This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"You are going to need sales taxes, both Federal and State, income tax, and a lot of other kinds. It’s a great country but you can’t live in it for nothing." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
"A simultaneous change of our whole economic and social system in favor of drastic decentralization of cities and industries, of the restoration of some more `natural order', more rural, but less urbanized, mechanized, industrialized, proletarized and commercialized. People will not like to face competition unless they have some firm stand. They must not feel lost in this present dehumanized world. Competition is a necessary social arrangement not a social gospel likely to make us enthusiastic. It is a negative concept which derives its strength from the fact that we like the alternatives, i.e., monopoly and collectivism, even less. It must be supplemented by something which is humanly positive." - Wilhelm Röepke
"I don’t have a problem with guilt about money. The way I see it is that my money represents an enormous number of claim checks on society. It’s like I have these little pieces of paper that I can turn into consumption. If I wanted to, I could hire 10,000 people to do nothing but paint my picture every day for the rest of my life. And the GNP would go up. But the utility of the product would be zilch, and I would be keeping those 10,000 people from doing AIDS research, or teaching, or nursing. I don’t do that though. I don’t use very many of those claim checks. There’s nothing material I want very much. And I’m going to give virtually all of those claim checks to charity when my wife and I die." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"The word agriculture, after all, does not mean agriscience, much less agribusiness. It means cultivation of land. And cultivation is at the root of the sense both of culture and of cult. The ideas of tillage and worship are thus joined in culture. And these words all come from an Indo-European root meaning both to revolve and to dwell. To live, to survive on the earth, to care for the soil, and to worship, all are bound at the root to the idea of a cycle. It is only by understanding the cultural complexity and largeness of the concept of agriculture that we can see the threatening diminishments implied by the term agribusiness." - Wendell Berry
"Then I squeezed roots and trunks into it from the tube, and modelled them a little with the brush. Yes, now they stand in it - shoot up out of it - stand firmly rooted in it." - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh
"Just as people are afraid of serpents they are afraid of persons who utter lies." - Valmiki NULL
"God is very precise in this point; he will say to such as invent ways to worship him of their own, coin means to mortify corruption, obtain comfort in their own mint: 'Who hath required this at your hands?' This is truly to be 'righteous over-much,' as Solomon speaks, when we will pretend to correct God's law, and add supplements of our own to his rule." - William Gurnall
"My whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service and the service of our great imperial family to which we all belong. But I shall not have the strength to carry out this resolution alone unless you join in it with me." - Elizabeth II, born Elizabeth Alexandra May NULL
"The first thing that we have to realize is a fact of fundamental importance, because it means breaking away from all the ordinary prepossessions of orthodoxy. The plain fact is that Jesus taught no theology whatever. His teaching is entirely spiritual or metaphysical. Historical Christianity, unfortunately, has largely concerned itself with theological and doctrinal questions which, strange to say, have no part whatever in the Gospel teaching. It will startle many good people to learn that all the doctrines and theologies of the churches are human inventions built up by their authors out of their own mentalities… There is absolutely no system of theology of doctrine to be found in the Bible; it simply is not there." - Emmet Fox
"A girl who cannot patch man's trousers in between the legs, must not marry at all, because what use does a man have of such a stupid wife." - Estonian Proverbs
"But the devil when he purports any evil against man, first perverts his mind." - Euripedes NULL
"To friends, or lead a sick man back to health" - Euripedes NULL
"That government is best which governs the least, so taught the courageous founders of this nation. This simple declaration is diametrically opposed to the all too common philosophy that the government should protect and support one from the cradle to the grave. The policy of the Founding Fathers has made our people and our nation strong. The opposite leads inevitably to moral decay." - Ezra Taft Benson
"And amid all the splendors of the World, its vast halls and spaces, and its wheeling fires, Il£vatar chose a place for their habitation in the Deeps of Time and in the midst of the innumerable stars." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"And as the captains gazed south to the Land of Mordor, it seemed to them that, black against the pall of cloud, there rose a huge shape of shadow, impenetrable, lightning-crowned, filling all the sky. Enormous it reared above the world, and stretched out towards them a vast threatening hand, terrible but impotent: for even as it leaned over them, a great wind took it, and it was all blown away, and passed; and then a hush fell." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for two and a half thousand years, the ring? passed out of all knowledge." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"And that's the way of a real tale. Take any one that you're fond of. You may know, or guess, what kind of a tale it is, happy-ending or sad-ending, but the people in it don't know. And you don't want them to." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"And then alas! I let the matter reset, watching and waiting only, as we have too often done." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"And thus it came to pass that the Silmarils found their long homes: one in the airs of heaven, and one in the fires of the heart of the world, and one in the deep waters." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"At last Fingon stood alone with his guard dead about him; and he fought with Gothmog, until another Balrog came behind and cast a thong of fire about him. Then Gothmog hewed him with his black axe, and a white flame sprang up from the helm of Fingon as it was cloven. Thus fell the High King of the Noldor; and they beat him into the dust with their maces; and his banner, blue and silver, they trod into the mire of his blood." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"Aure entuluva! day shall come again!" - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"Behind that, there was something else at work, beyond any design of the ring maker. I can put it no plainer than by saying that Bilbo was meant to find the ring, and not by its maker. In which case you also were meant to have it. And that may be an encouraging thought." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"Books ought to have good endings. How would this do: and they all settled down and lived together happily ever after?" - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"But it is said: Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. The choice is yours: to go or wait.' 'And it is also said,' answered Frodo: 'Go not to the Elves for counsel for they will answer both no and yes.' 'Is it indeed?' laughed Gildor. 'Elves seldom give unguarded advice, for advice is a dangerous gift, even from the wise to the wise, and all courses may run ill." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien
"It was just as the 1914 War burst on me that I made the discovery that 'legends' depend on the language to which they belong; but a living language depends equally on the 'legends' which it conveys by tradition. ... Volapuk, Esperanto, Ido, Novial, &c &c are dead, far deader than ancient unused languages, because their authors never invented any Esperanto legends..." - J. R. R. Tolkien, fully John Ronald Reuel Tolkien