This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Politics has been called the art of the possible, and it actually is a realm akin to art insofar as, like art, it occupies a creatively mediating position between spirit and life, the idea and reality." - Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
"The best teachers are forceful and demanding. They teach up, not down. They convince us that we are much better and brighter than we thought. " - Thomas Cronin, fully Thomas Edward Cronin
"Uncritical semantics is the myth of a museum in which the exhibits are meanings and the words are labels. To switch languages is to change the labels." - Willard Quine, fully Willard Van Orman Quine
"Dependency is the basic survival mechanism of the human organism. When the adult gives up hope in his ability to cope and sees himself incapable of either fleeing or fighting, he is "reduced" to a state of depression. This very reduction with its parallel to the helplessness of infancy becomes . . . a plea for a solution to the problem of survival via dependency. The very stripping of one's defenses becomes a form of defensive maneuver." - Willard Gaylen
"We are not as free and self-determining as we would like to believe, and we are not as independent as we pretend to be. We must face the fact that we are not as rational as we would like to think we are. The rational roots of our conduct are pathetically overvalued. We must appreciate the power of emotions over human behavior in order to effectively institute changes in that behavior. Despite a preference in the culture of autonomy for rational persuasion and a bias against manipulation and coercion, persuasion rarely works." - Willard Gaylen
"We must live in groups; other people are like nutrients for us, and are absolutely essential for our survival." - Willard Gaylen
"We avoid the gravest difficulties when, giving up the attempt to frame hypotheses concerning the constitution of matter, we pursue statistical inquiries as a branch of rational mechanics." - Willard Gibbs, fully Josiah Willard Gibbs
"The concepts of classical physics are just a refinement of the concepts of daily life and are an essential part of the language which forms the basis of all natural science. Our actual situation in science is such that we do use the classical concepts for the description of the experiments, and it was the problem of quantum theory to find theoretical interpretation of the experiments on this basis. There is no use in discussing what could be done if we were other beings than we are. At this point we have to realize, as von Weizsacker has put it, that `Nature is earlier than man, but man is earlier than natural science.’" - Werner Heisenberg, fully Werner Karl Heisenberg
"The fact that political ideologies are tangible, active realities does not prove their necessity. The bubonic plague was an extremely potent social reality. But nobody would have argued that, because it existed, it was necessary and nothing should be done about it." - Wilhelm Reich
"Unless we proceed cautiously, there might well arise a few generations of mystics who conceive of the orgone metaphysically, divorced from non-living nature and who do not comprehend it from the standpoint of natural science. And it seems to me that we have more than enough mysticism as it is." - Wilhelm Reich
"A very rich person should leave his kids enough to do anything but not enough to do nothing." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"An investor cannot obtain superior profits from stocks, by simply committing to a specific investment category or style." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"For some reason, people take their cues from price action rather than from values. What doesn’t work is when you start doing things that you don't understand or because they worked last week for somebody else. The dumbest reason in the world to buy a stock is because it's going up." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"It’s class warfare; my class is winning, but they shouldn’t be." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"It's class warfare, my class is winning, but they shouldn't be." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"Now it's $200 billion. If we don't change the course, the rest of the world could own $15 trillion of us. That's pretty substantial. That's equal to the value of all American stock." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"Over that time we've been happy with that investment but I've got to tell you I'm happier today. It's a dream deal." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"The attitude of our managers vividly contrasts with that of the young man who married a tycoon's only child, a decidedly homely and dull lass. Relieved, the father called in his new son- in-law after the wedding and began to discuss the future: Son, you're the boy I always wanted and never had. Here's a stock certificate for 50% of the company. You're my equal partner from now on.' Thanks, dad.' Now, what would you like to run? How about sales?' I'm afraid I couldn't sell water to a man crawling in the Sahara.' Well then, how about heading human relations?' I really don't care for people.' No problem, we have lots of other spots in the business. What would you like to do?' Actually, nothing appeals to me. Why don't you just buy me out?" - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"The critical investment factor is determining the intrinsic value of a business and paying a fair or bargain price." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"The major asset in this category is gold, currently a huge favorite of investors who fear almost all other assets, especially paper money (of whose value, as noted, they are right to be fearful). Gold, however, has two significant shortcomings, being neither of much use nor procreative. True, gold has some industrial and decorative utility, but the demand for these purposes is both limited and incapable of soaking up new production. Meanwhile, if you own one ounce of gold for an eternity, you will still own one ounce at its end." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"With enough insider information and a million dollars, you can go broke in a year." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"An infinity of forests lies dormant within the dreams of one Acorn." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
"There’s nothing under the ground that’s worth more than the little layer of topsoil sitting on top of it." - Wendell Berry
"Until we understand what the land is, we are at odds with everything we touch. And to come to that understanding it is necessary, even now, to leave the regions of our conquest - the cleared fields, the towns and cities, the highways - and re-enter the woods. For only there can a man encounter the silence and the darkness of his own absence. Only in this silence and darkness can he recover the sense of the world's longevity, of its ability to thrive without him, of his inferiority to it and his dependence on it. Perhaps then, having heard that silence and seen that darkness, he will grow humble before the place and begin to take it in - to learn from it what it is. As its sounds come into his hearing, and its lights and colors come into his vision, and its odors come into his nostrils, then he may come into its presence as he never has before, and he will arrive in his place and will want to remain. His life will grow out of the ground like the other lives of the place, and take its place among them. He will be with them - neither ignorant of them, nor indifferent to them, nor against them - and so at last he will grow to be native-born. That is, he must reenter the silence and the darkness, and be born again." - Wendell Berry
"We have made it our overriding ambition to escape work, and as a consequence have debased work until it is only fit to escape from. We have debased the products of work and have been, in turn, debased by them." - Wendell Berry
"Teamwork should be based on knowledge, design, redesign and redesign. Constant improvement is everyone's responsibility. Most causes of low quality and productivity are system design problems." - W. Edwards Deming, fully William Edwards Deming
"Actually she was at least in her late twenties (I never established her exact age for even her passport lied) and had mislaid her virginity under circumstances that changed with her reminiscent moods." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
"But being a religious person, I would like to question the validity of everything for myself. That is the essence of religion, which is humility. Not to accept anything unless you understand the meaning there of, personally in your life. If you accept without understanding, you will be imposing upon the mind. And then you are neither true to the mind, nor true to the meaning. The essence of religion, which is humility, lies in uncovering the meaning of life, uncovering the meaning of every moment, learning the meaning for ourselves." - Vimala Thakar
"The essence of religion is the personal discovery of the meaning of life, the meaning of truth. Religion is related to the unconditional, total freedom that truth confers on us. It is a revolution of the whole way of living. Religion moves us from the superficial layers of existence and encourages us to go deeper to the roots of life. It is an inward journey to the depths of our being." - Vimala Thakar
"Through observation thoughts subside, hence the strain and pressure they cause on the neurological and chemical systems is also lifted. It is this tension that brings about anti-social behaviour." - Vimala Thakar
"It is easy to see how adolescence becomes so frustrating, and old age so abhorrent, to many people. The life line is disempowered at two major points: at the beginning and at the end. The only acceptable place is in the middle. Power is conferred only on adults. It is denied to youth and seniors." - Virginia Satir
"All good things come to anyone who refuses to be intimidated by his own despair." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
"The last thing on earth which should bother you is the sudden failure of your carefully laid plans. Do not take your plans as being you and the disruption of any plan will be as nothing to you. Your plans are not you; they only appear to be so because of that human mistake called identification." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
"Uplift your inner nature and you will uplift your love-life." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
"We must become acquainted with our emotional household: we must see our feelings as they actually are, not as we assume they are. This breaks their hypnotic and damaging hold on us." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard
"A thought transfixed me: for the first time in my life I saw the truth as it is set into song by so many poets, proclaimed as the final wisdom by so many thinkers. The truth--that love is the ultimate and the highest goal to which man can aspire. Then I grasped the meaning of the greatest secret that human poetry and human thought and belief have to impart: The salvation of man is through love and in love. I understood how a man who has nothing left in this world may still know bliss, be it only for a brief moment, in the contemplation of his beloved. In a position of utter desolation, when a man cannot express himself in positive action, when his only achievement may consist in enduring his sufferings in the right way--an honorable way--in such a position man can, through loving contemplation of the image he carries of his beloved, achieve fulfillment. For the first time in my life, I was able to understand the words, "The angels are lost in perpetual contemplation of an infinite glory."" - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
"As long as a self is driven by an id to a Thou, it is not a matter of love, either. In love the self is not driven by the id, but rather the self chooses the Thou." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
"Austrian public-opinion pollsters recently reported that those held in highest esteem by most of the people interviewed are neither the great artists nor the great scientists, neither the great statesmen nor the great sport figures, but those who master a hard lot with their heads held high." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
"Each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
"Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
"Sigmund Freud once asserted, “Let one attempt to expose a number of the most diverse people uniformly to hunger. With the increase of the imperative urge of hunger all individual differences will blur, and in their stead will appear the uniform expression of the one unstilled urge.” Thank heaven, Sigmund Freud was spared knowing the concentration camps from the inside. His subjects lay on a couch designed in the plush style of Victorian culture, not in the filth of Auschwitz. There, the individual differences did not blur but, on the contrary, people became more different; people unmasked themselves, both the swine and the saints." - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
"This emphasis on responsibleness is reflected in the categorical imperative of logotherapy, which is: Live as if you were living already for the second time and as if you had acted the first time as wrongly as you are about to act now!" - Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
"When a truth is not given complete freedom, freedom is not complete." - Václav Havel
"The universe seems silent and unmoving, yet its natural functions never cease. The sun and moon hurry along day and night, yet their brightness never diminishes. By the same token, the noble person is alert while at leisure, and makes time for tasteful pursuits when busy with duties." - Hung Tzu-ch'eng, also Hong Zicheng or Hóng Zìchéng, born Hong Yingming
"What a man is at the age of seven is also what he is at seventy." - Turkish Proverbs
"That is why I introduced the idea that the world has gone from round to flat. Everywhere you turn, hierarchies are being challenged from below or transforming themselves from top-down structure into more horizontal and collaborative ones." - Thomas L. Friedman, fully Thomas Lauren Friedman
"“To believe your own thought,” observed Emerson, “to believe that what is true for you in your private heart is true for all men – that is genius.” But to impose what you believe is true for you upon all men, indeed upon a single individual – that is despotism." - Thomas Szasz, fully Thomas Stephen Szasz
"Drugs Are the Religion of the People - The Only Hope is Dope" - Timothy Leary, fully Timothy Francis Leary
"Monotheism is the primitive religion which centers human consciousness on Hive Authority. There is One God and His Name is _______ (substitute Hive-Label). If there is only One God then there is no choice, no option, no selection of reality. There is only Submission or Heresy. The word Islam means "submission". The basic posture of Christianity is kneeling. Thy will be done." - Timothy Leary, fully Timothy Francis Leary