This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
I’ve come down from the sky like some damned ghost, delayed too long…To the abandoned fields the trees returned and grew. They stand and grow. Time comes to them, time goes, the trees stand; the only place they go is where they are. Those wholly patient ones… They do no wrong, and they are beautiful. What more Could we have thought to ask?... I stand and wait for light to open the dark night. I stand and wait for prayer to come and find me here.
Cause | Disease | Individual | Motives | Order | People | Power | Success | Will | World |
What could be more superstitious than the idea that money brings forth food?
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
No opera plot can be sensible, for people do not sing when they are feeling sensible.
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
The commonest ivory tower is that of the average man, the state of passivity towards experience.
W. H. Auden, fully Wystan Hugh Auden
In all technologically "advanced" countries, fashion has replaced tradition, so that involuntary membership in a society can no longer provide a feeling of community.
W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
In my own country for nearly a century I have been nothing but a nigger.
Human nature | Mercy | Nature | Temptation | Will | Temptation |
W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
The theory of democratic government is not that the will of the people is always right, but rather that normal human beings of average intelligence will, if given a chance, learn the right and best course by bitter experience.
Change | Children | Church | Courage | Events | Men | Parents | Power | Public | Religion | Revolution | Time | Will | World | Learn |
W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer
Education is essentially the direction of mental energy. Children have abundant energy looking for an outlet. If adult society provides a satisfactory outlet, hobbies develop into professions and adults find life in their work. If adult society fails in providing an outlet, a double disaster occurs. The child has no energy or enthusiasm for work; and the child's energies are left to find an outlet at random. Society has then abdicated its duty to educate.
W. Winwood Reade, fully William Winwood Reade
We live between two worlds; we soar in the atmosphere; we creep upon the soil; we have the aspirations of creators and the propensities of quadrupeds. There can be but one explanation of this fact. We are passing from the animal into a higher form, and the drama of this planet is in its second act.
W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer
My concern has always been to promote joy in mathematics for all-ability pupils, and the driving force has been a feeling that must be shared by anyone who has derived great pleasure from any subject - intense regret that the subject in question is so often presented in a way that produces dislike, worry and a sense of failure.
W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky
When the Church obtained the direction of the civil power, she soon modified or abandoned the tolerant maxims she had formerly inculcated; and, in the course of a few years, restrictive laws were enacted, both against the Jews and against the heretics.
W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer
It is widely recognized that the weakest students can be very unhappy if their special needs are not met. It is often not recognized that the ablest too can suffer acutely, if they are captive in a lockstep class and have to work, at what seems to them a snail's pace, through material they could have disposed of quickly when they were several years younger. The root of the trouble lies in the concept that education is something done to a pupil by a teacher. This is entirely untrue, at any rate for mathematics. Young mathematicians are hungry for knowledge and nothing delights them more than to be given the opportunity to read ahead on their own. The strongest students will then reach topics far beyond anything that a school curriculum could possibly contain or a school teacher be expected to expound. Even those, who are slightly above the level the curriculum envisages, will benefit from the relief of boredom and the extra knowledge acquired.
Music | People | Revolution |
W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer
Mathematicians, it is often said, tend to be musical. It is less well known that problems arising from music have played an important role in the discovery of fundamental mathematical ideas. Questions about the vibrations of a piano string led to a fierce controversy that forced mathematicians to clarify their ideas about area, continuity, and the convergence of series.
Education | Knowledge | Nothing | Opportunity | Will | Trouble | Teacher |
W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer
The effectiveness of education depends on adaptability to individual differences. Rigid syllabuses and lock-step teaching ignore the real forces in the mind that make for development and learning and the resentment of the gifted when drill continues after a skill has been learned is very often evident. The problem is how to get practice of necessary skills without causing such resentment, a problem often neglected by some modern mathematics' reformers.
Rest |
Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL
All the gifts which fortune bestows she can easily take away; but education, when combined with intelligence, never fails, but abides steadily on to the very end of life.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.
Abuse | Democracy | Power | Tyranny | Understand |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
The Poor Peasants’ Committees are necessary to fight the kulaks, the rich, the exploiters, who shackle the working peasants. But between the kulaks, who are a small minority, and the poor or semi-proletarians there is the section of the middle peasants. The Soviet government has never declared or conducted any struggle against them. Any steps or measures to the contrary must be condemned most vigorously and stopped. The socialist government must pursue a policy of agreement with the middle peasants.
Meaning | Power | Revolution |
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
We have invited and continue to invite the Left Socialist-Revolutionaries to share power with us.
Regard |