This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman
I do believe that every individual should be free to own, buy, and sell gold. If under those circumstances a private gold standard emerged, fine—although I make a scientific prediction that it’s very unlikely. But I think those people who say they believe in a gold standard are fundamentally being very anti-libertarian because what they mean by a gold standard is a governmentally fixed price for gold.
Circumstances | Gold | Individual | People | Prediction | Price | Think |
Nāgārjuna, fully Acharya Nāgārjuna NULL
Property is unstable, and youth perishes in a moment. Life itself is held in the grinning fangs of Death, yet men delay to obtain release from the world. Alas, the conduct of mankind is surprising.
Conduct | Delay | Life | Life | Mankind | Men | Youth | Youth |
Occurrences in this domain are beyond the reach of exact prediction because of the variety of factors in operation, not because of any lack of order in nature.
Order | Prediction |
Ennius, fully Quintus Ennius NULL
One man by delay restored the state, for he preferred the public safety to idle report.
When the number of factors coming into play in a phenomenological complex is too large scientific method in most cases fails. One need only think of the weather, in which case the prediction even for a few days ahead is impossible.
Method | Need | Play | Prediction | Think |
William Rees and Mathis Wackernagel
The Earth's biophysical systems are large, complex, self-organizing entities. This means there is typically a long lag time between economic cause and ecological effect. (For example, whatever global warming we may already have experienced is not the result of today's levels of greenhouse gases but rather the levels reached perhaps 40 years ago; even though CFC production may be winding down, ozone depletion may worsen for a decade and it may be a half century or more before stratospheric ozone returns to normal.) Thus, the temptation to wait until we are certain that a particular trend is fatal, dangerous or simply uneconomic before deciding on corrective action leads us into an ecological trap. At best, the delay simply further entrenches our unsustainable lifestyles, making change the more difficult; at worst, it will be too late to do anything to reverse the trend.
Action | Cause | Change | Delay | Global | Means | Temptation | Time | Will | Temptation |
When you see a tiger, you had better not delay your prediction of its probable behavior.
Better | Delay | Prediction |
Robert Byrd, fully Robert Carlyle Byrd
I want answers - we all want answers - as to why it took so long for rescue teams to get on the ground. There is no excuse for the days of delay and the inexplicable lack of coordination in the response effort... We knew the danger was coming. Yet, the government failed to respond. Lives were lost because the government failed to do its job.
Danger | Delay | Government | Government | Danger |
It may be that we should stop putting so much emphasis in our own minds on the monetary value of a college education and put more emphasis on the intangible social and cultural values to be derived from learning. The time may be coming when we will have to start accepting the idea that education is life, not merely a preparation for it.
Ability | Abstract | Behavior | Delay | Important | Plan | System | Unique | Think |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
Let me smile with the wise, and feed with the rich.
I was lucky to wander into evolutionary theory, one of the most exciting and important of all scientific fields. I had never heard of it when I started at a rather tender age; I was simply awed by dinosaurs. I thought paleontologists spent their lives digging in up bones and putting them together, never venturing beyond the momentous issue of what connects to what. Then I discovered evolutionary theory. Ever since then, the duality of natural history — richness in particularities and potential union in underlying explanation — has propelled me.
Appearance | Change | Evolution | Failure | Means | Prediction | Failure | Understand |
Seldom ever was any knowledge given to keep, but to impart; the grace of this rich jewel is lost in concealment.
I think the issues of identity mostly are poppycock. We are what we have done, which includes our promises, includes our hopes, but promises first.
Expectation | Life | Life | Prediction | World | Worth | Expectation |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The history of all countries shows that the working class exclusively by its own effort is able to develop only trade-union consciousness.
Action | Death | Delay | Government | Government |
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
Sci-fi uses the images that ‘sf’ — starting with H.G. Wells — made familiar: space travel, aliens, galactic wars and federations, time machines, et cetera, taking them literally, not caring if they are possible or even plausible. It has no interest in or relation to real science or technology. It's fantasy in space suits. Spectacle. Wizards with lasers. Kids with ray guns. I've written both, but I have to say I respect science fiction enough that I wince when people call it sci-fi.
Liberty | Method | Order | People | Prediction | Science | Will |
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
Life rises out of death, death rises out of life; in being opposite they yearn to each other, they give birth to each other and are forever reborn. And with them, all is reborn, the flower of the apple tree, the light of the stars. In life is death. In death is rebirth. What then is life without death? Life unchanging, everlasting, eternal?-What is it but death-death without rebirth?
Ambiguity | Prediction |