This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
In politeness, as in many other things connected with the formation of character, people in general begin outside, when they should begin inside; instead of beginning with the heart, and trusting that to form the manners, they begin with the manners, and trust the heart to chance influences.
Martin Fischer, fully John Martin Fischer
The essence of our effort to see that every child has a chance must be to assure each an equal opportunity, not to become equal, but to become different-to realize whatever unique potential of body, mind and spirit he or she possesses.
It is true that we cannot make a genius. We can only give to teach child the chance to fulfil his potential possibilities.
Mary Kay Ash, fully Mary Kathlyn Wagner Ash
Our company was begun with only one objective and that is to give women the chance to succeed; an opportunity that simply did not exist in the 60s.
Chance | Opportunity |
Mary Shelley, née Mary Wollstonecraft Godwin
If our impulses were confined to hunger, thirst, and desire, we might be nearly free; but now we are moved by every wind that blows and a chance word or scene that that word may convey to us.
Chance |
Mary Kay Ash, fully Mary Kathlyn Wagner Ash
Faith is wanting something with all your heart. Faith is taking a chance on something before you are sure how everything will work out. Almost anything can be accomplished by the person who really wants to succeed. But no woman will ever believe she can move a mountain unless she really wants that mountain to move. Apply this definition of faith to your dreams.
For every five well-adjusted and smoothly functioning Americans, there are two who never had the chance to discover themselves. It may well be because they have never been alone with themselves.
Chance |
Max DePree, alternatively De Pree or Depree
We are alone, absolutely alone on this chance planet; and amid all the forms of life that surround us, not one, excepting the dog has made an alliance with us.
Maximilien Robespierre, fully Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre
Our revolution has made me feel the full force of the axiom that history is fiction and I am convinced that chance and intrigue have produced more heroes than genius and virtue.
The world of science lives fairly comfortably with paradox. We know that light is a wave, and also that light is a particle. The discoveries made in the infinitely small world of particle physics indicate randomness and chance, and I do not find it any more difficult to live with the paradox of a universe of randomness and chance and a universe of pattern and purpose than I do with light as a wave and light as a particle. Living with contradiction is nothing new to the human being.
Chance | Contradiction | Light | Nothing | Paradox | Purpose | Purpose | Science | Universe | World |
Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe, born Ludwig Mies
If teaching has any purpose, it is to implant true insight and responsibility. Education must lead us from irresponsible opinion to true responsible judgement. It must lead us from chance and arbitrariness to rational clarity and intellectual order.
Only where children gather is there any real chance of fun.
Mitch Albom, fully Mitchell David "Mitch" Albom
Have you ever lost someone you love and wanted one more conversation, one more chance to make up for the time when you thought they would be here forever? If so, then you know you can go your whole life collecting days, and none will outweigh the one you wish you had back.
Chance | Life | Life | Love | Thought | Time | Will | Thought |
Chance and chance alone has a message for us. Everything that occurs out of necessity, everything expected, repeated day in and day out, is mute. Only chance can speak to us.
Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I
All great events hang by a hair. The man of ability takes advantage of everything and neglects nothing that can give him a chance of success; whilst the less able man sometimes loses everything by neglecting a single one of those chances.
Neil Gaiman, fully Neil Richard Gaiman
No man, proclaimed Donne, is an island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived and then by some means or other, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as any other tale, as unique as any other life. Lives are snowflakes- forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'll mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection) but still unique.
Neil Gaiman, fully Neil Richard Gaiman
Lives are snowflakes - unique in detail, forming patterns we have seen before, but as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'd mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection.)