This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Demand not that events should happen as you wish; but wish them to happen as they do happen, and you will go on well.
There are no mistakes, no coincidences. All events are blessings given to us to learn from.
Eugene McCarthy, fully Eugene Joseph "Gene" McCarthy
Being in politics is like being a football coach. You have to be smart enough to understand the game, and dumb enough to think it's important.
Enough | Politics | Think | Understand |
Franz Boas, fully Franz Uri Boas
It is our task to inquire into the causes that have brought about the observed differentiation, and to investigate the sequence of events that have led to the establishment of the multifarious forms of human life.
Events |
I know that theater people often have very simplistic view of politics and tend to express very black and white patriotic sentiments but perhaps that is because we know the value of illusion, how it can help strengthen the weak, and stimulate the weary
Science, history and politics are not suited for discussion except by experts. Others are simply in the position of requiring more information; and, till they have acquired all available information, cannot do anything but accept on authority the opinions of those better qualified.
Authority | Better | Discussion | History | Politics | Position |
The future need not be a repetition of the past. Frequently one is caught by a paucity of imagination which conceives of the future only in terms of rearranging past events or experiences that are already known. Persistent attempts to explain the unknown in terms of what is already known, can lead to blind repetition of unsatisfactory patterns that limit growth and restrict possibilities.
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
The greatest events - are not our noisiest, but our stillest hours.
Events |
Subatomic particles do not exist but rather show 'tendencies to exist', and atomic events do not occur with certainty at definite times and in definite ways, but rather show 'tendencies to occur'.
Events |
The central aim of Eastern mysticism is to experience all the phenomena in the world as manifestations of the same ultimate reality. This reality is seen as the essence of the universe, underlying and unifying the multitude of things and events we observe. The Hindus call it Brahman, The Buddhists Dharmakaya (The Body of Being) or Tathata (Suchness) and the Taoists Tao; each affirming that it transcends our intellectual concepts and defies further explanation. This ultimate essence, however, cannot be separated from its multiple manifestations. It is central to the very nature to manifest itself in myriad forms which come into being and disintegrate, transforming themselves into one another without end.
Body | Events | Experience | Mysticism | Nature | Phenomena | Reality | World |
Life is essentially a series of events to be lived through rather than intellectual riddles to be played with and solved.
Events |
This violence of landscape, this cruelty of climate, this continual tension in everything, and even these monuments of the past, magnificent yet incomprehensible because not built by us and yet standing round us like lovely mute ghosts; all those rulers who landed by main force from every direction who were at once obeyed, soon detested, and always misunderstood, their only expressions works of art we couldn't understand and taxes which we understood only too well and which they spent elsewhere: all these things have formed our character, which is thus conditioned by events outside our control as well as by a terrifying insularity of mind.
Art | Control | Cruelty | Events | Force | Cruelty | Art | Understand |
For over twenty-five centuries we’ve been bearing the weight of superb and heterogeneous civilizations, all from outside, none made by ourselves, none that we could call our own. This violence of landscape, this cruelty of climate, this continual tension in everything, and even these monuments of the past, magnificent yet incomprehensible because not built by us and yet standing round us like lovely mute ghosts; all those rulers who landed by main force from every direction who were at once obeyed, soon detested, and always misunderstood, their only expressions works of art we couldn't understand and taxes which we understood only too well and which they spent elsewhere: all these things have formed our character, which is thus conditioned by events outside our control as well as by a terrifying insularity of mind.
Art | Control | Cruelty | Events | Force | Cruelty | Art | Understand |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.
Politics |
To let politics become a cesspool, and then avoid it because it is a cesspool, is a double crime.
Politics |
No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.
Corruption | Politics | Science |