This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Edward R. Murrow, born Egbert Roscoe Murrow
Our major obligation is not to mistake slogans for solutions.
Mistake | Obligation |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
The application of psychoanalysis to sociology must definitely guard against the mistake of wanting to give psychoanalytic answers where economic, technical, or political facts provide the real and sufficient explanation of sociological questions. On the other hand, the psychoanalyst must emphasize that the subject of sociology, society, in reality consists of individuals, and that it is these human beings, rather than abstract society as such, whose actions, thoughts, and feelings are the object of sociological research.
Abstract | Feelings | Mistake | Object | Psychoanalysis | Reality | Society | Society |
A doctrine is something that pins you down to a given mode of conduct and dozens of situations which you cannot foresee, which is a great mistake in principle.
George Gurdjieff, fully George Ivanovich Gurdjieff
It is the greatest mistake to think that man is always one and the same. A man is never the same for long. He is continually changing. He seldom remains the same even for half an hour.
Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke
It is a very easy thing to devise good laws; the difficulty is to make them effective. The great mistake is that of looking upon men as virtuous, or thinking that they can be made so by laws; and consequently the greatest art of a politician is to render vices serviceable to the cause of virtue.
Art | Cause | Difficulty | Good | Men | Mistake | Thinking | Art |
People who are in despair always make a mistake when they hang themselves; the next day often brings the unknown.
Jean-Pierre Camus de Pontcarré
The great imperfection of most of us proceeds from want of reflection, but, on the other hand, there are many who think overmuch, who fall into the mistake of too close self-inspection, and who are perpetually fretting over their failings and weaknesses.
Imperfection | Mistake | Think |
The only freedom that is of enduring importance is the freedom of intelligence, that is to say, freedom of observation and of judgment, exercised in behalf of purposes that are intrinsically worth while. The commonest mistake made about freedom is, I think, to identify it with freedom of movement, or, with the external or physical side of activity.
Freedom | Mistake | Observation | Worth |
The greatest mistake we make is living in constant fear that we will make one.
Lester Pearson, fully Lester Bowles "Mike" Pearson
It would be especially tragic if the people who most cherish ideals of peace, who are most anxious for political cooperation on a wider than national scale, made the mistake of underestimating the pace of economic change in our modern world.
Change | Cooperation | Ideals | Mistake | People |
Louis L'Amour, fully Louis Dearborn L'Amour
A mistake constantly made by those who should know better is to judge people of the past by our standards rather than their own. The only way men or women can be judged is against the canvas of their own time.