This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Clarence Darrow, fully Clarence Seward Darrow
The fear of God is not the beginning of wisdom. The fear of God is the death of wisdom. Skepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom.
Beginning | Death | Doubt | Fear | God | Skepticism | Study | Wisdom | God |
One who never feels the wanton stings and motions of the sense, but doth rebate and blunt his natural edge with profits of the mind, study and fast.
Cardinal de Retz, Jean Francois-Paul de Gondil
Men who enter the service of the State should make it their chief study to set out in the world with some notable act which may strike the imagination of the people, and cause themselves to be discussed.
Cause | Imagination | Men | People | Service | Study | World |
C. S. Peirce, fully Charles Sanders Peirce
Few persons care to study logic, because everybody conceives himself to be proficient enough in the art of reasoning already. But I observe that this satisfaction is limited to one’s own ratiocination, and does not extend to that of other men.
Edgar Degas, born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas
No art is less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and the study of the great masters.
Art | Reflection | Study | Art |
When you are offended at any man's fault, turn to yourself and study your own failings. Then you will forget your anger.
There is but one quality necessary for the perfect understanding of character, one quality that, if man have it, he may dare to judge—that is, omniscience. Most people study character as a proofreader pores over a great poem: his ears are dulled to the majesty and music of the lines, his eyes are darkened to the magic imagination of the genius of the author; that proofreader is busy watching for an inverted comma, a misspacing, or a wrong font letter. He has an eye trained for the imperfections, the weaknesses.
Character | Genius | Imagination | Magic | Man | Music | People | Study | Understanding | Wrong |
Fyodor Dostoevsky, fully Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoevsky or Feodor Mikhailovich Dostoevski
To study the meaning of man and of life — I am making significant progress here. I have faith in myself. Man is a mystery: if you spend your entire life trying to puzzle it out, then do not say that you have wasted your time. I occupy myself with this mystery, because I want to be a man.
Max Müller, fully Friedrich Max Müller
If there is one thing which a comparative study of religions places in the clearest light, it is the inevitable decay to which every religion is exposed. It may seem almost like a truism, that no religion can continue to be what it was during the lifetime of its founder and its first apostles.
Inevitable | Religion | Study |
There will be no room, here, for the smug myopia which views American civilization as the final solution to all world problems; which recommends our institutions for universal adoption and turns away with contempt from the serious study of the institutions of peoples whose civilizations may seem to us to be materially less advanced.
Civilization | Contempt | Study | Will | World |
Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
I see the clouds part slowly, and I hear a cry of protest against the bigot. The restraining hand of tolerance is laid upon the inquisitor, and the humanist utters a message of peace to the persecuted. Instead of the cry, "Burn the heretic!" men study the human soul with sympathy, and there enters into their hearts a new reverence for that which is unseen.
The scrutiny of human nature on a small scale is one of the most dangerous of employments; the study of it on a large scale is one of the safest and truest.
Human nature | Nature | Study |
Not alone to know, but to act according to thy knowledge, is thy destination, proclaims the voice of thy inmost soul. Not for indolent contemplation and study of thyself, nor for brooding over emotions of piety - no, for action was existence given thee; thy actions, and thy actions alone, determine thy worth.
Action | Contemplation | Emotions | Existence | Piety | Study | Contemplation |
Education is the cultivation of the mind so that action is not self-centred; it is learning throughout life to break down the walls which the mind builds in order to be secure, and from which arises fear with all its complexities. To be rightly educated, you have to study hard and not be lazy. Be good at games, not to beat another, but to amuse yourself. Eat the right food, and keep physically fit. Let the mind be alert and capable of dealing with the problems of life, not as a Hindu, a Communist, or a Christian, but as a human being. To be rightly educated, you have to understand yourself; you have to keep on learning about yourself. When you stop learning, life becomes ugly and sorrowful. Without goodness and love, you are not rightly educated.
Action | Cultivation | Fear | Good | Learning | Life | Life | Mind | Order | Problems | Right | Study | Ugly | Understand |
J. G. Fichte, fully Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Not alone to know, but to act according to thy knowledge, is thy destination,--proclaims the voice of my inmost soul. Not for indolent contemplation and study of thyself, nor for brooding over emotions of piety,--no, for action was existence given thee; thy actions, and thy actions alone, determine thy worth.
Action | Contemplation | Emotions | Existence | Study | Contemplation |
Biology occupies a position among the sciences both marginal and central. Marginal because, the living world, constituting only a tiny and very 'special' part of the universe, it does not seem likely that the study of living beings will ever uncover general laws applicable outside the biosphere. But if the ultimate aim of the whole of science is indeed, as I believe, to clarify man's relationship to the universe, then biology must be accorded a central position, since of all the disciplines it is the one that endeavours to go most directly to the heart of the problems that must be resolved before that of 'human nature' can even be framed in other than metaphysical terms.
Heart | Position | Problems | Relationship | Science | Study | Will |