This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Richard Smolowe, fully Richard Edward Smolowe
The ultimate function of prophecy is not to tell the future but to make it.
Depend on this one fact: The future of mankind, peace, progress and prosperity must be finally determined by the extent to which men can be brought to a state of common and honest understanding.
Future | Mankind | Men | Peace | Progress | Prosperity | Understanding | Wisdom |
With all its alluring promise that some one else will guarantee for a rainy day, social security can never replace the program that man's future welfare, is after all, a matter of individual responsibility.
Day | Future | Guarantee | Individual | Man | Promise | Responsibility | Security | Will | Wisdom |
Expand your thinking of where you are to include your family - your neighbors - your country- other countries - a global village - the universe. Think not as a unit of one, but as a part of a unit of many. And look to the future with hope.
Family | Future | Global | Hope | Thinking | Universe | Wisdom | Think |
Lillian Smith, fully Lillian Eugenia Smith
To believe in something not yet proved and to underwrite it with our lives; it is the only way we can leave the future open. Man, surrounded by facts, permitting himself no surprise, no intuitive flash, no great hypothesis, no risk, is in a locked cell. Ignorance cannot seal the mind and imagination more securely.
Future | Hypothesis | Ignorance | Imagination | Man | Mind | Risk | Wisdom |
H. G. Wells, fully Herbert George Wells
We live in reference to past experience and not to future events, however inevitable.
Events | Experience | Future | Inevitable | Past | Wisdom |
Tennessee Williams, fully Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams
The future is called "perhaps," which is the only possible thing to call the future. And the important thing is not to allow that to scare you.
We need to find a form of life that is valuable in itself. What can make a life meaningful? Candidates for this role need to be worthwhile in themselves and not just means to future ends. They need to treat each human life as an autonomous being-for-itself, not merely a being-in-itself to serve some cause beyond it. They need to satisfy our aesthetic and ethical needs, as being both tied to the present moment and existing across time. And there is no reason why such meaning should not be found in this life and not only in a supposed life to come.
Aesthetic | Cause | Ends | Future | Life | Life | Meaning | Means | Need | Present | Reason | Time |
James Baldwin, fully James Arthur Baldwin
The future is like heaven--everyone exalts it, but no one wants to go there now.
Things reduced to act in time, are known by us successively in time, but by God are known in eternity, which is above time. Whence to us they cannot be certain, forasmuch as we know future contingent things as such; but they are certain to God alone, whose understanding is in eternity above time.
It seems that a big factor that contributes to our state of happiness is the attitude we have about life. We alone are responsible for the attitude we have about things. We can decide to look for the good in life, or we can agonize over that which did not go the way we wanted and stress about what the future might bring.