This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Leonard Lauder, fully Leonard A. Lauder
The future is not a gift - it is an achievement.
Achievement | Future | Wisdom |
Many a time I have wanted to stop talking and find out what I really believed.
Belief in immortality gives dignity to life and enables us to endure cheerfully those trials which come to us all. As the thought of immortality occupies our minds, we gain a clearer conception of duty and are inspired to cultivate character. Living for the future is not coward's philosophy, but an inspiration to noble and unselfish activity.
Belief | Character | Dignity | Duty | Future | Immortality | Inspiration | Life | Life | Philosophy | Thought | Trials | Wisdom | Thought |
Samuel David Luzzatto, aka by acronym of SHaDaL or SHeDaL
Society's preservation and man's happiness depend on illusion. Nature itself, which certainly represents the will of God, deludes us in many respects, as when it leads us by the cords of love to reproduce the race. If a youth would consider the trouble in rearing a family, not one in a thousand would marry, but nature closes our eyes to the future (and indeed, wherever popular knowledge rises, the birth rate declines). The same is true of the other passions, which nature utilizes to deceive man and goad them toward the attainment of ends which, when attained, turn out to be but vanity.
Attainment | Birth | Ends | Family | Future | God | Illusion | Knowledge | Love | Man | Nature | Race | Society | Will | Wisdom | Youth | Youth | Trouble | Happiness |
Successful democratic politicians are insecure and intimidated men. They advance politically only as they placate, appease, bribe, seduce, bamboozle, or otherwise manage to manipulate the demanding and threatening elements in their constituencies. The decisive consideration is not whether the proposition is good but whether it is popular -- not whether it will work well and prove itself but whether the active talking constituents like it immediately. Politicians rationalize this servitude by saying that in a democracy public men are the servants of the people.
Consideration | Democracy | Good | Men | Public | Servitude | Talking | Will | Wisdom | Work |
Neil MacCormick, Sir Donald Neil MacCormick
When we say that law ‘embodies’ values we are talking metaphorically. What does it mean? Values are only ‘embodied’ in law in the sense that and to the extent that human beings approve of the laws they have because of the state of affairs they are supposed to secure, being states of affairs which are on some ground deemed just or otherwise good. This need not be articulated at all.
John "J. M. E." McTaggart. born John McTaggart Ellis
Past, present and future are incompatible determinations. Every event must be one or the other, but no event can be more than one. If I say that any event is past, that implies that it is neither present nor future, and so with the others. And this exclusiveness is essential to change, and therefore to time. For the only change we can get is from future to present, and from present to past. The characteristics, therefore, are incompatible. But every event has them all. If M is past, it has been present and future. If it is future, it will be present and past. If it is present, it has been future and will be past. thus all the three characteristics belong to each event. How is this consistent with their being incompatible?
Can a man control his future? Yes. Despite the system they live under, men everywhere have, I believe, more power over the future than ever before. The important thing is that we must choose to exercise it. What we do today determines how the world shall go, for tomorrow is made up of the sum total of today's experiences... Far from feeling hopeless or helpless, we must seize every opportunity, however small, to help the world around us toward peace, productivity and human brotherhood.
Brotherhood | Control | Future | Important | Man | Men | Opportunity | Peace | Power | System | Tomorrow | Wisdom | World |
Robert Oppenheimer, fully Julius Robert Oppenheimer
The atomic bomb made the prospect of future war unendurable. It has led us up those last few steps to the mountain pass; and beyond there is a different country.
Atomic bomb | Future | War | Wisdom |
If you want to know your past life, look into your present condition; if you want to know your future life, look at your present actions.
The Cosmos has had no beginning... and this is warrant for its continued existence. Why should there be in the future a change that has not yet occurred? The elements there are not worn away like beams and rafters: they hold sound for ever, and so the All holds sound. And even supposing these elements to be in ceaseless transmutation, yet the All persists: the ground of all the change must itself be changeless.