This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Love withers under constraint: its very essence is liberty: it is compatible neither with obedience, jealously, nor fear: it is there most pure, perfect and unlimited where its votaries live in confidence, equality and unreserve." - Percy Bysshe Shelley
"To grow and know what one is growing towards - that is the source of all strength and confidence in life." - Philip James Bailey
"Confidence begets confidence, and love, love." - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
"Peace is not just the absence of war. It involves mutual respect and confidence between peoples and nations. It involves collaboration and binding agreements. Like a cathedral, peace must be constructed patiently and with unshakable faith." - Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL
"Censorship reflects society's lack of confidence in itself. It is a hallmark of an authoritarian regime." - Potter Stewart
"A function of free speech under our system of government is to invite dispute. It may indeed best serve its high purpose when it indices a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with things as they are, or even stirs people to anger. Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it presses for understanding." - Potter Stewart
"The best of life is conversation, and the greatest success is confidence, or perfect understanding between sincere people." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The great success is confidence, or perfect understanding between sincere people." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence." - Robert Frost
"You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair." - Samuel Ullman
"We observe with confidence that the truly strong mind, view it as intellect or morality, or under any other aspect, is nowise the mind acquainted with its strength; that here the sign of health is unconsciousness." - Thomas Carlyle
"To be free is not necessarily to be wise. Wisdom comes with counsel, with the frank and free confidence of untrammeled men united in the common interest." - Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
"As in our confidence, so is our capacity." - William Hazlitt
"Nothing gives such a blow to friendship as the detecting another in an untruth. It strikes at the root of our confidence ever after." - William Hazlitt
"Nothing gives such a blow to friendship as detecting another in an untruth. It strikes at the root of our confidence ever after." - William Hazlitt
"Confidence gives a fool the advantage over a wise man." - William Hazlitt
"A teacher who tends to lower the self-esteem and confidence of his students should either change this tendency or change professions. One of the most important lessons an educator can convey to students is that they have inherent worth and should strive to utilize their potential." - Zelig Pliskin
"The self-confidence of the warrior is not the self-confidence of the average man. The average man seeks certainty in the eyes of the onlooker and calls that self-confidence. The warrior seeks impeccability in his own eyes and calls that humbleness. The average man is hooked to his fellow men, while the warrior is hooked to himself." - Carlos Castaneda, fully Carlos César Salvador Arana Castaneda
"Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership. " - Colin Powell, fully Colin Luther Powell
"Have confidence that if you have done a little thing well, you can do a bigger thing well too. " - David Storey
"If you think about disaster, you will get it. Brood about death and you hasten your demise. Think positively and masterfully, with confidence and faith, and life becomes more secure, more fraught with action, richer in achievement and experience." - Eddie Rickenbacker, formally Edward Vernon "Eddie" Rickenbacker
"Think positively and masterfully, with confidence and faith, and life becomes more secure, more fraught with action, richer in achievement and experience." - Eddie Rickenbacker, formally Edward Vernon "Eddie" Rickenbacker
"We do not so much need the help of our friends as the confidence of their help in need." - Epicurus NULL
"Hope is both the earliest and the most indispensable virtue inherent in the state of being alive. If life is to be sustained hope must remain, even where confidence is wounded, trust impaired." - Erik Erickson
"The mark of a truly civilized man is confidence in the strength and security derived from the inquiring mind." - Felix Frankfurter
"Affliction is a school of virtue; it corrects levity, and interrupts the confidence of sinning. " - Francis Atterbury
"All confidence which is not absolute and entire, is dangerous. There are few occasions but where a man ought either to say all, or conceal all; for, how little so ever you have revealed of your secret to a friend, you have already said too much if you think it not safe to make him privy to all particulars." - Francis Beaumont
"Mutual caring relationships require kindness and patience, tolerance, optimism, joy in the other's achievements, confidence in oneself, and the ability to give without undue thought of gain." - Fred Rogers, "Mister Rogers," born Frederick McFeely Rogers
"Politics is an act of faith; you have to show some kind of confidence in the intellectual and moral capacity of the public. " - George McGovern, fully George Stanley McGovern
"Concerned adults serve best when with confidence they stand and wait." - Haim Ginott, fully Haim G. Ginott, orignially Ginzburg
"Every great anthropologic and paleontologic discovery fits into its proper place, enabling us gradually to fill out, one after another, the great branching lines of human ascent and to connect with the branches definite phases of industry and art. This gives us a double means of interpretation, archaeological and anatomical. While many branches and links in the chain remain to be discovered, we are now in a position to predict with great confidence not only what the various branches will be like but where they are most like to be found. " - Henry Fairfield Osborn
"All confidence which is not absolute and entire is dangerous; there are few occasions but where a man ought either to say all or conceal all; for how little soever you have revealed of your secret to a friend, you have already said too much if you think it not safe to make him privy to all particulars." - J. Beaumont
"It is so often true that whether a person carries with him an atmosphere of gloom and depression or one of confidence and courage depends on his individual outlook. " - James Keller
"If a child tells a lie, tell him that he has told a lie, but don't call him a liar. If you define him as a liar, you break down his confidence in his own character. " - Jean Paul, born Johann Paul Friedrich Richter, aka Jean Paul Richter
"There is no worse screen to block out the Spirit than confidence in our own intelligence." - John Calvin
"More than anything else, followers want to believe that their leaders are ethical and honest. When your people see that you are not only competent to lead but also have a track record of successes, they will have confidence in following you, even when they don't understand all the details. As a leader, it's your job to get your people excited about what their work will accomplish; it’s a natural motivator." - John C. Maxwell
"The world has had enough of the curse of hatred and selfishness, of destruction and war. It has had enough of the wrongful use of material power. For the healing of the nations there must be good will and charity, confidence and peace. The time has come for a more practical use of moral power, and more reliance upon the principle that right makes its own might. Our authority among the nations must be represented by justice and mercy. It is necessary not only to have faith, but to make sacrifices for our faith. The spiritual forces of the world make all its final determinations. It is with these voices that America should speak. Whenever they declare a righteous purpose there need be no doubt that they will be heard. America has taken her place in the world as a Republic--free, independent, powerful. The best service that can be rendered to humanity is the assurance that this place will be maintained." - Calvin Coolidge, fully John Calvin Coolidge, Jr.
"Language is evidently one of the principle instruments or helps of thought; and any imperfection in the instrument, or in the mode of employing it, is confessedly liable, still more than in almost any other art, to confuse and impede the process, and destroy all ground of confidence in the result." - John Stuart Mill
"Leadership is solving problems. The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help or concluded you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership." - Karl Popper, fully Sir Karl Raimund Popper
"Without self-discovery, a person may still have self confidence, but it is a self confidence built on ignorance and it melts in the face of heavy burdens. Self discovery is the end product of a great challenge mastered, when the mind commands the body to do the seemingly impossible, when courage and strength are summoned to extraordinary limits for the sake of something outside the self--a principle, an onerous task, another human life." - Kurt Hahn, fully Kurt Martin "the rod" Hahn
"Health is the greatest possession. Contentment is the greatest treasure. Confidence is the greatest friend. Non-being is the greatest joy. " - Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
"The mutual confidence on which all else depends can be maintained only by an open mind and a brave reliance upon free discussion." - Learned Hand, fully Billings Learned Hand
" Although we must keep all our confidence in our science,we must not blindly believe in its actual almightiness." - Pierre Lecomte du Noüy
"We must keep on trying to solve problems, one by one, stage by stage, if not on the basis of confidence and cooperation, at least on that of mutual toleration and self-interest." - Lester Pearson, fully Lester Bowles "Mike" Pearson
"In healthy families, children discover (through being listened to) that what they have to say is important and that their experiences and ideas (and they themselves) have worth. They are encouraged to think for themselves, express opinions, and make decisions for themselves. Parents supporting them in standing on their own two feet and doing what they think is right. Trusting and gaining confidence in themselves, they develop an inner locus of control." - Louise Hart
"The future of the world no longer disturbs me; I do not try still to calculate, with anguish, how long or how short a time the Roman peace will endure; I leave that to the Gods. Not that I have acquired more confidence in their justice, which is not our justice, or more faith in human wisdom; the contrary is true. Life is atrocious, we know. But precisely because I expect little of the human condition, man's periods of felicity, his partial progress, his efforts to begin over again and to continue, all seem to me like so many prodigies which nearly compensate for monstrous mass of ills and defeats, of indifference and error. Catastrophe and ruin will come; disorder will triumph, but order will too, from time to time. Peace will again establish itself between two periods and there regain the meaning which we have tried to give them. Not all our books will perish, nor our statues, if broken, lie unrepaired; other domes and pediments will rise from our domes and pediments; some few men will think and work and feel as we have done, and I venture to count upon such continuators, placed irregularly throughout the centuries, and upon this kind of intermittent immortality." - Marguerite Yourcenar, pseudonym for Marguerite Cleenewerck de Crayencour
"Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something and that this thing must be attained." - Marie Curie, fully Marie Skłodowska-Curie, originally Manya Sklodowska
"Body work must be approached with the same respect and attentiveness that one gives to dreams. The body has a wisdom of its own. However slowly and circuitously that wisdom manifests, once it is experienced it is a foundation, a basis of knowing that gives confidence and total support to the ego. To reach its wisdom requires absolute concentration: dropping the mind into the body, breathing into whatever is ready to be released, and allowing the process of expression until the negative, dammed energy is out, making room for the positive energy, genuine Light, to flood in." - Marion Woodman