This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities. But it cannot achieve its end. Its doctrines carry with them the stamp of the times in which they originated, the ignorant childhood days of the human race. Its consolations deserve no trust. Experience teaches us that the world is not a nursery. The ethical commands, to which religion seeks to lend its weight, require some other foundations instead, for human society cannot do without them, and it is dangerous to link up obedience to them with religious belief. If one attempts to assign to religion its place in man’s evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition, as a parallel to the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity.
Belief | Childhood | Control | Evolution | Experience | Human race | Individual | Man | Means | Obedience | Race | Religion | Society | Trust | Wisdom | World | Society |
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
This age of childhood, in which the sense of shame is unknown, seems a paradise when we look back upon it alter, and paradise itself is nothing but the mass-phantasy of the childhood of the individual. This is why in paradise men are naked and unashamed, until the moment arrives when shame and fear awaken; expulsion follows, and sexual life and cultural development begin.
Age | Childhood | Fear | Individual | Life | Life | Men | Nothing | Paradise | Sense | Shame | Wisdom |
S. I. Hayakawa, fully Samuel Ichiye Hayakawa
It is the individual who knows how little he knows about himself who stands a chance of finding something about himself before he dies.
Chance | Individual | Little | Wisdom |
Thomas Haliburton, fully Thomas Chandler Haliburton, pseudonym "Sam Slick"
Give me a chance, says Stupid, and I will show you. Ten to one he has had his chance already, and neglected it.
It is interesting to notice how some minds seem almost to create themselves, springing up under every disadvantage, and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles. Nature seems to delight in disappointing the assiduities of art, with which it would rear dullness to maturity; and to glory in the vigor and luxuriance of her chance productions. She scatters the seeds of genius to the winds, and though some may perish among the stony places of the world, and some may be choked by the thorns and brambles of early adversity, yet others will now and then strike root even in the clefts of the rock, struggle bravely up into sunshine, and spread over their sterile birthplace all the beauties of vegetation.
Chance | Genius | Glory | Nature | Struggle | Will | Wisdom |
The medical profession tells us that there are four conditions which must be met if we are to have any chance of leading a happy life: physical security, social recognition, adventure, emotional security. In today's highly technical and scientific life, these four considerations become increasingly important, but we should add one vital ingredient: love. Love of our fellow man, love for our work, and the conviction that this love insures the future for all of us.
Adventure | Chance | Future | Happy | Important | Life | Life | Love | Man | Security | Wisdom | Work |
In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover, and wickedness insensibly open, cultivate and improve. Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories.
Corruption | Cunning | Degeneracy | Earth | Government | People | Safe | Weakness | Wickedness | Will | Wisdom | Government |
Charles F. Kettering, fully Charles Franklin Kettering
You will never stub your toe standing still. The faster you go, the more chance there is of stubbing your toe, but the more chance you have of getting somewhere.
Time and chance reveal all secrets.
Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon
I seek the Presidency not because it offers me a change to be somebody but because it offers a chance to do something.
Demean thyself more warily in thy study than in the street. If thy public actions have a hundred witnesses, thy private have a thousand. The multitude looks but upon thy actions; thy conscience looks into them: the multitude may chance to excuse thee, if not acquire thee; thy conscience will accuse thee, if not condemn thee.
Chance | Conscience | Looks | Public | Study | Will | Wisdom |