This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Great discoveries or ideas have one thing in common. Before they are achieved they are considered incredible and not worth the effort deemed necessary to make them real. After they are achieved, it is incredible that we should be without them." - M. Stanton Evans, fully Medford Stanton Evans
"The rule for every worthwhile man is that no serious job ever shall receive less than his best thought and effort." - William Feather
"If we had strength and faith enough to trust ourselves entirely to God, and follow Him simply wherever He should lead us, we should have no need of any great effort of mind to reach perfection." - François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
"The essence of our effort to see that every child has a chance must be to assure each an equal opportunity, not to become equal, but to become different - to realize whatever unique potential of body, mind and spirit he or she possesses." - John Fischer
"Quality is never an accident; it is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, intelligent direction and skillful execution; it represents the wise choice of many alternatives, the cumulative experience of many masters of craftsmanship. Quality also marks the search for an ideal after necessity has been satisfied and mere usefulness achieved." -
"No time exists other than now... So now is all you have and all you ever will have... Why not begin doing the best you can right where you are?... Trust the process of growth. Trust God. Pay attention to the details of your life, doing your very best with each challenge that presents itself... The past is the raw material of the present, but the past is not a blueprint for the present... Begin where you are. Do what you can. Even a small effort to change, to grow, to improve, will bring astonishing results... You can choose to build on what you were, but you are not what you were. You can focus on what you will be, but you are not what you will be. What you are is what you are right now - the inheritor of all of God’s gifts." - Richard and Mary-Alice Jafolla
"Metaphysics means nothing but an unusually obstinate effort to think clearly." - William James
"Disease is not so much the effect of noxious, external forces - the 'bugs,' both literal and figurative in our lives - as it is the faulty effort of our minds and bodies to deal with them... already reside in our bodies. When our responses to problems in life are excessive or deficient, the central nervous system and hormones act on our immune defenses in such a way that the microbes aid and abet disease. The balance is upset between us and our resident pathogens." - Blair Justice
"Research... is nothing but a state of mind - a friendly, welcoming attitude toward change; going out to look for a change instead of waiting for it to come. Research, for practical men, is an effort to do things better." - Charles F. Kettering, fully Charles Franklin Kettering
"Work alone does not suffice - the effort must be intelligent." - Charles B. Rogers
"A sublime soul can rise to all kind of greatness, but by an effort; it can tear itself from all bondage, to all that limits and constrains it, but only by strength of will. Consequently the sublime soul is only free by broken efforts." - Friedrich Schiller, fully Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller
"It is not ease but effort, not facility, but difficulty, that makes men. There is, perhaps, no station in life in which difficulties have not to be encountered and overcome before any decided measure of success can be achieved." - Samuel Smiles
"Viewing health as something to achieve gives rise to effort and striving, which create stress. And this can interfere with the natural healing tendencies already present within us. The meditative traditions see things differently; they regard health as intrinsic to our nature, and thus already fully present within us... Dis-ease results from a loss of connection with our intrinsic health, caused by ignorance, distraction or confusion." - John Welwood
"Money, material thought it be, does lie at the base of the most useful work you do. In itself nothing, it is the basis of much of the best effort which can be made for spiritual purposes." - A. J. Balfour, fully Arthur James "A.J. Balfour, the Earl of Balfour
"An innate knowledge, or rather an acquired ignorance, suggests to it straightaway the step to be taken, the decisive act, the unanswerable word. Yet effort remains indispensable, endurance and perseverance likewise. But they come of themselves, they develop of their own accord, in a soul acting and acted upon, whose liberty coincides with the divine activity." - Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson
"I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more - the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men; the deceitful feeling that lures us on to joys, to perils, to love, to vain effort - to death; the triumphant conviction of strength, the heat of life in the handful of dust, the glow in the heart that with every year grows dim, grows cold, grows small, and expires - and expires, too soon, too soon - before life itself." - Joseph Conrad
"As the artist creates patterns in a vain effort to catch a beauty which escapes him, because it is behind his thought and never realized in what he sees, so the love of God beckons and draws the soul of man, though he has never heard the sacred Name." - Martin D’Arcy, fully Fr. Martin Cyril D'Arcy
"The problems we face today – violent conflicts, destruction of nature, poverty, hunger, and so on – are mainly problems created by humans. They can be resolved – but only through human effort, understanding and the development of a sense of brotherhood and sisterhood. To do this, we need to cultivate a universal responsibility for one another and for the planet we share, based on a good heart and awareness." -
"An organism lives by growth, by processes of change, by powers of generation, but its interfusion with other organisms and with its environment, also by its `mental state’ in which is vested the unifying principles pervading all its parts and subdivisions, rising in man to the conscious mental state, to self-awareness, and with this self-awareness to advance further by directed effort." - L. Francis Edmunds
"In our effort to escape from aloneness and powerlessness, we are ready to get rid of our individual self either by submission to new forms of authority or by a compulsive conforming to accepted patterns." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"Man's main task in life is to give birth to himself, to become what he potentially is. The most important product of his effort is his own personality." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"There is no meaning in life except the meaning man gives his life by the unfolding of his power, by living productively… Only constant vigilance, activity, and effort can keep us from failing in the one task that matters – the full development of our powers within the limitations set up by the laws of our existence." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
"We do not know whether it is good to live or to die. Therefore, we should not take delight in living, nor should we tremble at the thought of death. We should be equiminded towards death. This is the ideal. It may be long before we reach it, and only a few of us can attain it. Even then, we must keep it constantly in view, and the more difficult it seems of attainment, the greater should be the effort we put forth." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
"The school system can’t make up for family failure. The total education of our children is a cooperative effort requiring community solidarity. Apathetic parents who foster a permissive home atmosphere create a problem for everyone." - John Hansgate
"If there is no dull and determined effort, there will be no brilliant achievement." - Hsun-Tzu NULL
"Toleration… is the greatest gift of the mind; it requires the same effort of the brain that it takes to balance oneself on a bicycle." - Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
"Forgiveness is not explanation… Explanations have to do with exploring causes, with digging down into the past in an effort to exert whatever control is still possible over the past. Forgiveness, on the other hand, has to do with letting go of the past – giving up the claim to control the past and refusing to be controlled by it. But forgiving is not the same thing as forgetting. “Letting go” of the past is not some kind of erasure; forgiveness is not an attempt to obliterate the past or wipe the slate clean… because the past is important, there can be no “unconditional forgiveness.”" - Ernest Kurtz and Katherine Ketcham
"We are not isolated souls, singular, lonely, called and engaged in a solitary effort. We are members of a great Company, and whether we think it or not, we pray in Company." - John W. Lynch
"In war, as it is waged now, with the enormous losses on both sides, both sides will lose. It is a form of mutual suicide; and I believe that the entire effort of modern society should be concentrated on an endeavor to outlaw war as a method of the solution of problems between nations." - Douglas MacArthur
"Religion, like everything great and noble and demanding within us, increases the tension in mankind; and together with the tension, suffering; and with the suffering, spiritual effort; and with the spiritual effort, joy." - Jacques Maritain
"As Aristotle taught, people do not naturally or spontaneously grow up to be morally excellent or practically wise. They become so, if at all, only as a result of a lifelong personal and community effort." - Jon Moline
"The ideal of asceticism represents moral effort as essentially sacrifice, the sacrifice of one part of human nature to another, that it may live the more completely in what survives of it." - Walter Pater, fully Walter Horatio Pater
"According to the Buddha the will is free, effort is worth while, man makes his own fate, deeds have consequences, knowledge is possible, the body is not the real self, and death is not its end." - James Bisset Pratt
"This is the Noble Eightfold Path: right views, right intention; right speech, right action, right livelihood; right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration." - Samyutta Nikaya "Connected Discourses" or "Kindred Sayings" NULL
"The best aid to give is intellectual aid, a gift of useful knowledge… Nothing becomes truly “one’s own” except on the basis of some genuine effort or sacrifice… The gift of material goods makes people dependent, but the gift of knowledge makes them free." - E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
"There must be for me a deep sense of relatedness to God. This relatedness is the way by which there shall open for me more and more springs of energy and power, which will enable me to thread life’s mysteries with life’s clue. I shall not waste any effort trying to reduce God to my particular logic. Here in the quietness, I shall give myself in love to God." -
"All the seven deadly sins are self destroying, morbid appetites, but in their early stages at least, lust and gluttony, avarice and sloth know some gratification, while anger and pride have power, even though that power eventually destroys itself. Envy is impotent, numbed with fear, never ceasing in its appetite, and it knows no gratification, but endless self torment. It has the ugliness of a trapped rat, which gnaws its own foot in an effort to escape." - Angus Wilson, fully Sir Angus Frank Johnstone Wilson
"If there cannot be immediate unity of faith, there must be unity of love, expressing itself in common effort in social, economic and political relations." - John Joseph Wright
"Telling someone something that you like, admire, or appreciate about them is a "random act of kindness." It takes almost no effort (once you get used to it), yet it pays enormous dividends." - Richard Carlson
"What is required for effective change is continuity of sincere effort to release and let go of inefficient thought patterns from the past." - Doc Childre
"Continuous effort - not strength or intelligence - is the key to unlocking our potential." - Winston Churchill, fully Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill
"The first requisite for success is to develop the ability to focus and apply your mental and physical energies to the problem at hand - without growing weary. Because such thinking is often difficult, there seems to be no limit to which some people will go to avoid the effort and labor that is associated with it." - Thomas Edison, fully Thomas Alva Edison
"Effort is only effort when it begins to hurt." - Tryon Edwards