This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The artisan or scientist or the follower of whatever discipline who has the habit of comparing himself not with other followers but with the discipline itself will have a lower opinion of himself, the more excellent he is.
Discipline | Habit | Opinion | Will | Wisdom |
John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes of Tilton
A study of the history of opinion is a necessary preliminary to the emancipation of the mind. I do not know which makes man more conservative - to know nothing but the present, or nothing but the past.
History | Man | Mind | Nothing | Opinion | Past | Present | Study | Wisdom |
It is an established opinion among some men that there are in the understanding certain innate principles, some primary notions, stamped, as it were, upon the mind of man which the soul receives in its very first being, and brings into the world with it. It would be sufficient to convince unprejudiced readers of the falseness of this supposition, if I should only show how many men obtain to all the knowledge they have, without the help of any such innate impressions... Let us suppose the mind to be a blank tablet; how comes it to be furnished? To this answer in one word, from experience.
Experience | Knowledge | Man | Men | Mind | Opinion | Principles | Soul | Understanding | Wisdom | World |
It is the man who does not want to express his opinion whose opinion I want.
Lucretius, fully Titus Lucretius Carus NULL
Fly no opinion because it is new, but strictly search, and after careful view, reject it if false, embrace it if 'tis true.
Go, wiser thou! and in thy scale of sense weigh thy opinion against providence.
Opinion | Providence | Sense | Wisdom |
The more I consider the condition of the white men, the more fixed becomes my opinion that, instead of gaining, they have lost much by subjecting themselves to what they call the laws and regulations of civilized societies.
The theory that can absorb the greatest number of facts, and persist in doing so, generation after generation, through all changes of opinion and of detail, is the one that must rule all observation.
Observation | Opinion | Rule | Wisdom |
Public opinion is stronger than the Legislature, and nearly as strong as the Ten Commandments.
Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
All our distinctions are accidental; beauty and deformity, though personal qualities, are neither entitled to praise nor censure; yet it is so happens that they color our opinion of those qualities to which mankind have attached responsibility.
Beauty | Censure | Mankind | Opinion | Praise | Qualities | Responsibility | Wisdom | Beauty |
The most effective way to influence opinion is by the selection and arrangement of the appropriate facts.
Only two things are infinite the universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the former.
Perfection of means and confusion of goals seem – in my opinion – to characterize our age.
Age | Goals | Means | Opinion | Perfection |