This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
True human progress is based less on the inventive mind than on the conscience.
Conscience | Mind | Progress | Wisdom |
In the first place, the human mind, no matter how highly trained, is not capable of grasping the Universe. We are like a little child entering a huge library. The walls are covered to the ceiling with books in many tongues. The little child knows that someone must have written these books. It does not know who or how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child notes a definite plan in the arrangement of the books - a mysterious order which it does not comprehend, but only dimly suspects. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the human mind to God. And because I believe this, I am not an atheist.
Books | God | Little | Mind | Order | Plan | Universe | Wisdom | Child | Understand |
George Eliot, pen name of Mary Ann or Marian Evans
Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another.
There is nothing so elastic as the human mind. Like imprisoned steam, the more it is pressed the more it rises to resist the pressure. The more we are obliged to do the more we are able to accomplish.
Physical concepts are free creations of the human mind, and are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external world. In our endeavor to understand reality we are somewhat like a man trying to understand the mechanism of a closed watch. He sees the face and the moving hands, even hears its ticking, but he has no way of opening the case. If he is ingenious he may form some picture of a mechanism which could be responsible for all the things he observes, but he may never be quite sure his picture is the only one which could explain his observations. He will never be able to compare his picture with the real mechanism and he cannot even imagine the possibility or the meaning of such a comparison. But he certainly believes that, as his knowledge increases, his picture of reality will become simpler and simpler and will explain a wider and wider range of his sensuous impressions. He may also believe in the existence of the ideal limit of knowledge and that it is approached by the human mind. He may call this ideal limit the objective truth.
Existence | Knowledge | Man | Meaning | Mind | Reality | Will | Wisdom | World | Understand |
Most mistakes in philosophy and logic occur because the human mind is apt to take the symbol for the reality.
Logic | Mind | Philosophy | Reality | Wisdom |
All human situations have their inconveniences. We feel those of the present but neither see nor feel those of the future; and hence we often make troublesome changes without amendment, and frequently for the worse.
Retribution is one of the grand principles in the divine administration of human affairs; a requital is imperceptible only to the willfully unobservant. There is everywhere the working of the everlasting law of requital; man always gets as he gives.
Administration | Law | Man | Principles | Wisdom |
Anatole France, pen name of Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault
It is part of human nature to think wise things and do ridiculous ones.
Human nature | Nature | Wisdom | Wise | Think |
Anatole France, pen name of Jacques Anatole Francois Thibault
It is human nature to think wisely and act foolishly.
Human nature | Nature | Wisdom | Think |