This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Randy Pausch, fully Randolph Frederick "Randy" Pausch
A professor’s job is to teach students how to see their minds growing the same way they can see their muscles grow when they look in a mirror… Getting people to welcome feedback was the hardest thing I ever had to do as an educator… too much stroking, too little real feedback.
Nikhilananda, fully Swami Nikhilananda, born Dinesh Chandra Das Gupta NULL
There is no such thing as a single scheme of salvation. Salvation is not the monopoly of any church. All paths lead to the hilltop of one and the same God-consciousness. The different religions are suited to the different aspirants in their various stages of progress.
Church | Consciousness | God | Progress | Salvation |
Boris Pasternak, fully Boris Leonidovich Pasternak
It’s a good thing when a man is different from your image of him. It shows he isn’t a type. If her were, it would be the end of him as a man. But if you can’t place him in a category, it means that at least a part of him is what a human being ought to be. He has risen above himself, he has a grain of immortality.
Good | Immortality | Man | Means |
New York Times Editorial on the Holocaust NULL
It was and it is to do all that can be done to eradicate an evil thing out of our civilization… a thing so incredibly wicked that it would not have been believable of modern man if it had not actually occurred. This evil, this wickedness began with intolerance and hate in a few men’s hearts. It spread until it almost wrecked the world. Now the obligation is to remember, not in hate, not in the spirit of revenge, but so that this spirit cannot ever flourish again so long as man remains on earth. And to this end, let us begin, each of us, by looking into our own hearts.
Civilization | Earth | Evil | Hate | Intolerance | Man | Men | Obligation | Revenge | Spirit | Wickedness | World |
O. Hobart Mowrer, fully Orval Hobart Mowrer
Is there no such thing as moral responsibility and social accountability at all? Is every mean or vicious thing that you or I as ordinary individuals do, not sin, but rather as expression of “illness”? Who would seriously hold that a society could long endure which consistently subscribed to this flaccid doctrine?
Doctrine | Responsibility | Sin | Society | Society |
Poison is in everything, and no thing is without poison. The dosage makes it either a poison or a remedy.
People who know they will die live very carefully. Not careful as in fearful; careful as in full of care. Every word, every act, every relationship holds the possibility of giving birth to something filled with great care. And that thing need not be showy or dramatic, for the most potent spiritual acts are often acts of breathtaking simplicity: a simple prayer, a sip of wine and a piece of bread, a single breath in meditation, a sprinkling of water on the forehead, an exchange of rings, a kind word, a hand on the cheek, a blessing.
Birth | Care | Giving | Meditation | Need | People | Prayer | Relationship | Simplicity | Will |
John Naber, fully John Phillips Naber
It’s the tough decisions that really test our character, for character is revealed when the price of doing the right thing is more than we want to pay.
Those words, “temperate and moderate,” are words either of political cowardice, or of cunning, or seduction. A thing moderately good, if not so good as it ought to be. Moderation in temper is always a virtue, but moderation in principle is a species of vice.
Cowardice | Cunning | Good | Moderation | Temper | Virtue | Virtue | Words | Moderation |
One of the greatest satisfactions one can ever have, comes from the knowledge that he can do some one thing superlatively well.
Gilda Radner, fully Gilda Susan Radner
The goal is to live a full, productive life even with all that ambiguity. No matter what happens, whether the cancer never flares up again or whether you die, the important thing is that the days that you have had you will have lived.