This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Michael Dell, fully Michael Saul Dell
Visionaries have the unique ability to dream of what's possible and then make it a reality. We are excited to watch these visionaries use technology to help students develop skills in collaboration, critical thinking and teamwork that they'll need to compete in the global economy.
Ability | Critical thinking | Global | Need | Technology | Thinking | Unique | Critical Thinking |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
Love to his soul gave eyes; he knew things were not as they seem. The dream is his real life; the world around him is the dream.
I dream of a new age of curiosity. We have the technical means for it; the desire is there; the things to be known are infinite; the people who can employ themselves at this task exist. What are we suffering from? From too little: from channels that are too narrow, skimpy, quasi-monopolistic, insufficient. There is no point in adopting a protectionist attitude, to prevent "bad" information from invading and suffocating the "good". Rather we must multiply the paths and the possibility of comings and goings... Which doesn't mean, as is often feared, the homogenization and leveling from below. But on the contrary, the differentiation and simultaneity of different networks.
Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa
It is the mission of each true knight... His duty... nay, his privilege! To dream the impossible dream, To fight the unbeatable foe, To bear with unbearable sorrow To run where the brave dare not go; To right the unrightable wrong. To love, pure and chaste, from afar, To try, when your arms are too weary, To reach the unreachable star! This is my Quest to follow that star, No matter how hopeless, no matter how far, To fight for the right Without question or pause, To be willing to march into hell For a heavenly cause! And I know, if I'll only be true To this glorious Quest, That my heart will lie peaceful and calm When I'm laid to my rest. And the world will be better for this, That one man, scorned and covered with scars, Still strove, with his last ounce of courage, To reach the unreachable stars!
Better | Heart | Hell | Mission | Question | Right | Sorrow | Will | World |
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
Those who have likened our life to a dream were more right, by chance, than they realized. We are awake while sleeping, and waking sleep.
Mother Teresa, born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu NULL
Reach high, for stars lie hidden in your soul. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal.
Moshe Chayim Luzzatto, also Moses Hayyim Luzzato, known by Hebrew acronym RaMCHal
When a man sleeps, his faculties rest, his senses are quiet, and his mind is relaxed and hushed. The only thing that continues to function is his imagination (dream center), and this conceives and envisions various images. Some of these images arise from the individual's experiences while awake. Others may be the result of substances that rise to the brain, either from the body's own hormones, or from the food that one eats. These images are the dreams that all people experience. G-d has also decreed that the bond between the body and the divine soul should be somewhat loosened while man sleeps. The portions of the soul from Ruach (Spirit) and above then rise and sever themselves from the body. Only one portion, the Nefesh (Soul), remains with the lower [animal] soul. The freed portions of the soul can then move about in the spiritual realm wherever they are allowed. They can interact and associate with such spiritual beings as the angels who oversee natural phenomena, the angels associated with prophecy, and Shedim (demons). Whatever they experience will depend on a variety of factors. When these higher levels of the soul perceive something, they can sometimes transmit it step by step, until it reaches the animal soul. The imagination is then stimulated and forms images in its normal manner. [A person can then see this as a dream.]... Dreams in general can therefore arise either from the imagination itself or as a result of the stimulation of the Soul (Neshamah) according to what it perceives. In the latter case, the initiating agent is always one of the spiritual Forces which make something known to the Soul (Neshamah). The soul then transmits this to the imagination. If that spiritual Force is one of G-d's holy servants, then the information that the soul receives will be true. If it comes from the opposing Forces, on the other hand, then it will be false. Our sages thus teach us that a true dream originates through an angel, while a false one originates through a Shed (demon).
Angels | Body | Dreams | Experience | Force | Imagination | Man | Mind | People | Soul | Teach | Will |
Nahuatl Wise Men including Nezahualcoyotl NULL
Do we speak the truth here, oh Giver of Life? We merely dream, we only rise from a dream. All is like a dream ... ' No one speaks here of truth
Truth |
Man, alone, has the power to transform his thoughts into physical reality; man, alone, can dream and make his dreams come true.
Neil Gaiman, fully Neil Richard Gaiman
I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you'll dream dangerously and outrageously, that you'll make something that didn't exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and to like in return. And, most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now), that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind.
Hope | Kindness | Love | Need | People | Right | Will | Wisdom | World | Think |
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
Utopias are realizable, they are more realizable than what has been presented as 'realist politics' and what has simply been the calculated rationalism of armchair politicians. Life is moving towards utopias. But perhaps a new age is opening up before us, in which the intelligentsia and the cultured classes will dream of ways to avoid utopias and return to non-utopian society, to a less 'perfect', a freer society.
Neil Gaiman, fully Neil Richard Gaiman
She will take you life and all you are and all you care'st for, and she will leave you with nothing but mist and fog. She'll take your joy. And one day you'll wake and your heart and soul will have gone. A husk you'll be, a wisp you'll be, and a thing no more than a dream on waking, or a memory of something forgotten.
Day | Heart | Life | Life | Memory | Nothing | Soul | Will |
Neil Gaiman, fully Neil Richard Gaiman
You're alive, Bod. That means you have infinite potential. You can do anything, make anything, dream anything. If you can change the world, the world will change. Potential. Once you're dead, it's gone. Over. You've made what you've made, dreamed your dream, written your name. You may be buried here, you may even walk. But that potential is finished.
It is not a dream, it is a simple feat of scientific electrical engineering, only expensive — blind, faint-hearted, doubting world! [...] Humanity is not yet sufficiently advanced to be willingly led by the discoverer's keen searching sense. But who knows? Perhaps it is better in this present world of ours that a revolutionary idea or invention instead of being helped and patted, be hampered and ill-treated in its adolescence — by want of means, by selfish interest, pedantry, stupidity and ignorance; that it be attacked and stifled; that it pass through bitter trials and tribulations, through the strife of commercial existence. So do we get our light. So all that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combatted, suppressed — only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle. (Tesla at the end of his dream for Wardenclyffe)
Adolescence | Better | Humanity | Invention | Past | Present | Stupidity | Trials | World |