This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Old ideas give way slowly; for they are more than abstract logical forms and categories. They are habits, predispositions, deeply ingrained attitudes of aversion and preference.
Abstract | Ideas | Preference | Wisdom |
Teachers of today must have the ability to bring personal meaning to ideas as they investigate, interpret and integrate their thoughts. They must possess their own unique conceptual frameworks on which to hang ideas. They should be able to select, and build upon, significant ideas, observe relationships, and distinguish essential matters from irrelevant and incidental ones.
The doctrine that the world is made up of objects whose existence is independent of human consciousness turns out to be in conflict with quantum mechanics and the facts established by experiment.
Consciousness | Doctrine | Existence | Experiment | Wisdom | World |
Agatha Christie, fully Dame Agatha Miller Christie
The gap between theory and practice is a wide one.
Charles Darwin, fully Charles Robert Darwin
I have steadily endeavored to keep my mind free so as to give up any hypothesis, however much beloved... as soon as facts are shown to be opposed to it.
Hypothesis | Mind | Wisdom |
The first principle asserts that at least some mental events interact causally with physical events... The second principle is that where there is causality, there must be a law: events related as cause and effect fall under strict deterministic laws... The third principle is that there are no strict deterministic laws on the basis of which mental events can be predicted and explained... from the fact that there can be no strict psychophysical laws, and without our other two principles, we can infer the truth of a version of the identity theory, that is, a theory that identifies at least some mental events with physical events.
Declaration of American Women NULL
Man-made barriers, laws, social customs and prejudices continue to keep a majority of women in an inferior position without full control of our lives and bodies. From infancy throughout life, in personal and public relations, in the family, in the schools, in every occupation and profession, too often we find our individuality, our capabilities, our earning powers diminished by discriminatory practices and outmoded ideas of what a woman is, what a woman can do, and what a woman must be... We lack effective political and economic power We have only minor and insignificant roles in making, interpreting and enforcing our laws, in running our political parties, businesses, unions, schools and institutions, in directing the media, in governing our country, in deciding issues of war or peace. We do not seek special privileges, but we demand as a human right a full voice and role for women in determining the destiny of our world, our nation, our families and our individual lives.
Control | Destiny | Family | Ideas | Individual | Individuality | Infancy | Life | Life | Majority | Man | Occupation | Peace | Position | Power | Public | Right | War | Wisdom | Woman | World |
Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges
History studies not just facts and institutions, its real subject is the human spirit.
It seems hard to sneak a look at a God's cards. But that he plays dice and uses "telepathic" methods (as the present quantum theory requires of him) is something that I cannot believe for a single moment.
The special theory of relativity... creates a formal dependence between the way in which the spatial co-ordinates on the one hand, and the temporal co-ordinates, on the other, have to enter into the natural laws.
Dependence | Wisdom |
Quantum mechanics is certainly imposing. But an inner voice tells me that it is not yet the real thing. The theory says a lot, but does not really bring us any closer to the secret of the ‘old one’. I, at any rate, am convinced that He is not playing dice.
Wisdom |
Georges Duhamel, Pen name Denis Thevenin
Great ideas have such radiant strength. They cross space and time like avalanches: they carry along with them whatever they touch. They are the only riches that one shares without ever dividing them.
Ideas | Riches | Space | Strength | Time | Wisdom | Riches |
M. Stanton Evans, fully Medford Stanton Evans
Great discoveries or ideas have one thing in common. Before they are achieved they are considered incredible and not worth the effort deemed necessary to make them real. After they are achieved, it is incredible that we should be without them.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, fully Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see things as hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.
Ability | Example | Ideas | Intelligence | Mind | Time | Wisdom |
Randolph S. Foster, fully Randolph Sinks Foster
Death must obliterate all memories and affections and ideas and laws, or the awakening in the next world will be amid the welcomes, and loves and raptures of those who left us with tearful farewells, and with dying promises that they would wait to welcome us when we should arrive. And so they do. Not sorrowfully, not anxiously, but lovingly they wait to bid us welcome.