This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The influence of woman is the same everywhere. Her condition influences the morals, manners, and character of the people of all countries. Where she is debased, society is debased; where she is morally pure and enlightened, society will be proportionately elevated.
England was nothing, compared to continental nations until she had become commercial…until about the middle of the last century, when a number of ingenious and inventive men, without apparent relation to each other, arose in various parts of the kingdom, succeeded in giving an immense impulse to all the branches of the national industry; the result of which has been a harvest of wealth and prosperity, perhaps without a parallel in the history of the world.
No human being escapes the necessity of conceiving some good outside himself towards which his thought turns in a movement of desire, supplication, and hope. consequently, the only choice is between worshipping the true God or an idol. Every atheist is an idolater — unless he is worshipping the true God in his impersonal aspect. The majority of the pious are idolaters.
Culture | Experiment | Glory | Humanity | Progress | Purpose | Purpose | Research | Society | Study | Time | Theoretical | Society |
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
Words have a magical power. They can bring either the greatest happiness or deepest despair; they can transfer knowledge from teacher to student; words enable the orator to sway his audience and dictate its decisions. Words are capable of arousing the strongest emotions and prompting all men's actions.
Culture | Forbearance |
Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir
When Sartre and I met not only did our backgrounds fuse, but also our solidity, our individual conviction that we were what we were made to be. In that framework we could not become rivals. Then, as the relationship between Sartre and me grew, I became convinced that I was irreplaceable in his life, and he in mine. In other words, we were totally secure in the knowledge that our relationship was also totally solid, again preordained, though, of course, we would have laughed at that word then. When you have such security it's easy not to be jealous. But had I thought that another woman played the same role as I did in Sartre's life, of course, I would have been jealous.
Angus Wilson, fully Sir Angus Frank Johnstone Wilson
All fiction for me is a kind of magic and trickery-a confidence trick, trying to make people believe something is true that isn't.
Alexander Fleming, fully Sir Alexander Fleming
It may be - usually is, in fact - a false alarm that leads to nothing, but it may on the other hand be the clue provided by fate to lead you to some important advance.
Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir
As long as there have been men and they have lived, they have all felt this tragic ambiguity of their condition, but as long as there have been philosophers and they have thought, most of them have tried to mask it.
Culture | Custom | Discovery | Education | Enough | Freedom | Individual | People | Philosophy | Respect | Riches | Spirit | Unique | Woman | World | Riches | Respect | Discovery |
Scientists have power by virtue of the respect commanded by the discipline... We live with poets and politicians, preachers and philosophers. All have their ways of knowing, and all are valid in their proper domain. The world is too complex and interesting for one way to hold all the answers.
The more important the subject and the closer it cuts to the bone of our hopes and needs, the more we are likely to err in establishing a framework for analysis.
Appearance | Evolution | Means | Theories | Value |
We now live, as Earth always has, in an Age of Bacteria. These simplest organisms will dominate our planet (if conditions remain hospitable for life at all) until the sun explodes. During our current, and undoubtedly brief, geological moment, they watch with appropriate amusement as we strut and fret our hour upon the stage. For we are, to them, only transient and delectable islands ripe for potential exploitation.
Culture |
Place is a rich and complex reality and the more nature is apparent in place, the more distinct the influence.
Consciousness | Culture | Hope | Philosophy | Tenets | World | Think |
Throughout his last half-dozen books, for example, Arthur Koestler has been conducting a campaign against his own misunderstanding of Darwinism. He hopes to find some ordering force, constraining evolution to certain directions and overriding the influence of natural selection. […] Darwinism is not the theory of capricious change that Koestler imagines. Random variation may be the raw material of change, but natural selection builds good design by rejecting most variants while accepting and accumulating the few that improve adaptation to local environments.
Culture | Important | Life | Life | Perception | Question | Resolution | Thought | Truth | World | Thought |
Stephen Vizinczey, born István Vizinczey
When too many things are taken for granted, it is next to impossible to perceive the truth.
Theodor W. Adorno, born Theodor Ludwig Wiesengrund
The first and only principle of sexual ethics: the accuser is always in the wrong.
Culture | Dehumanization | Joy |
Theodor Herzl, born Benjamin Ze’ev Herzl
We have an important task before us. We have met here to lay the foundation-stone of the house that will someday shelter the Jewish people. . . We have to aim at securing legal, international guarantees for our work.
Culture |