This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Mary Kay Ash, fully Mary Kathlyn Wagner Ash
A mediocre idea that generates enthusiasm will go further than a great idea that inspires no one.
Enthusiasm | Will |
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
Science could not survive without a community sharing scientific values. Moral systems do not continue unless individuals subscribe to a common set of ethics. Values are so ephemeral that they require the joining psychic input of a group to retain their hold on each person’s attention. They may be created by individuals, but they must be maintained by the collectivity.
Mikhail Bakunin, fully Mikhail Alexandrovich Bakunin
All temporal or human authority stems directly from spiritual and/or divine authority. But authority is the negation of freedom. God, or rather the fiction of God, is the consecration and the intellectual and moral source of all slavery on earth, and the freedom of mankind will never be complete until the disastrous and insidious fiction of a heavenly master is annihilated.
Authority | Consecration | Earth | Freedom | God | Mankind | Slavery | Will |
It's faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes life worth living.
Success at anything requires two vital ingredients: enthusiasm and perseverance. Both can be helped by the broad view that looks beyond temporary difficulties and disappointments to a great goal... Enthusiasm is the priceless quality that makes everything different.
Enthusiasm | Looks | Perseverance | Success |
To have enthusiasm for life, act as if you did possess it and you shall have it.
Enthusiasm | Life | Life |
It is impossible to combat enthusiasm with reason; for though it makes a show of resistance, it soon eludes the pressure, refers you to distinctions not to be understood, and feelings which it cannot explain.
Enthusiasm | Feelings | Reason |
Oscar Wilde, pen name for Fingal O'Flahertie Wills
Faithfulness is to the emotional life what consistency is to the life of the intellectual - simply a confession of failures.
Consistency | Life | Life |
Faith is belief, and belief has, over and above its intellectual character, an aspect of irmness, persistence, and subjective certainty.
Belief | Character | Faith | Persistence |
Man was born to be rich, or grow rich by use of his faculties, by the union of thought with nature. Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players. Cultivated labor drives out brute labor.
Labor | Man | Nature | Patience | Promptness | Property | Right | Thought | Thought |
Man was born to be rich, or grows rich by the use of his faculties, by the union of thought with nature. Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players. Cultivated labor drives out brute labor.
Labor | Man | Nature | Patience | Promptness | Property | Right | Thought | Thought |
Roger Babson, fully Roger Ward Babson
A character standard is far more important than even a gold standard. The success of all economic systems is still dependent upon both righteous leaders and righteous people. In the last analysis, our national future depends upon our national character - that is, whether it is spiritually or materially minded.
Robert Ingersoll, fully Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll
The history of intellectual progress is written in the lives of infidels.
Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust.
Enthusiasm | Heart | Soul | Spirit |
Benjamin Collins Brodie, fully Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, 1st Baronet
The failure of the mind in old age is often less the results of natural decay, than of disuse. Ambition has ceased to operate; contentment bring indolence, and indolence decay of mental power, ennui, and sometimes death. Men have been known to die, literally speaking, of disease induced by intellectual vacancy.
Age | Ambition | Contentment | Death | Disease | Ennui | Failure | Indolence | Men | Mind | Old age | Power | Ambition | Failure | Old |
Youth is not a time of life, it is a state of mind, it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness off the deep springs of life. Youth means the temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals. Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, fear, self-distrust bows the heart and turns the spirit back to dust. Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being's heart the lure of wonder, the unfailing childlike appetite of what's next, and the joy of the game of living.
Adventure | Appetite | Courage | Distrust | Emotions | Enthusiasm | Fear | Heart | Ideals | Imagination | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Man | Means | Mind | Self | Soul | Spirit | Time | Will | Wonder | Worry | Youth | Youth | Old |
Do not be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory or ideology. All systems of thought are guiding means; they are not absolute truth. Do not think that the knowledge you presently possess is changeless, absolute truth. Avoid being narrow-minded and bound to present views. Learn and practice non-attachment from views in order to be open to receive others’ viewpoints. Truth is found in life and not merely in conceptual knowledge. Be ready to learn throughout your entire life and to observe reality in yourself and in the world at all times.
Absolute | Doctrine | Knowledge | Life | Life | Means | Order | Practice | Present | Reality | Receive | Thought | Truth | World | Learn | Think | Thought |