This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
W. Winwood Reade, fully William Winwood Reade
A religion so cheerless, a philosophy so sorrowful, could never have succeeded with the masses of mankind if presented only as a system of metaphysics. Buddhism owed its success to its catholic spirit and its beautiful morality.
Evidence | Learning | Mathematics | Talking |
The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.
Age | Art | Beauty | Consciousness | Culture | Elegance | Evidence | Excitement | Failure | Family | Good | Hate | Health | Life | Life | Loneliness | Marriage | Past | People | Politics | Recreation | Reward | Science | Self | Talking | Time | Work | World | Failure | Loss | Art | Beauty |
W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky
When it began, Christianity was regarded as a system entirely beyond the range and scope of human reason; it was impious to question; it was impious to examine; it was impious to discriminate. On the other hand, it was visibly instinct with the supernatural. Miracles of every order and degree of magnitude were flashing forth incessantly from all its parts.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
But every little difference may become a big one if it is insisted on.
Absurd | Attention | Books | Earth | Evidence | Humanity | Important | Means | Oppression | Order | Paradise | Philosophy | Practice | Proletariat | Question | Reflection | Religion | Society | Struggle | Tomorrow | Unity | Will | Society | Old | Propaganda |
Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
One false idea is that anyone can hurt you. Events can ruin your reputation, take your money, mistreat you, revenge itself upon you, deceive, betray, abandon you, but cannot hurt you.
Because the regime is captive to its own lies, it must falsify everything. It falsifies the past. It falsifies the present, and it falsifies the future. It falsifies statistics. It pretends not to possess an omnipotent and unprincipled police apparatus. It pretends to respect human rights. It pretends to prosecute no one. It pretends to fear nothing. It pretends to pretend nothing.
V. S. Pritchett, fully Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett
The present has its élan because it is always on the edge of the unknown and one misunderstands the past unless one remembers that this unknown was once part of its nature.
Evidence | Superstition |
Vauvenargues, Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues NULL
Our actions are neither so good nor so vicious that our wills.
Evidence |
There is a new profession of trail blazers, those who find delight in the task of establishing useful trails through the enormous mass of the common record.
Science has sometimes been said to be opposed to faith, and inconsistent with it. But all science, in fact, rests on a basis of faith, for it assumes the permanence and uniformity of natural laws - a thing which can never be demonstrated.
Right actions for the future are the best apologies for wrong ones in the past - the best evidence of regret for them that we can offer, or the world receive.
Bitterness | Evidence | Little | Reason | Wit |
Sinful and forbidden pleasures are like poisoned bread; they may satisfy appetite for the moment, but there is death in them at the end.
Correctness | Evidence | Truth | Will |
Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
You take one bomber and deploy him in Baghdad, and another is manufactured in Riyadh the next day. It’s exactly like when you take the toy off the shelf at Wal-Mart and another is made in Shen Zhen the next day.
Thorstein Veblen, fully Thorstein Bunde Veblen, born Torsten Bunde Veblen
These various habits of thought, or habitual expressions of life, are all phases of the single life sequence of the individual; therefore a habit formed in response to a given stimulus will necessarily affect the character of the response made to other stimuli. A modification of human nature at any one point is a modification of human nature as a whole.
If there is no solution to the problem then don’t waste time worrying about it. If there is a solution to the problem then don’t waste time worrying about it.
Evidence |