This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
In the heat of speculation or of love there may come moments of equal perfection, but they are very unstable. The reason and the heart remain deeply unsatisfied. But the eye finds in nature, and in some supreme achievements of art, constant and fuller satisfaction. For the eye is quick and seems to have been more docile to the education of life than the heart or the reason of man, and able sooner to adapt itself to the reality. Beauty therefore seems to be the clearest manifestation of perfection, and the best evidence of its possibility.
Art | Beauty | Education | Evidence | Heart | Life | Life | Love | Man | Nature | Perfection | Reality | Reason | Speculation | Beauty |
The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error, if error seduce[s] them. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.
Evidence |
Against the formidable array of cumulative evidence for Determinism, there is but one argument of real force: the immediate affirmation of consciousness in the moment of deliberate action.
Action | Argument | Consciousness | Evidence | Force |
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
Men profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence in their opinions and lives that they have heard it. It would not leave them narrow-minded and bigoted.
Isaac Asimov, born Isaak Yudovich Ozimov
I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.
Evidence | Observation | Will |
There can be no doubt but that everything in the world, by the beauty of its order, and the evidence of a determinate and beneficial purpose which pervades its, testifies that some supreme efficient Power must have pre-existed, by which the whole was ordained for a specific end.
Beauty | Doubt | Evidence | Order | Power | Purpose | Purpose | World | Beauty |
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
The thoughts we think of and the things we make are under our control, that we can manipulate them at will. The evidence seems to suggest the contrary. The information we generate has a life of its own, and its existence is sometimes symbiotic, sometimes parasitic, relative to ours.... It doesn’t seem that memes are any more dependent on their environment than we are.
Control | Evidence | Existence | Life | Life | Will | Think |
There is overwhelming evidence that the higher the level of self-esteem, the more likely one will be to treat others with respect, kindness, and generosity.
Esteem | Evidence | Generosity | Kindness | Respect | Self | Self-esteem | Will |
Our dissatisfaction with any other solution is the blazing evidence of immortality.
Evidence | Immortality |
The blazing evidence of immortality is our dissatisfaction with any other solution.
Evidence | Immortality |
We should never allow ourselves to be persuaded excepting by the evidence of our Reason, of our Reason and not our imagination nor of our senses.
Evidence | Imagination | Reason |
Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir
The time that one gains cannot be accumulated in a storehouse; it is contradictory to want to save up existence, which, the fact is, exists only by being spent and there is a good case for showing that airplanes, machines, the telephone, and the radio do not make men of today happier than those of former times.
The highest and most profitable learning is the knowledge of ourselves. To have a low opinion of our own merits, and to think highly of others, is an evidence of wisdom. All men are frail, but thou shouldst reckon none so frail as thyself.
Evidence | Knowledge | Learning | Men | Opinion | Wisdom | Think |
Differences of opinion give me but little concern; but it a real pleasure to be brought into communication with anyone who is in earnest, and who really looks to God's will as his standard of right and wrong, and judges of actions according to their greater or lesser conformity.
Conformity | God | Little | Looks | Opinion | Pleasure | Right | Will | Wrong |
Ted Turner, fully Robert Edward "Ted" Turner III
You talk about Marshall McLuhan’s idea of TV connecting us all in one “global village.” I believe mass communication has helped make us all closer today than we’ve ever been. And I believe that the gathering and dissemination of worthwhile information to all the peoples of the world is the most important tool we have for achieving the end of realizing that our planet is the address for paradise.
There is hardly a moment that goes by that we are not bombarded with all manner of communication from the worlds beyond flesh.