This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
It is well known to all great men, that by conferring an obligation they do not always procure a friend, but are certain of creating many enemies.
Friend | Men | Obligation | Wisdom |
E. M. Forster, fully Edward Morgan Forster
It is pleasant to be transferred from an office where one is afraid of a sergeant-major into an office where one can intimidate generals, and perhaps this is why History is so attractive to the more timid among us. We can recover self-confidence by snubbing the dead.
Confidence | History | Office | Self | Self-confidence | Wisdom | Afraid |
It is not marriage that fails: it is people that fail. All that marriage does is to show people up.
The happiest people are those who are too busy to notice whether they are or not.
Formerly, people believed that the sugar cane alone yielded sugar; nowadays it is extracted from almost anything. It is the same with poetry. Let us draw it, no matter whence, for it lies everywhere, and in all things.
A man who cannot think is not an educated man, however many college degrees he may have acquired.
Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.
Capital punishment | Charity | Crime | Poverty | Punishment | Wisdom | Wrong |
It has been my observation that most people get ahead during the time that others waste.
Observation | People | Time | Waste | Wisdom |
The majority of people are naturally straddlers. They are not in the world to pioneer but to be as happy as possible. If pioneering in a cause brings discomfort, they would rather not be among the pioneers. they would rather stand on the sidelines and, in the combat between truth and error, wait and see which proves the stronger. Though they may have a lazy faith that truth at last will win, they do not wish to lend a premature support.
Cause | Error | Faith | Happy | Majority | People | Truth | Will | Wisdom | World |
Beneath a free government there is nothing but the intelligence of the people to keep the people’s peace. Order must be preserved, not by a military police or regiments of horse-guards, but by the spontaneous concert of a well-informed population, resolved that the rights which have been rescued from despotism shall not be subverted by anarchy.
Anarchy | Government | Intelligence | Nothing | Order | Peace | People | Rights | Wisdom | Government |
Aristotle said that all creative people are dissatisfied because they are looking for happiness in perfection and seeking for things that do not exist. This is one of the hopes of the world. There is no progress where people are satisfied. Discontent is perhaps the most potent challenge to improvement.
Challenge | Discontent | Improvement | People | Perfection | Progress | Wisdom | World | Happiness |
One intellectual excitement has, however, been denied me. Men wiser and more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a predetermined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following another as wave follows upon wave, only one great fact with respect to which, since it is unique, there can be no generalizations, only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize in the development of human destinies the play of the contingent and the unforeseen.
Excitement | History | Men | Play | Respect | Rule | Safe | Unique | Wisdom | Following | Respect |
The cure for "Materialism" is to have enough for everybody and to spare. When people are sure of having what they need they cease to think about it.