This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Freedom springs from within, whether in a man or in a people. To remove disabilities and confer the franchise is not enough. Men must be enabled to grow if they are to exercise their rights with dignity and effect. For this reason the widening of the franchise in democratic countries has always been accompanied or followed by the development of popular education.
Character | Dignity | Education | Enough | Freedom | Man | Men | People | Reason | Rights | Wisdom |
The goal of our intellectual efforts cannot be a static, polished possession; it can only be further, more successful efforts of the same general kind. In science as in life it is the process, not the terminus, that should concern us - if we are wise.
Lord Acton, John Emerich Dalberg-Acton
Great men are almost always bad men, even when they exercise influence and not authority; but still more when they are super bad and add the tendency of the certainty of corruption of authority.
Authority | Corruption | Influence | Men | Wisdom |
The exercise of criticism always destroys for a time our sensibility to beauty by leading us to regard the work in relation to certain laws of construction. The eye turns from the charms of nature to fix itself upon the servile dexterity of art.
Art | Beauty | Criticism | Nature | Regard | Sensibility | Time | Wisdom | Work | Beauty |
Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon
Style supposes the reunion and the exercise of all the intellectual faculties. The style is the man.
Bill Bradley, fully William Warren "Dollar Bill" Bradley
The winning team like the conquering army claims everything in its path and seems to say that only winning is important. Yet like getting into a college of your choice or winning an election or marrying a beautiful mate, victory is fraught with as much danger as glory. Victory has very narrow meanings and, if exaggerated or misused, can become a destructive force.
Choice | Danger | Force | Glory | Important | Wisdom | Danger | Winning |
Difficulties, by bracing the mind to overcome the, assist cheerfulness, as exercise assists digestion.
Cheerfulness | Mind | Wisdom |
Fashion is the science of appearances, and it inspires one with the desire to seem rather than to be.
Man's knowledge of science has clearly outstripped his knowledge of man. Our only hope of making the atom servant rather than master lies in education, in a broad liberal education where each student within his capacity can free himself from trammels of dogmatic prejudice and apply his educational accouterment to besetting social and human problems.
Capacity | Education | Hope | Knowledge | Man | Prejudice | Problems | Science | Wisdom |