This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
A little gleam of time between two eternities; no second chance to us forever more.
Duke Ellington, fully Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington
A problem is a chance for you to do your best.
Chance |
Are we no greater than the noise we make along one blind atomic pilgrimage whereon by crass chance billeted we go because our brains and bones and cartilage will have it so?
Eugène Ionesco, born Eugen Ionescu
Childhood is the world of miracle and wonder; as if creation rose, bathed in the light, out of the darkness, utterly new and fresh and astonishing. The end of childhood is when things cease to astonish us.
Since there is nothing so well worth having as friends, never lose a chance to make them.
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
I wish to use my last hours of ease and strength in telling the strange story of my experience. I have never fully unbosomed myself to any human being; I have never been encouraged to trust much in the sympathy of my fellow-men. But we have all a chance of meeting with some pity, some tenderness, some charity, when we are dead: it is the living only who cannot be forgiven — the living only from whom men's indulgence and reverence are held off, like the rain by the hard east wind. While the heart beats, bruise it — it is your only opportunity; while the eye can still turn towards you with moist, timid entreaty, freeze it with an icy unanswering gaze; while the ear, that delicate messenger to the inmost sanctuary of the soul, can still take in the tones of kindness, put it off with hard civility, or sneering compliment, or envious affectation of indifference; while the creative brain can still throb with the sense of injustice, with the yearning for brotherly recognition — make haste — oppress it with your ill-considered judgements, your trivial comparisons, your careless misrepresentations.
Affectation | Chance | Haste | Heart | Indulgence | Reverence | Sense | Story | Strength | Sympathy | Trust |
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Many people wait throughout their whole lives for the chance to be good in their own fashion.
Nicholas Black Elk, formally Heȟáka Sápa
Everything the Power of the World does is done in a circle. The sky is round, and I have heard that the earth is round like a ball, and so are all the stars. The wind, in its greatest power whirls. Birds make their nest in circles, for theirs is the same religion as ours. The sun comes forth and goes down again in a circle. The moon does the same and both are round. Even the seasons form a great circle in their changing, and always come back again to where they were. The life of a man is a circle from childhood to childhood, and so it is in everything where power moves. Our tepees were round like the nests of birds, and these were always set in a circle, the nation's hoop.
Childhood | Earth | Life | Life | Man | Power | Religion | World |
Time is not measured by the years that you live but by the deeds that you do and the joy that you give. And each day as it comes brings a chance to each one to love to the fullest, leaving nothing undone that would brighten the life or lighten the load Of some weary traveler lost on Life's Road. So what does it matter how long we may live if as long as we live we unselfishly give.
Chance | Day | Deeds | Joy | Life | Life | Love | Nothing | Deeds |
Our thesis is that quantum mechanics leaves our body, our brain, at any moment in a state with numerous (because of its complexity we might say innumerable) possible futures, each with a predetermined probability. Freedom involves two components: chance (existence of a genuine set of alternatives) and choice. Quantum mechanics provides the chance, and we shall argue that only the mind can make the choice by selecting (not energetically enforcing) among the possible future courses.
The existence of man, indeed of the entire universe, has long been regarded as a miracle, incomprehensible without assuming the existence of a Creator who is omnipotent and omniscient. British astronomer Fred Hoyle is noted for the statement that believing the first cell (in the universe) originated by mere chance is like believing a tornado ripping through a junkyard full of airplane parts could produce a Boeing 747. God created the universe out of nothing in an act which also brought time into existence. Recent discoveries, such as observations supporting the big Bang and similar astronomical phenomena, are wholly compatible with this view.
Chance | Existence | God | Nothing | Time | Universe | God |
The function of education, then, is to help you from childhood not to imitate anybody, but to be yourself all the time. And this is a most difficult thing to do: whether you are ugly or beautiful, whether you are envious or jealous, always to be what you are, but understand it. To be yourself is very difficult, because you think that what you are is ignoble, and that if you could only change what you are into something noble it would be marvellous; but that never happens.
Change | Childhood | Ugly | Think | Understand |
Chance alone is at the source of every innovaton, of all creation in the biosphere. Pure chance, only chance, absolute but blind liberty is at the root of the prodigious edifice that is evolution... It today is the sole conceivable hypothesis, the only one that squares with observed and tested fact. Stating life began by the chance collision of particles of nucleic acid in the 'prebiotic soup.'
To pursue more than what you need becomes exploitation. You need food, clothes, and shelter, but when they become the means of personal aggrandizement, then exploitation begins. To use another to gain power and position, authority and domination, is exploitation. Exploitation is the problem and not who exploits. The capitalist, the ruler, the zamindar are like you; if you had the chance you would become like them. You would lose your generosity, your love, the moment you climb the ladder of success, of gain.
Jacob Burckhardt, fully Carl Jacob (or Jakob) Christoph Burckhardt
Every successful wickedness is, to say the least, a scandal... The only lesson to be derived from the successful misdeeds of the strong is to hold life here and now in no higher esteem than it deserves.
Esteem | Lesson | Life | Life | Wickedness |