This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Expand your thinking of where you are to include your family - your neighbors - your country- other countries - a global village - the universe. Think not as a unit of one, but as a part of a unit of many. And look to the future with hope." - Tauri NULL
"Cities have their indispensable purposes, and their charms, not the least of which is that you can be alone in a crowd. But that kind of living alone is an acquired taste, and not for the weak or unfortunate. they are apt to learn that no city’s institutions can provide protective supports like those of an extended family or real community." - George Frederick Will
"Ultimately, what we invest our lives in reveals where our heart is. The man who says he loves his family but never spends time with them because he is obsessed with his work has greater love for his work than his family… The things to which we apportion most of our time, thought, and attention reveal where our treasure in life is truly found. If God is not foremost in our lives, if he is not our greatest treasure, he does not have our heart." - Joe Boot
"Most people accept life scripts from the environment (family, society) into which they have grown. However, there is always the opportunity to write a new script." - Tom Butler-Bowdon
"The men and women who, for good reasons and bad, revolt against the family are, for good and bad, simply revolting against mankind." - Gilbert Keith "G.K." Chesteron
"Lowering consumption need not deprive people of goods and services that really matter. To the contrary, life’ most meaningful and pleasant activities are often paragons of environmental virtue. The preponderance of things that people name as their most rewarding pastimes are infinitely sustainable. Religious practice, conversation, family and community gatherings, theater, music, dance, literature, sports, poetry, artistic and creative pursuits, education, and appreciation of nature all fit readily into a culture of permanence – a way of life that can endure through countless generations." - Alan Thein Durning
"The tight boundaries of rural, neighborhood, family-centered America have burst, breaking the bonds of exclusiveness and duty, freeing people for alternatives that seem to have no end, so much do they promise. And yet - the problem of loneliness. When it is mentioned, even the eyes of those who tend to deny its existence flicker inward for a moment." - Suzanne Gordon
"From the Mahzor Hadash: There is holiness when we strive to be true to the best we know. There is holiness when we are kind to someone who cannot possibly be of service to us. There is holiness when we promote family harmony. There is holiness when we forget what divides us and remember what unites us. There is holiness when we are willing to be laughed at for what we believe in. There is holiness when we love – truly, honestly, and unselfishly. There is holiness when we remember the lonely and bring cheer into a dark corner. There is holiness when we share – our bread, our ideas, our enthusiasms. There is holiness when we gather to pay to Him who gave us the power to pray." - Sidney Greenberg
"Assign someone to be your guardian angel. Give someone in your family, a member who’s smart and attentive, the assignment of writing down and recording everything that’s don’t to and for you… the largest number of adverse events, by far, is caused by medication errors." - Allan J Hamilton
"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
"Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man’s starving." - O. Henry, pen name for William Sydney Porter
"If the instinctual and repressed kindness of mankind were suddenly let loose upon the earth, sooner than we think would we be members one of another, sitting around one family hearth-stone, and singing the song of the new humanity." - George D. Herron
"Talent is a very common family trait; genius belongs rather to the individuals – just as you find one giant or one dwarf in a family, but rarely a whole brood of either. Talent is often to be envied, and genius very commonly to be pitied. It stands twice the chance of the other of dying in a hospital, in jail, in debt, in bad repute. It is a perpetual insult to mediocrity; its every word is a trespass against somebody’s vested ideas." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.
"The dominant values of activity and productivity, the overwhelming importance of close family ties as well as friendships, the reliance on good health, and now, in old age, the concern with the depletion of one’s life savings and the fear of senility and dependence are commonly held attitudes…" - Sharon R. Kaufman
"The family you come from isn’t as important as the family you’re going to have." - Ring Lardner, fully Ringgold "Ring" Wilmer Lardner
"Most of the inmates of mental hospitals have been committed as the result of a petition by a family member. Psychiatric commitment is often the result of an acute or prolonged family disruption, which results in the exclusion and isolation of one member (usually the least powerful). Psychiatric commitment therefore serves to relieve intolerable family conflicts by removing one member from the group." - Ron Leifer, fully Ronald Leifer
"A man’s first charity should be to his own family." - Muhammad, also spelled Mohammad, Mohammed or Mahomet, full name Muhammad Ibn `Abd Allāh Ibn `Abd al-Muttalib NULL
"Four simple questions have shaped the spiritual journeys of pilgrims and seekers for thousands of years. These questions enable us to gently awaken the four fundamental realms of inner life: Identity, Love, Daily Practice, and Kindness. (1) Who am I? We have within us an essential nature that is whole and unbroken. (2) What do I love? (3) How shall I live, knowing I will die? Every moment of life is a precious gift. (4) What is my gift to the family of the earth?" - Wayne Muller
"Authentic humanity evolves to the extent that blind egotism erodes. To expand the heart and mind in ever-wider circles of empathy so that, starting with oneself, those circles embrace one’s family, one’s community, one’s nation, and finally humanity - this is the Confucian aim." - Philip Novak
"Lead your life so you wouldn’t be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip!" - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair “Will” Rogers
"Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated, communication is open, and rules are flexible -- the kind of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family." - Virginia Satir
"What the world desperately needs is bridges, individuals and groups, like Christ himself, put an end to all the distances which divide men and which hinder their access to truth, dignity, and full human development. This is another way of saying that the world needs community; it needs models of community to convince it that the diverse and warring elements in the human family can be reconciled." - Sisters of the Immaculate Heart NULL
"When we all know the Truth and it is rightly interpreted, truly is it not one and all from the same source? Are we not all one with the universal mind substance, God? Are we not all one great family?" - Baird T. Spalding
"Family myths powerfully affect our relationships." - Richard “Rick” Stone
"All happy families resemble one another; every unhappy family is unhappily in its own way." - Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
"Men and women must be educated, in great degree, by the opinions and manners of the society they live in. In every age there has been a stream of popular opinion that has carried all before it, and given a family character, as it were, to the century. It may then fairly be inferred, that, until society be differently constituted, much cannot be expected from education." -
"Governors must never forget that he who is unable to run his own house and family is still less competent to be entrusted with public matters." - Pachacutec Inca Yupanqui, sometimes referred to as Pachacuti
"One of the things a wise man knows and a foolish man does not is that such things as social position, wealth, and the good opinion of the world, are too dearly bought at the cost of health or friendship or family ties." - Philippa Foot, fully Philippa Ruth Foot, née Bosanquet
"The problem in Muslim societies is rooted in authoritarianism, which burdens practically every community, mosque, and family...Muslims continue to suffer because of the abject failure of the religious establishment to live up to the standards of human decency set by Islam." - Maher Hathout
"A man can't make a place for himself in the sun if he keeps taking refuge under the family tree." - Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
"The most powerful lessons about ethics and morality do not come from school discussions or classes in character-building. They come from family life where people treat one another with respect, consideration, and love." - Neil Kurshan
"I will spend time with those I love. My spouse, my children, my family. A man can own the world but be poor for the lack of love. A man can own nothing and yet be wealthy in relationships. Today I will spend at least five minutes with the significant people in my world. Five quality minutes of talking or hugging or thanking or listening. Five undiluted minutes with my mate, children, and friends." - Max Lucado
"Most teachers do not like controversy. A study some years ago found that 92 percent of teachers did not initiate discussion of controversial issues, 89 percent didn't discuss controversial issues when students brought them up, and 79 percent didn't believe they should. Among the topics that teachers felt children were interested in discussing but that most teachers believed should not be discussed in the classroom were the Vietnam War, politics, race relations, nuclear war, religion, and family problems such as divorce." - Jack L. Nelson & William B. Stanley
"If you want a place in the sun, you must leave the shade of the family tree." - Osage Proverbs
"The family requires the most delicate mixture of nature and convention, of human and divine, to subsist and perform its function. Its base is merely bodily reproduction, but its purpose is the formation of civilized human beings." - Allan Bloom, fully Allan David Bloom
"All social and political problems are interwoven – that energy, for example, affects economics, which in turn affects health, which in turn, affects education, work, family life, and a thousand other things. The attempt to deal with neatly defined problems in isolation from one another… creates only confusion and disaster." - Alvin Toffler
"If mankind cannot now bring itself at last to live as one family, the penalty, in our new situation, must be genocide sooner or later." - Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
"If you begin the day with love in your heart, peace in your nerves, and truth in your mind, you not only benefit by their presence but also bring them to others, to your family and friends, and to all those whose destiny draws across your path that day." - Author Unknown NULL
"If you pursue happiness, it may elude you, but if you focus on your family, your friends, the needs of others, your work and doing the very best you can, happiness will find you." - Author Unknown NULL
"Self-love is a principle of action; but among no class of human beings has nature so profusely distributed this principle of life and action as through the whole sensitive family of genius." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
"Marriage is a great institution, and no family should be without it." - Channing Pollock
"It is with nations as with individuals, those who know the least of others think the highest of themselves; for the whole family of pride and ignorance are incestuous, and mutually beget each other." - Charles Caleb Colton
"All things are connected like the blood which unites one family. All things are connected. Whatever befalls the Earth befalls the sons of the Earth. Man did not weave the web of life, he is merely a strand on it. Whatever he does to the web, he does to himself." - Chief Seattle, also spelled Seathl
"A year's opportunities depend on the spring, a days' on the dawn, a family's on harmony, a life's on industry." - Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL