful members of the population and to carry the event toward its maximum potential.
Romances, in general, are calculated rather to fire the imagination than to inform the judgment.
Imagination | Judgment | Wisdom |
Meditation is the life of the soul; action is the soul of meditation; honor is the reward of action; so meditate, that thou mayst do; so do, that thou mayst purchase honor; for which purchase, give God the glory.
Action | Glory | God | Honor | Life | Life | Meditation | Reward | Soul | Wisdom | God |
When two loving hearts are torn asunder, it is a shade better to be the one that is driven away into action than the bereaved twin that petrifies at home.
Necessity of action takes away fear of the act, and makes bold resolution the favorite of fortune.
High theory and mere mind-stimulation are secondary; living itself - in the real world, among people - is the essence... I hereby promise to attempt to be a mensh, a decent, caring human being. Neutrality, noncommitment, indifference have no place in life. To be fully human, we are committed to being caring, sensitive, aggressively compassionate people. Our lives are defined by how we act. We are alive because we perform just and righteous deeds, deeds of gentle loving kindness.
Deeds | Indifference | Kindness | Life | Life | Mind | Neutrality | People | Promise | Wisdom | World | Deeds |
Lydia Sigourney, fully Lydia Huntley Sigourney, née Lydia Howard Huntley
Teachers should be held in the highest honor. They are the allies of legislators; they have agency in the prevention of crime; they aid in regulating the atmosphere, whose incessant action and pressure cause the life-blood to circulate, and to return pure and healthful to the heart of the nation.
Action | Aid | Cause | Crime | Heart | Honor | Life | Life | Wisdom |
The world of reality has its limits; the world of imagination is boundless. Not being able to enlarge the one, let us contract the other; for it is from their difference that all evils arise which render us unhappy.
Imagination | Reality | Wisdom | World |
With all its alluring promise that some one else will guarantee for a rainy day, social security can never replace the program that man's future welfare, is after all, a matter of individual responsibility.
Day | Future | Guarantee | Individual | Man | Promise | Responsibility | Security | Will | Wisdom |