This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman
The power to do good is also the power to do harm; those who control the power today may not tomorrow; and, more important, what one man regards as good, another may regard as harm.
Control | Good | Harm | Important | Man | Power | Regard | Tomorrow | Wisdom |
Water, gentlemen, is the one substance from which the earth can conceal nothing. It sucks out its innermost secrets and brings them to our very lips.
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
To be sure, if it is the purpose of educators to stifle the child’s power of independent thought as early as possible, in order to produce that ‘good behavior’ which is so highly prized, they cannot do better than deceive children in sexual matters and intimidate them by religious means. The stronger characters will, it is true, withstand these influences; they will become rebels against the authority of their parents and later against every other form of authority. When children do not receive the explanations for which they turn to their elders, they go on tormenting themselves in secret with the problem, and produce attempts at solution in which the truth they have guessed is mixed up in the most extraordinary way with grotesque inventions; or else they whisper confidences to each other which, because of the sense of guilt in the youthful inquirers, stamp everything sexual as horrible and disgusting.
Authority | Behavior | Better | Children | Good | Guilt | Means | Order | Parents | Power | Purpose | Purpose | Receive | Sense | Thought | Truth | Will | Wisdom | Thought |
The greatest things ever done on earth have been done little by little.
Oscar Hammerstein II, fully Oscar Greeley Clendenning Hamerstein II
All the sounds of the earth are like music.
He that acts unjustly is the worst rebel to himself; and though now ambition’s trumpet and drum of power may drown the sound, yet conscience with one day speak loudly to him.
Hugo Grotius, also known as Huig de Groot, Hugo Grocio or Hugo de Groot
It is not in the power of man to devise any form of government free from imperfections and dangers.
Government | Man | Power | Wisdom | Government |
God then, is the source of all things; the Aeon is the power of God; and the work of the Aeon is the Kosmos which never came into being, but is ever coming into being, by the action of the Aeon, and that which olds the universe together is the Aeon.
John Alexander Hammerton, fully Sir John Alexander Hammerton
One of the most melancholy things in the world is the enormous power for evil of the dead over things living. There is hardly a great painter or writer, or a man who had achieved greatness in any direction, whose name has not been used to repress rising genius.
Evil | Genius | Greatness | Man | Melancholy | Power | Wisdom | World |
Dreaming is an act of pure imagination, attesting in all men a creative power which, if it were available in waking, would make every man a Dante or a Shakespeare.
Imagination | Man | Men | Power | Wisdom |
Robert A. Heinlein, fully Robert Anson Heinlein, pen name for Anson MacDonald
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity.
Faith is the backbone of the social and the foundation of the commercial fabric; remove faith between man and man, and society and commerce fall to pieces. There is not a happy home on earth but stands on faith; our heads are pillowed on it, we sleep at night in its arms with greater security for the safety of our lives, peace, and prosperity than bolts and bars can give.
Commerce | Earth | Faith | Happy | Man | Peace | Prosperity | Security | Society | Wisdom | Society | Commerce |