This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
Men sometimes speak as though the progress of science must necessarily be a boon to mankind, but that, I fear, is one of the comfortable nineteenth century delusions which our more disillusioned age must discard.
Nothing is more common than good things; the only question is how to discern them; it is certain that all of them are natural and within our reach and even known by every one. But we do not know how to distinguish them. This is universal. It is not in things extraordinary and strange that excellence of any kind is found. We reach up for it, and we are further away; more often than not we must stoop. The best books are those whose readers think they; could have written them. Nature, which alone is good, is familiar and common throughout.
Books | Distinguish | Excellence | Good | Nature | Nothing | Question | Excellence | Think |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
There is a constant relation between the state of the universe at any instant and the rate of change in the rate at which any part of the universe is changing at that instant, and this relation is man-one, i.e., such that the rate of change in the rate of change is determinate when the state of the universe I given. If the ‘law of causality’ is to be something actually discoverable in the practice of science, the above proposition has a better right to the name than any ‘law of causality’ to be found in the books of philosophers.
Better | Books | Change | Law | Man | Practice | Right | Science | Universe |
He who studies books alone will know how things ought to be, and he who studies men will know how they are
A book can give greater riches than any; other form of recreation but it cannot provide the last answers. They must be found in the loneliness of a man's own mind. Books can help a man be ready for those moments. But neither books nor teachers can provide the answers.
Books | Loneliness | Man | Mind | Recreation | Riches | Riches |
Coventry Patmore, fully Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
What the world, which truly knows nothing, calls “mysticism” is the science of ultimates… the science of self-evident Reality, which cannot be “reasoned about,” because it is the object of pure reason or perception.
Mysticism | Nothing | Object | Perception | Reality | Reason | Science | Self | World |
The thesis that there is an inherent conflict between science and our immortal souls is simply untrue.
Science |
A clear stream reflects all the objects on its shore, but is unsullied by them; so it should be with our hearts; they should show the effect of all earthly objects, but remain unstained by any... All worldly things are so much without us, and so subject to variety and uncertainty, that they do not make us when they come, nor mend us while they stay, nor undo us when they are taken away.
Taste and elegance, though they are reckoned only among the small and secondary morals, yet are of no mean importance in the regulation of life. A moral taste is not of force to turn vice into virtue; but it recommends virtue with something like the blandishments of pleasure.
Elegance | Force | Life | Life | Pleasure | Regulation | Taste | Virtue | Virtue | Vice |
War suspends the rules of moral obligation, and what is long suspended is in danger of being totally abrogated. Civil wars strike deepest of all into the manners of the people. They vitiate their politics; they corrupt their morals; they pervert their natural taste and relish of equity and justice. By teaching us to consider our fellow-citizens in a hostile light, the whole body of our nation becomes gradually less dear to us. The very nature of affection and kindred, which were the bond of charity, whilst we agreed, become new incentives to hatred and rage, when the communion of our country is dissolved.
Body | Charity | Danger | Equity | Justice | Light | Manners | Nature | Obligation | People | Politics | Rage | Taste | War | Danger |
Nothing tends so much to the corruption of science as to suffer it to stagnate; these waters must be troubled before they can exert their virtues.
Corruption | Nothing | Science |
There are two kinds of constancy in love, one arising from incessantly finding in the loved one fresh objects to love, the other from regarding it as a point of honor to be constant.
It is as common for men to change their taste as it is uncommon for them to change their inclination.
Change | Inclination | Men | Taste |
It is for the most part in our skill in manners, and in the observation of time and place and of decency in general that what is called taste consists; and which is in reality no other that a more refined judgment. The cause of a wrong taste is a defect of judgment.
Cause | Judgment | Manners | Observation | Reality | Skill | Taste | Time | Wrong |
Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower
Modern man worships at the temple of science, yet science tells him only what is possible, not what is right.