This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The mechanism of modern business is so delicate that extreme care must be taken not to interfere with it in a spirit of rashness or ignorance. Many of those who have made it their vocation to denounce the great industrial combinations which are popularly, although with technical inaccuracy, known as trusts, appeal especially to hatred and fear. These are precisely the two emotions, particularly when combined with ignorance, which unfit men for the exercise of cool and steady judgment. In facing new industrial conditions, the whole history of the world shows that legislation will generally be both unwise and ineffective unless undertaken after calm inquiry and with sober self-restraint. [...] All this is true; and yet it is also true that there are real and grave evils, one of the chief being over-capitalization because of its many baleful consequences; and a resolute and practical effort must be made to correct these evils. There is a widespread conviction in the minds of the American people that the great corporations known as trusts are in certain of their features and tendencies hurtful to the general welfare. This [...] is based upon sincere conviction that combination and concentration should be, not prohibited, but supervised and within reasonable limits controlled; and in my judgment this conviction is right.
Antiquity | Change | Civilization | Destiny | Force | Man | Memory | Nations | Nothing | Power | Will | Work | World |
Théophile Gautier, fully Pierre Jules Théophile Gautier, aka Le Bon Theo
The public, which has been wrong before and is wrong now, can accept only demons and angels on the stage
Age | Appearance | Famous | Guests | Mind |
The artillery of the press has been leveled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted...
Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
How strange a vehicle it is, coming down unchanged from times of old romance, and so characteristically black, the way no other thing is black except a coffin — a vehicle evoking lawless adventures in the plashing stillness of night, and still more strongly evoking death itself, the bier, the dark obsequies, the last silent journey!
Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
You have never spent any time in theatrical circles, have you? So you do not know those thespian faces that can embody the features of a Julius Caesar, a Goethe and a Beethoven all in one, but whose owners, the moment they open their mouths, prove to be the most miserable ninnies under the sun.
The danger to which the success of revolutions is most exposed, is that of attempting them before the principles on which they proceed, and the advantages to result from them, are sufficiently seen and understood.
Antiquity | Better | Character | Era | Famous | Improvement | Literature | Rank | Science | World | Circumstance |
Edward Dyer, fully Sir Edward Dyer
Love-Contradictions - As rare to heare as seldome to be seene, It cannot be nor never yet hathe bene That fire should burne with perfecte heate and flame Without some matter for to yealde the same. A straunger case yet true by profe I knowe A man in joy that livethe still in woe: A harder happ who hathe his love at lyste Yet lives in love as he all love had miste: Whoe hathe enougehe, yet thinkes he lives wthout, Lackinge no love yet still he standes in doubte. What discontente to live in suche desyre, To have his will yet ever to requyre.
Better | Cause | Comfort | Day | Death | Faith | Famous | Fate | Force | Fortune | Grace | Hate | Hope | Knowledge | Life | Life | Light | Love | Mirth | Nothing | Present | Quiet | Rest | Reward | Safe | Sense | Sound | Thought | Trust | Will | World | Fate | Thought |
Joint-stools were then created; on three legs up borne they stood. Three legs upholding firm a massy slab, in fashion square or round. On such a stool immortal Alfred sat.
Dear dying lamb, thy precious blood shall never lose its power till all the ransomed church of god be saved, to sin no more.
Willa Cather, fully Willa Sibert Cather
If the street life, not the Whitechapel street life, but that of the common but so-called respectable part of town is in any city more gloomy, more ugly, more grimy, more cruel than in London, I certainly don't care to see it. Sometimes it occurs to one that possibly all the failures of this generation, the world over, have been suddenly swept into London, for the streets are a restless, breathing, malodorous pageant of the seedy of all nations.
Famous |
Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
You know the more you read and observe about this Politics thing, you got to admit that each party is worse than the other. The one that's out always looks the best. My only solution would be to keep em both out one term and hire my good friend Henry Ford to run the whole thing, and give him a commission on what he saves us.
Werner Heisenberg, fully Werner Karl Heisenberg
In the philosophy of Democritus the atoms are eternal and indestructible units of matter, they can never be transformed into each other. With regard to this question modern physics takes a definite stand against the materialism of Democritus and for Plato and the Pythagoreans. The elementary particles are certainly not eternal and indestructible units of matter; they can actually be transformed into each other. As a matter of fact, if two such particles, moving through space with a very high kinetic energy, collide, then many new elementary particles may be created from the available energy and the old particles may have disappeared in the collision. Such events have been frequently observed and offer the best proof that all particles are made of the same substance: energy. But the resemblance of the modern views to those of Plato and the Pythagoreans can be carried somewhat further. The elementary particles in Plato's Timaeus are finally not substance but mathematical forms. All things are numbers is a sentence attributed to Pythagoras. The only mathematical forms available at that time were such geometric forms as the regular solids or the triangles which form their surface. In modern quantum theory there can be no doubt that the elementary particles will finally also be mathematical forms but of a much more complicated nature. The Greek philosophers thought of static forms and found them in the regular solids. Modern science, however, has from its beginning in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries started from the dynamic problem. The constant element in physics since Newton is not a configuration or a geometrical form, but a dynamic law. The equation of motion holds at all times, it is in this sense eternal, whereas the geometrical forms, like the orbits, are changing. Therefore, the mathematical forms that represent the elementary particles will be solutions of some eternal law of motion for matter. This is a problem which has not yet been solved.
Consciousness | Doubt | Famous | History | Life | Life | Reality | Relationship | Thinking | Truth | Trial |
Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson
Walking uplifts the spirit. Breathe out the poisons of tension, stress, and worry; breathe in the power of God. Send forth little silent prayers of goodwill toward those you meet. Walk with a sense of being a part of a vast universe. Consider the thousands of miles of earth beneath your feet; think of the limitless expanse of space above your head. Walk in awe, wonder, and humility. Walk at all times of day. In the early morning when the world is just waking up. Late at night under the stars. Along a busy city street at noontime.
Chance | Church | Famous | Happy | Laughter | Little | Thinking |
Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
Our second advantage relates to the allocation of the money our businesses earn. After meeting the needs of those businesses, we have very substantial sums left over. Most companies limit themselves to reinvesting funds within the industry in which they have been operating. That often restricts them, however, to a "universe" for capital allocation that is both tiny and quite inferior to what is available in the wider world. Competition for the few opportunities that are available tends to become fierce. The seller has the upper hand, as a girl might if she were the only female at a party attended by many boys. That lopsided situation would be great for the girl, but terrible for the boys.
And if unhappy in her love, her heart is like some fortress that has been captured, and sacked, and abandoned, and left desolate.
Wei Wu Wei, pen name for Terence James Stannus Gray
Affective fixation on the personality of a master, teacher, guru, is a serious obstacle to 'liberation': the person of the liberator becomes the gaoler... The Chinese Masters told their monks to kill the Buddha if by chance they met him.
Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
For can anything be sillier than to insist on carrying a burden one would continually much rather throw to the ground?