This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
All experience shows that even smaller technological changes than those now in the cards profoundly transform political and social relationships. Experience also shows that those transformations are not a priori predictable and that most contemporary “first guesses” concerning them are wrong. For all these reasons, one should take neither present difficulties nor presently proposed reforms too seriously... To ask in advance for a complete recipe would be unreasonable. We can specify only the human qualities required: patience, flexibility, intelligence.
Character | Experience | Flexibility | Intelligence | Patience | Present | Qualities | Wrong |
Baron de Montesquieu, fully Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
Through a fatality inseparable from human nature, moderation in great men is very rare: and as it is always much easier to push on force in the direction in which it moves than to stop its movement, so in the superior class of the people, it is less difficult, perhaps, to find men extremely virtuous, than extremely prudent.
Character | Force | Human nature | Men | Moderation | Nature | People | Moderation |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
No young man is educated if he comes out of college with the cheap and false values of the common man.
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
In human history a moral victory is always a disaster, for it debauches and degrades both the victor and the vanquished.
No discipline is immune to excess or lack of wisdom. All programs for human betterment can be undermined by ignorance, imcompetence, or moral perversity.
Character | Discipline | Excess | Ignorance | Wisdom |
Exceptional abilities develop most fully in cultures that prize them... no aspect of human nature is immune to social influence.
Character | Human nature | Influence | Nature |
Ashley Montagu, fully Montague Francis Ashley Montagu, born Israel Ehrenberg
Human beings are not born with human nature - they develop it.
Character | Human nature | Nature |
Cynics build no bridges; they make no discoveries; no gaps are spanned by them. Cynics may pride themselves in being realistic in their approach, but progress and the onward march of Christian civilization demand an inspiration and motivation that cynicism never affords. If we want progress we must take the forward look.
Character | Civilization | Cynicism | Inspiration | Pride | Progress |
Molière, pen name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin NULL
The defects of human nature afford us opportunities of exercising our philosophy, the best employment of our virtues. If all men were righteous, all hearts true and frank and loyal, what use would our virtues be?
Character | Defects | Human nature | Men | Nature | Philosophy |
The time-man in us does not know now. He is always preparing something in the future, or busy with what happened in the past... All decisions that belong to the life in time, to success, to business, comfort, are about ‘tomorrow’. All decisions about the right thing to do, about how to act, are about tomorrow. It is only what is done in now that counts, and this is a decision always about oneself and with oneself, even though its effect may touch other people’s lives ‘tomorrow’. Now is spiritual... Spiritual values have nothing to do with time.
Business | Character | Comfort | Decision | Future | Life | Life | Man | Nothing | Past | People | Right | Success | Time | Tomorrow |
So the thing to do when working on a motorcycle, as in any other task, is to cultivate the peace of mind which does not separate one’s self from one’s surroundings. When that is done successfully, then everything else follows naturally. Peace of mind produces right values, right values produce right thoughts. Right thoughts produce right actions and right actions produce work which will be a material reflection for others to see of the serenity at the center of it all.
Character | Mind | Peace | Reflection | Right | Self | Serenity | Will | Work |
Programmes of a political nature are important and products of social quality that can be effective only if the underlying structure of social values is right. The social values are right only if the individual values are right. The place to improve the world is first in one’s own heart and head and hands, and then work outside from there.
Character | Heart | Important | Individual | Nature | Right | Work | World |
Mankind never loses any good thing, physical, intellectual, or moral, till it finds a better, and then the loss is a gain. No steps backward, is the rule of human history. What is gained by one man is invested in all men, and is a permanent investment for all time.
Better | Character | Good | History | Man | Mankind | Men | Rule | Time | Loss |