This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
What is the lesson to us to-day? Are we to go the way of the older civilizations? The immense increase in the area of civilized activity to-day, so that it is nearly coterminous with the world's surface; the immense increase in the multitudinous variety of its activities; the immense increase in the velocity of the world movement—are all these to mean merely that the crash will be all the more complete and terrible when it comes? We can not be certain that the answer will be in the negative; but of this we can be certain, that we shall not go down in ruin unless we deserve and earn our end. There is no necessity for us to fall; we can hew out our destiny for ourselves, if only we have the wit and the courage and the honesty.
Civilization | Debt | Family | Folly | Good | Heart | Husband | Important | Intolerance | Man | Men | Mother | Need | Past | Philosophy | Power | Present | Qualities | Science | Spirit | Will | Woman | Work |
No foreign policy-no matter how ingenious-has any chance of success if it is born in the minds of few and carried in the hearts of many.
Business | Care | Competence | Debt | Defeat | Destiny | Effort | Energy | Honor | Industry | Law | Men | Nations | Nothing | Policy | Power | Prosperity | Struggle | Wealth | Will | Business |
I... proposed three distinct grades of education, reaching all classes. 1. Elementary schools for all children generally, rich and poor. 2. Colleges for a middle degree of instruction, calculated for the common purposes of life and such as should be desirable for all who were in easy circumstances. And 3. an ultimate grade for teaching the sciences generally and in their highest degree... The expenses of [the elementary] schools should be borne by the inhabitants of the county, every one in proportion to his general tax-rate. This would throw on wealth the education of the poor.
I advance with obedience to the work, ready to retire from it whenever you become sensible how much better choice it is in your power to make.
I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.
Choice | Debt | Government | Important | People | Public | Will | Government |
The great object of my fear is the Federal Judiciary. That body, like gravity, ever acting with noiseless foot and unalarming advance, gaining ground step by step and holding what it gains, is engulfing insidiously the special governments into the jaws of that which feeds them.
Debt | Government | Regard | Will | Government | Circumstance |
It is more dangerous that even a guilty person should be punished without the forms of law than that he should escape.
Change | Debt | Toleration | War | Think |
The cause of America is in a great measure the cause of all mankind. Many circumstances hath, and will arise, which are not local, but universal, and through which the principles of all Lovers of Mankind are affected, and in the Event of which, their Affections are interested. The laying a Country desolate with Fire and Sword, declaring War against the natural rights of all Mankind, and extirpating the Defenders thereof from the Face of the Earth, is the Concern of every Man to whom Nature hath given the Power of feeling; of which Class, regardless of Party Censure, is the AUTHOR.
Debt |
Not a place on earth might be so happy as America. Her situation is remote from all the wrangling world, and she has nothing to do but to trade with them.
Debt |
Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
A Democrat is just like a baby. If it's hollering and making a lot of noise, there is nothing serious the matter with it. When it's quiet and doesn't pay much attention to anything, that's when it's really dangerous.
Borrowing | Debt | Good | Government | Government |
Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
If he has no sympathy for the man that does love horses then there is something worse the matter with him.
Debt |
Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
You are going to need sales taxes, both Federal and State, income tax, and a lot of other kinds. It’s a great country but you can’t live in it for nothing.
Debt |
A simultaneous change of our whole economic and social system in favor of drastic decentralization of cities and industries, of the restoration of some more `natural order', more rural, but less urbanized, mechanized, industrialized, proletarized and commercialized. People will not like to face competition unless they have some firm stand. They must not feel lost in this present dehumanized world. Competition is a necessary social arrangement not a social gospel likely to make us enthusiastic. It is a negative concept which derives its strength from the fact that we like the alternatives, i.e., monopoly and collectivism, even less. It must be supplemented by something which is humanly positive.
Business | Debt | Man | Nature | Need | Problems | Worry | Business |
Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
I don’t have a problem with guilt about money. The way I see it is that my money represents an enormous number of claim checks on society. It’s like I have these little pieces of paper that I can turn into consumption. If I wanted to, I could hire 10,000 people to do nothing but paint my picture every day for the rest of my life. And the GNP would go up. But the utility of the product would be zilch, and I would be keeping those 10,000 people from doing AIDS research, or teaching, or nursing. I don’t do that though. I don’t use very many of those claim checks. There’s nothing material I want very much. And I’m going to give virtually all of those claim checks to charity when my wife and I die.