This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Hinduism has seemed singularly able to accept the dispassionate impersonality of the All in One without crying out against it in despair, rage or rebellion. Perhaps this is the genius of this paradoxical land of so many blended cultures and people" - Nancy Wilson Ross
"Men of genius are meters destined to burn themselves out in lighting up their age." - Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I
"If the genius of invention were to reveal to-morrow the secret of immortality, of eternal beauty and youth, for which all humanity is aching, the same inexorable agents which prevent a mass from changing suddenly its velocity would likewise resist the force of the new knowledge until time gradually modifies human thought." - Nikola Tesla
"Talent wears well, genius wears itself out; talent drives a brougham in fact; genius, a sun-chariot in fancy. " - Ouida, pseudonym of Maria Louise Ramé, preferred to be called Marie Louise de la Ramée NULL
"The scorn of genius is the most arrogant and the most boundless of all scorn. " - Ouida, pseudonym of Maria Louise Ramé, preferred to be called Marie Louise de la Ramée NULL
"Don’t expect to get anything back, don’t expect recognition for your efforts, don’t expect your genius to be discovered or your love to be understood. Act because you need to act… Don’t forget that everything you deal with is only one thing and nothing else... above all don’t forget to follow your destiny through to its conclusion… Don't allow your mind to tell your heart what to do. The mind gives up easily. " - Paulo Coelho
"That at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what's happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That's the world's greatest lie… That is why it is so important to let certain things go. To release them. To cut loose. People need to understand that no one is playing with marked cards; sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Don't expect to get anything back, don't expect recognition for your efforts, don't expect your genius to be discovered or your love to be understood. Complete the circle. Not out of pride, inability or arrogance, but simply because whatever it is no longer fits in your life. Close the door, change the record, clean the house, get rid of the dust. Stop being who you were and become who you are… That the truest experience of freedom: having the most important thing in the world without owning it. " - Paulo Coelho
"Indulge, and to thy genius freely give, for not to live at ease is not to live." - Persius, fully Aulus Persius Flaccus NULL
"Any darn fool can make something complex; it takes a genius to make something simple. " - Pete Seeger, born Peter Seeger
"In fact, it is certain that in proportion as the human mind frees itself from ideas inculcated by minorities of priests, military chiefs and judges, all striving to establish their domination, and of scientists paid to perpetuate it, a conception of society arises, in which conception there is no longer room for those dominating minorities. A society entering into possession of the social capital accumulated by the labor of preceding generations, organizing itself so as to make use of this capital in the interests of all, and constituting itself without reconstituting the power of the ruling minorities. It comprises in its midst an infinite variety of capacities, temperaments and individual energies: it excludes none. It even calls for struggles and contentions; because we know that periods of contests, so long as they were freely fought out, without the weight of constituted authority being thrown on the one side of the balance, were periods when human genius took its mightiest flight and achieved the greatest aims. Acknowledging, as a fact, the equal rights of all its members to the treasures accumulated in the past, it no longer recognizes a division between exploited and exploiters, governed and governors, dominated and dominators, and it seeks to establish a certain harmonious compatibility in its midst — not by subjecting all its members to an authority that is fictitiously supposed to represent society, not by trying to establish uniformity, but by urging all men to develop free initiative, free action, free association." - Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin
"It even calls for struggles and contentions; because we know that periods of contests, so long as they were freely fought out, without the weight of constituted authority being thrown on the one side of the balance, were periods when human genius took its mightiest flight and achieved the greatest aims." - Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin
"It is India that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all numbers by means of ten symbols, each symbol receiving a value of position as well as an absolute value a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit. But its very simplicity and the great ease which it has lent to computations put our arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions and we shall appreciate the grandeur of the achievement the more when we remember that it escaped the genius of Archimedes and Apollonius, two of the greatest men produced by antiquity." - Pierre-Simon Laplace, Compte de Laplace, Marquis de Laplace
"He is gifted with genius who knoweth much by natural inspiration." - Pindar NULL
"The American people have a great genius for splendid and unselfish acts. Into the hands of America God has placed the destinies of an afflicted mankind." - Pope Pius XII, born Eugenio Marìa Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli NULL
"Silence is the genius of fools and one of the virtues of the wise." - Pope Boniface VIII, born Benedetto Gaetani NULL
"The world will, sooner or later, be compelled to go to the Divine presence not to human presence for its new heart. Mankind has not holiness enough to entice any heart from its sins has not love enough to persuade, nor power enough to alarm. It is the conception of an ever-present God ; it is the sublime divinity of Jesus ; it is communion with these charac ters ; it is a belief in the infinite love, and power, and justice, and in the all-pervading presence of Deity, that can give to this world noble, converted hearts, and can bear earth along toward the new birth the new genius of human life." - David Swing, aka Professor Swing
"The honors of genius are eternal" - Propertius, fully Sextus Propertius NULL
"A true genius admits that he/she knows nothing. " - Albert Einstein
"An autocratic system of coercion, in my opinion, soon degenerates. For force always attracts men of low morality, and I believe it to be an invariable rule that tyrants of genius are succeeded by scoundrels." - Albert Einstein
"It seldom happens that a premature shoot of genius ever arrives at maturity." - Quintilian, fully Marcus Fabius Quintilianus, also Quintillian and Quinctilian NULL
"You don't have to be a genius to sound like one. Here's a collection of the most profound and provocative wit and wisdom in the English language in two lines or less. Edited by entrepreneur John M. Shanahan, who created the wildly successful Hooked on Phonics program, this wonderful book presents the best that has been thought and said on every imaginable topic." - Rachel Carson, fully Rachel Louise Carson
"You don't have to be a genius to sound like one. Here's a collection of the most profound and provocative wit and wisdom in the English language in two lines or less. Edited by entrepreneur John M. Shanahan, who created the wildly successful Hooked on Phonics program, this wonderful book presents the best that has been thought and said on every imaginable topic." - Ray Bradbury, fully Ray Douglas Bradbury
"You don't have to be a genius to sound like one. Here's a collection of the most profound and provocative wit and wisdom in the English language in two lines or less. Edited by entrepreneur John M. Shanahan, who created the wildly successful Hooked on Phonics program, this wonderful book presents the best that has been thought and said on every imaginable topic." - Red Skelton, fully Richard Bernard "Red" Skelton
"If theology is an effort to construct a rational and systematic view of life out of the various and sometimes contradictory myths which are associated with a single religious tradition, philosophy carries the process one step further by seeking to dispense with the mythical basis altogether and resting its world-view entirely upon the ground of rational consistency. Thus for Hegel, religion is no more than primitive philosophy in terms of crude picture-thinking, which a more advanced rationality refines. This rationalization of myth is indeed inevitable and necessary, lest religion be destroyed by undisciplined and fantastic imagery or primitive and inconsistent myth. Faith must feed on reason. (Unamuno.) But reason must also feed on faith. Every authentic religious myth contains paradoxes of the relation between the finite and the eternal which cannot be completely rationalized without destroying the genius of true religion." - Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr
"Science is the only truth and it is the great lie. It knows nothing, and people think it knows everything. It is misrepresented. People think that science is electricity, automobilism, and dirigible balloons. It is something very different. It is life devouring itself. It is the sensibility transformed into intelligence. It is the need to know stifling the need to live. It is the genius of knowledge vivisecting the vital genius." - Remy de Gourmont
"The progress of science depends less than is usually believed on the efforts and performance of the individual genius ... many important discoveries have been made by men of ordinary talents, simply because chance had made them, at the proper time and in the proper place and circumstances, recipients of a body of doctrines, facts and techniques that rendered almost inevitable the recognition of an important phenomenon. It is surprising that some historian has not taken malicious pleasure in writing an anthology of 'one discovery' scientists. Many exciting facts have been discovered as a result of loose thinking and unimaginative experimentation, and described in wrappings of empty words. One great discovery does not betoken a great scientist; science now and then selects insignificant standard bearers to display its banners." - René Dubos, fully René Jules Dubos
"Firmness of purpose is one of the most necessary sinews of character, and one of the best instruments of success. Without it genius wastes its efforts in a maze of inconsistencies." - Richard Bach, fully Richard David Bach
"You don't have to be a genius to sound like one. Here's a collection of the most profound and provocative wit and wisdom in the English language in two lines or less. Edited by entrepreneur John M." - Richard Cobden
"You don't have to be a genius to sound like one. Here's a collection of the most profound and provocative wit and wisdom in the English language in two lines or less. Edited by entrepreneur John M. Shanahan, who created the wildly successful Hooked on Phonics program, this wonderful book presents the best that has been thought and said on every imaginable topic." - Richard Dawkins
"The difference between genius and stupidity is that even genius has its limits." - Rita Mae Brown
"Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them." - Robertson Davies
"Genius is unquestionably a great trial, when it takes the romantic form, and genius and romance are so associated in the public mind that many people recognize no other kind. There are other forms of genius, of course, and though they create their own problems, they are not impossible people. But O, how deeply we should thank God for these impossible people like Berlioz and Dylan Thomas! What a weary, grey, well-ordered, polite, unendurable hell this would be without them!" - Robertson Davies
"He was a genius - that is to say, a man who does superlatively and without obvious effort something that most people cannot do by the uttermost exertion of their abilities." - Robertson Davies
"Where a man's wound is, that is where his genius will be." - Robert Bly
"My creed: To love justice, to long for the right, to love mercy, to pity the suffering, to assist the weak, to forget wrongs and remember benefits, to love the truth, to be sincere, to utter honest words, to love liberty, to wage relentless war against slavery in all its forms, to love family and friend, to make a happy home, to love the beautiful in art, in nature, to cultivate the mind, to be familiar with the mighty thoughts that genius has expressed, the noble deeds of all the world; to cultivate courage and cheerfulness, to make others happy, to fill life with the splendor of generous acts, the warmth of loving words; to discard error, to destroy prejudice, to receive new truths with gladness, to cultivate hope, to see the calm beyond the storm, the dawn beyond the night, to do the best that can be done and then be resigned. This is the religion of reason, the creed of science. This satisfies the brain and the heart." - Robert Ingersoll, fully Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll
"The highest genius is willingness and ability to do hard work. Any other conception of genius makes it a doubtful, if not a dangerous possession." - Robert S. MacArthur
"A thought has no size in the physical sense but is vast as compared to the physical acts and objects into which it is later precipitated. The power of a thought is enormous and superior to all the successive physical acts, objects, and events that body forth its energy. A thought often endures for a time much greater than the whole life of the man who thought it." - Harold W. Percival, fully Sir Harold Waldwin Percival
"The art of acceptance is the art of making someone who has just done you a small favor wish that he might have done you a greater one." - Russell Lynes, fully Joseph Russell Lynes, Jr.
"One day it will have to be officially admitted that what we have christened reality is an even greater illusion than the world of dreams." - Salvador Dalí, fully Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech
"Everyone should keep a mental wastepaper basket and the older he grows the more things he will consign to it-torn up to irrecoverable tatters." - Samuel Butler
"Genius has been defined as a supreme capacity for taking trouble...It might be more fitly described as a supreme capacity for getting its possessors into trouble of all kinds and keeping them therein so long as the genius remains." - Samuel Butler
"Genius is a nuisance, and it is the duty of schools and colleges to abate it by setting genius-traps in its way." - Samuel Butler
"A man ought to read just as inclination leads him, for what he reads as a task will do him little good." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"The true measure of a man is how he treats someone who can do him absolutely no good." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"Those writers who lie on the watch for novelty can have little hope of greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former observation." - Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
"Good manners, which give color to life, are of greater importance than laws, which are but one of their manifestations. The law touches us here and there, but manners are about us everywhere." - Samuel Smiles
"Respectable scientists like de Broglie himself accept wave mechanics because it confers coherence and unity upon the experimental findings of contemporary science, and in spite of the astonishing changes it implies in connection with ideas of causality, time, and space, but it is because of these changes that it wins favor with the public. The great popular success of Einstein was the same thing. The public drinks in and swallows eagerly everything that tends to dispossess the intelligence in favor of some technique; it can hardly wait to abdicate from intelligence and reason and from everything that makes man responsible for his destiny." - Simone Weil
"Never had he found himself so close to those terrible weapons of feminine artillery." - Stendhal, pen name of Marie Henn Beyle or Marie-Henri Beyle NULL
"The more a race is governed by its passions, the less it has acquired the habit of cautious and reasoned argument, the more intense will be its love of music." - Stendhal, pen name of Marie Henn Beyle or Marie-Henri Beyle NULL