This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"We must learn that any person who will not accept what he knows to be truth for the very love of truth alone is very definitely undermining his mental integrity... you have not been a close observer of such men if you have not seen them shrivel, become commonplace, mean without influence, without friends, and without the enthusiasm of youth and growth, like a tree covered with fungus, the foliage deceased, the life gone out of the heart with dry rot and indelibly marked for destruction --- dead, but not yet handed over to the undertaker." - Luther Burbank
"Conscience is doubtless sufficient to conduct the coldest character into the road of virtue; but enthusiasm is to conscience what honor is to duty; there is in us a superfluity of soul, which it is sweet to consecrate to the beautiful when the good has been accomplished." - Madame de Staël, Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein, born Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Madame Necker
"The sense of this word among the Greeks affords the noblest definition of it: enthusiasm signifies God in us." - Madame de Staël, Anne Louise Germaine de Staël-Holstein, born Anne Louise Germaine Necker, Madame Necker
"Alas! How enthusiasm decreases, as our experience increases! " - Louise Colet, born Louise Revoil
"There is a part of a child's soul that has always been unknown but which must be known. With a spirit of sacrifice and enthusiasm we must go in search like those who travel to foreign lands and tear up mountains in their search for hidden gold. This is what the adults must do who seeks the unknown factor that lies hidden in the depths of a child's soul. This is a labor in which all must share, without distinction of nation, race, or social standing since it means the bringing forth of an indispensable element for the moral progress of mankind." - Maria Montessori
"I play to win, whether during practice or a real game. And I will not let anything get in the way of me and my competitive enthusiasm to win." - Michael Jordan, fully Michael Jeffrey Jordon, aka MJ, Air Jordan and His Airness
"Those who knew that the judgements of many centuries had reinforced the opinion that the Earth is placed motionless in the middle of heaven, as though at its centre, if I on the contrary asserted that the Earth moves, I hesitated for a long time whether to bring my treatise, written to demonstrate its motion, into the light of day, or whether it would not be better to follow the example of the Pythagoreans and certain others, who used to pass on the mysteries of their philosophy merely to their relatives and friends, not in writing but by personal contact, as the letter of Lysis to Hipparchus bears witness. And indeed they seem to me to have done so, not as some think from a certain jealousy of communicating their doctrines, but so that their greatest splendours, discovered by the devoted research of great men, should not be exposed to the contempt of those who either find it irksome to waste effort on anything learned, unless it is profitable, or if they are stirred by the exhortations and examples of others to a high-minded enthusiasm for philosophy, are nevertheless so dull-witted that among philosophers they are like drones among bees. " - Nicholas Copernicus
"The fire of true enthusiasm is like the fires of Baku, which no water can ever quench, and which burn steadily on from night to day, and year to year, because their well-spring is eternal." - Ouida, pseudonym of Maria Louise Ramé, preferred to be called Marie Louise de la Ramée NULL
"Plan your progress carefully; hour-by hour, day-by-day, month-by-month. Organized activity and maintained enthusiasm are the wellsprings of your power." - Paul J. Meyer
"I weep for Narcissus, but I never noticed that Narcissus was beautiful. I weep because, each time he knelt beside my banks, I could see, in the depths of his eyes, my own beauty reflected… I wept because I was re-experiencing the enthusiasm of my childhood; I was once again a child, and nothing in the world could cause me harm… If I don’t think about love, I will be nothing… But if you believe yourself worthy of the thing you fought so hard to get, then you become an instrument of God, you help the Soul of the World, and you understand why you are here… If you really desire something, the whole universe will conspire to help you… If you must say yes, say it with an open heart. If you must say no, say it without fear… If you want to succeed at something, let your eyes open and focused thinking to realize exactly what you want. " - Paulo Coelho
"Generally speaking, these meetings occur when we reach a limit, when we need to die and be reborn emotionally. These meeting are waiting for us, but more often than not, we avoid them happening. If we are desperate, though, if we have nothing to lose, or if we are full of enthusiasm for life, then the unknown reveals itself, and our universe changes directions… Dreams mean work… Go further than you planned. Ask for the moon: you will be surprised how often you get it. " - Paulo Coelho
"When you open yourself to the continually changing, impermanent, dynamic nature of your own being and of reality, you increase your capacity to love and care about other people and your capacity to not be afraid. You're able to keep your eyes open, your heart open, and your mind open. And you notice when you get caught up in prejudice, bias, and aggression. You develop an enthusiasm for no longer watering those negative seeds, from now until the day you die. And, you begin to think of your life as offering endless opportunities to start to do things differently. " - Pema Chödrön, born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown
"There is eloquence in the tongueless wind, and a melody in the flowing brooks and the rustling of the reeds beside them, which by their inconceivable relation to something within the soul, awaken the spirits to a dance of breathless rapture, and bring tears of mysterious tenderness to the eyes, like the enthusiasm of patriotic success, or the voice of one beloved singing to you alone. " - Percy Bysshe Shelley
"The problem is, of course, that these interest groups are all asking for changes, but their enthusiasm for change rapidly disappears when it affects the core of their own interests." - Angela Merkel, fully Angela Dorothea Merkel, née Kasner
"The popularity of the paranormal, oddly enough, might even be grounds for encouragement. I think that the appetite for mystery, the enthusiasm for that which we do not understand, is healthy and to be fostered. It is the same appetite which drives the best of true science, and it is an appetite which true science is best qualified to satisfy." - Richard Dawkins
"One of the easiest forms of pretense to break down is the pretense of enthusiasm for exotic foods. Just bring on the exotic foods." - Robert Benchley, fully Robert Charles Benchley
"Because of human restlessness, mankind would grow rebellious under any utopian domination, and would break out once more in violent discontent-or else expire of boredom." - Russell Kirk
"It’s always easier to dismiss a person than to train him. No great leader ever built a reputation on firing people." - S. Truett Cathy
"Every reformation must have its victims. You can't expect the fatted calf to share the enthusiasm of the angels over the prodigal's return." - Saki, pen name for Hector Hugh Munro or H.H. Munro NULL
"However important it is that love shall precede marriage, it is far more important that it shall continue after marriage." - Samson Raphael Hirsch
"It is natural to admire and revere really great men. They hallow the nation to which they belong, and lift up not only all who live in their time, but those who live after them. Their great example becomes the common heritage of their race; and their great deeds and great thoughts are the most glorious legacies of mankind." - Samuel Smiles
"I love and am loved by a better man than he." - Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle
"The French are the wittiest, the most charming, and up to the present, at all events, the least musical race on Earth." - Stendhal, pen name of Marie Henn Beyle or Marie-Henri Beyle NULL
"One never gets to know a person's character better than by watching his behavior during decisive moments.... It is always only danger which forces the most deeply hidden strengths and abilities of a human being to come forth." - Stefan Zweig
"But I am convinced that those Jews who stand aside today with a malicious smile and with their hands in their trousers' pockets will also want to dwell in our beautiful home." - Theodor Herzl, born Benjamin Ze’ev Herzl
"An honest confession is good for the soul, but bad for the reputation" - Thomas Dewar, Lord Dewar, fully Thomas Robert "Tommy" Dewar, 1st Baron Dewar
"Blest is that nation whose silent course of happiness furnishes nothing for history to say." - Thomas Jefferson
"To secure these [inalienable] rights [to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness], governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed... Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on suchprinciples, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." - Thomas Jefferson
"We should be determined... to sever ourselves from the union we so much value rather than give up the rights of self-government... in which alone we see liberty, safety and happiness." - Thomas Jefferson
"For I must tell you that we artists cannot tread the path of Beauty without Eros keeping company with us and appointing himself as our guide." - Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
"This is a choice that makes overwhelming sense." - Thomas Mann, fully Paul Thomas Mann
"Goedel proved that a system of axioms can never be based on itself; in order to prove its validity, statements from outside must be used." - Victor Weisskopf, fully Victor "Viki" Frederick Weisskopf
"Mirth is better than fun, and happiness is better than mirth." - William Blake
"Rulers and generals muster their troops. Magnates muster the sums of money which give them power. The fascist dictators muster the irrational human reactions which make it possible for them to attain and maintain their power over the masses. The scientists muster knowledge and means of research. But, thus far, no organization fighting for freedom has ever mustered the biological arsenal where the weapons are to be found for the establishment and the maintenance of human freedom. All precision of our social existence notwithstanding, there is as yet no definition of the word freedom which would be in keeping with natural science. No word is more misused and misunderstood. To define freedom is the same as to define sexual health. But nobody will openly admit this. The advocacy of personal and social freedom is connected with anxiety and guilt feelings. As if to be free were a sin or at least not quite as it should be. Sex-economy makes this guilt feeling comprehensible: freedom without sexual self-determination is in itself a contradiction. But to be sexual means — according to the prevailing human structure — to be sinful or guilty. There are very few people who experience sexual love without guilt feeling. "Free love" has acquired a degrading meaning: it lost the meaning given it by the old fighters for freedom. In films and in books, to be genital and to be criminal are presented as the same thing." - Wilhelm Reich
"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
"There is an emanation from the heart in genuine hospitality which cannot be described, but is immediately felt and puts the stranger at once at his ease." - Washington Irving
"When you do the wrong thing, knowing it is wrong, you do so because you haven't developed the habit of effectively controlling or neutralizing strong inner urges that tempt you, or because you have established the wrong habit and don't know how to eliminate them effectively." - W. Clement Stone, fully William Clement Stone
"You affect your subconscious mind by verbal repetition." - W. Clement Stone, fully William Clement Stone
"The period of Catholic ascendancy was on the whole one of the most deplorable in the history of the human mind.... The spirit that shrinks from enquiry as sinful and deems a state of doubt a state of guilt, is the most enduring disease that can afflict the mind of man. Not till the education of Europe passed from the monasteries to the universities, not till Mohammedan science, and clasical free thought, and industrial independence broke the sceptre of the Church, did the intellectual revival of Europe begin." - W. E. H. Lecky, fully William Edward Hartpole Lecky
"Children are born wanting to think and discover for themselves; rote teaching systematically destroys their powers of thought; the older the students are, the less curiosity and intelligent interest you can expect." - W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer
"Energy then is morally neutral, it is good or bad depending on the direction it takes. Our task is to provide legitimate outlets for it. The provision of such outlets is important in three ways - for society, for the individual and for the learning of subjects. For any society that wishes to remain civilized this is the highest priority; only by providing satisfactory activities for all citizens can delinquency, vandalism, crime and violence become exceptional rather than normal. This is a priority of which our dominant institutions seem totally unaware. For the individual, finding a satisfactory outlet for energy means a sense of fulfillment and escape from frustration. For the learning of subjects it is the driving force without which little will be learned." - W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer
"To master anything from football to relativity requires effort. But it does not require unpleasant efforts, drudgery. The main task of any teacher is to make a subject interesting." - W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer
"The reflection of nature in man’s thought must be understood not lifelessly but in the eternal process of movement, the arising of contradictions and their solution." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
"What is called happiness is an abstract idea, composed of various ideas of pleasure; for he who has but a moment of pleasure is not a happy man, in like manner that a moment of grief constitutes not a miserable one." - Voltaire, pen name of François-Marie Arouet NULL
"Build for your team a feeling of oneness, of dependence on one another and of strength to be derived by unity." - Vince Lombardi, fully Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi
"What has changed is that my life then was less difficult and my future seemingly less gloomy, but as far as my inner self, my way of looking at things and of thinking is concerned, that has not changed. But if there has indeed been a change, then it is that I think, believe and love more seriously now what I thought, believed and loved even then." - Vincent van Gogh, fully Vincent Willem van Gogh
"By getting up early in the morning one also gets more time at his disposal for work as compared to late-risers. Scholar and thinkers get up early in the morning and contemplate." - Rig Veda, or The Rigveda
"Ego is the biggest enemy of humans." - Rig Veda, or The Rigveda
"Harmony prevails if people of similar nature meet." - Rig Veda, or The Rigveda
"One who makes a resolution and then makes sincere efforts to realize his dreams, nothing stops him from realizing his goal." - Rig Veda, or The Rigveda