This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Science is an important part of the humanities because it is based on an essential human trait: curiosity about the how and why of our environment. We must foster wonder, joy of insight." - Victor Weisskopf, fully Victor "Viki" Frederick Weisskopf
"Unconsciousness is one of the most important conditions of a good style in speaking or in writing." - Richard Grant White
"“Why are we here?” is surely the most important question human beings must face, whatever their origin, whatever their belief. Our obligation is to confer meaning to life and, in doing so, overcome temptations of passivity and indifference. A person who chooses indifference is dead without knowing it. In his or her case, life has no meaning, nor does death. And yet for those who believe in sharing experiences, life does have meaning in spite of the meaningless death some of us may have witnessed. Those who share teach us that one must make every minute rich and enriching, not for oneself but for someone else, thereby creating living links between the individuals and groups. Ultimately, life is a gift and meaning is its reward. So is the art and ability of asking questions. The meaning of life is to be found in the question that becomes encounter. Then every moment becomes a moment of grace." -
"The future is called "perhaps," which is the only possible thing to call the future. And the important thing is not to allow that to scare you." - Tennessee Williams, fully Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams
"Important science is not just any similarity glimpsed for the first time. It offers analogues that map the gateways of unexplored terrain." - E. O. Wilson, fully Edward Osborne "E.O." Wilson
"Real intelligence is a creative use of knowledge, not merely an accumulation of acts. The slow thinker who can finally come up with an idea of his own is more important to the world than a walking encyclopedia who hasn't learned how to use information productively." - D. Kenneth Winebrenner
"Never lose sight of this important truth, that no one can be truly great until he has gained a knowledge of himself which can only be acquired by occasional retirement." - Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
"Circumstances may clarify who we are and what is important for this life and how we are going to live with integrity." - Carol Adrienne
"They are quite different from us, and yet they are human beings! They have their customs and we have ours. Each side thinks his are the only right ones… These customs are not so important after all. It seems that the rules of life a society sets up for itself cannot be the last criterion of “good” and “bad,” “beneficial” and “harmful.”" - Ahmad Faris al-Shidyaq, known also as Fares Chidiac, Faris Al Chidiac
"In this world within, your world, you are the most important figure. There is a place that no one else can fill There is an influence that no one else can impart. There is a life that no one else can live quite as well as you can live it. What you do with your life within, in terms of self-realization, self-awareness, self-denial and self-expression, is the greatest challenge that can come to you." - Marcus Bach, fully James Marcus Bach
"A goal-oriented life locates the purposed of life in the achievement of a goal, which is necessarily tied to a discrete moment in time… But we also exist across time, and when our life’s goals are fixed so narrowly on moments that are only briefly the present, we fail to do justice to the enduring aspect of human life… Moments slip away and so if life’s purpose is tied to moments. Although moments can play a part, in order to find a purpose which is truly fulfilling, we also need to find a way of living which is worthwhile in itself. Life is rarely an undiluted pleasure that our own attitudes are themselves important to our sense of well-being." - Julian Baggini
"Love also sheds light on our desire for happiness. The desire for love is connected with the desire for happiness. But no one who truly loves can in good faith reduce love to the pursuit of happiness. Love is more bittersweet than that. True love, be it romantic, familial or platonic, persists through happiness and has as its subject the welfare of the persons loved, not the lover. Love, then, reflects the important role of happiness in the meaningful life, but also the shallowness of seeing happiness as all." - Julian Baggini
"The most characteristic mark of a great mind is to choose some one important object, and pursue it for life." - Anna Letitia Barbauld
"Shift your emphasis from problems to challenges. The relationship of this concept to tension is very close. When you have problems you worry about them. When you have challenges, you are working, applying and attacking this plan to get results. The shift in thinking from problems to challenges is important in making tension an asset. Don’t let unsolved problems pursue you, make your decisions and forget them, and then do your job as well as you can." - Joe D. Batten and Leonard C. Hudson
"Whether or not `life has meaning’ is to an important extent determined by the quality of one’s experience… Meaningfulness, then, appears to be the more appropriate category, and rather than asking, “what is the meaning of life?” it seems more helpful to ask, “under what conditions can life be experienced as meaningful?… intrinsic value without loss of content." - James O. Bennett, fully James O'
"People are more important than ideas." - Martha Berry, fully Martha McChesney Bery
"The most important thing in life is not simply to capitalize on your gains. Any fool can do that. The most important thing is to profit from your losses. That requires intelligence and it marks the difference between a man of sense and a fool." - William Bolitho, pen name for Charles William Ryall
"In any society, the artist has a responsibility. Their effectiveness is certainly limited and a painter or writer cannot change the world. But they can keep an essential margin of nonconformity alive. Thanks to them the powerful can never affirm that everyone agrees with their acts. That small difference is very important." - Luis Buñuel, fully Luis Buñuel Portolés
"Never lose sight of the fact that the most important yardstick of your success will be how you treat other people." - Barbara Bush, fully Barbara Pierce Bush
"The important thing to recognize is that it takes a team, and the team ought to get credit for the wins and the losses. Successes have many fathers, failures have none." - Philip Caldwell
"In a Nutshell: Six Ways to Make People Like You – Principle 1: Become genuinely interested in other people. Principle 2: Smile. Principle 3: Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language. Principle 4: Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves. Principle 5: Talk in terms of the other person’s interests. Principle 6: Make the other person feel important – and do it sincerely." -
"Values change, just as the body of knowledge available to us changes, and it is imperative that we be not only open to the changes as they creep up on us but actually strive to play an important role in such valuational change." - Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter
"We think for a landlady considering a lodger it is important to know his income, but still more important to know his philosophy." - Gilbert Keith "G.K." Chesteron
"The most important things in life aren't things." - Anthony J. D'Angelo
"What is important and of greatest significance is that an ideal of final truth is always before use and that the search for truth is acknowledged by all men as a duty not imposed from outside but born from within. The search for final truth rests with each individual personality and rendering the partial interpretations of our experience fundamentally consistent with one another. It is this fact that justifies the use of the word `God’ to designate the all embracing personality in whose existence ultimate reality exists." - L. Francis Edmunds
"I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world." - Albert Einstein
"An important way to distinguish philosophy from religion is that philosophy, at its best, raises questions, whereas religion provides answers. Answers can sometimes lose their force, however, if the questions to which they provide answers have somehow been lost, muted, or superseded. But philosophy can never end. As long as we live, we are going to ask ourselves about the meaning of life. Some have written about the “end of philosophy.” It has been thought that philosophy exists only if you can construe life as a journey traveling to a new and different dimension. Some have said that the cognitive sciences, linguistics, neuroscience, and so forth will advance so much that traditional technical problems of philosophy will diminish. Insofar as philosophy is a pursuit of the art of living providing (often conflicting) guidance for living, there is a future for philosophy." - Stephen A. Erickson
"The length of our life is less important than its depth." - Mary David Fisher, born Lizabeth Davis Frehling
"Good will is one of the few really important assets of life. A determined man can win almost anything he goes after, but unless, in his getting he gains good will he has not profited much." - Henry Ford
"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
"At the bottom, people tend to believe that class is defined by the amount of money you have. In the middle, people grant that money has something to do with it, but think education and the kind of work you do almost equally important. Nearer the top, people perceive that taste, values, ideas, style, and behavior are indispensable criteria of class, regardless of money or occupation or education." - Paul Fussell
"Almost anything you do will seem insignificant but it is very important that you do it…You must be the change you wish to see in the world." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
"Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it." - Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
"Enjoyment is not a goal, it is a feeling that accompanies important ongoing activity." - Roy M. Goodman
"We have become so preoccupied with power and control over nature that we have lost an important dimension of our being, the disposition of thankfulness, of commemoration, of perceiving and enjoying something for its own sake. Instead of viewing these immediate objects of our environment in terms of their own being, we have come to regard them solely in terms of what they are for us. And to such an exploitative mentality, nature’s own voice becomes mute. Approached as material merely, to be worked up and pressed into the service of a self-styled lord of creation, she contains no revelation and no blessing." - J. Glenn Gray
"Responsibility . . . requires that a person think, speak and act as if personally accountable to all who may be affected by his or her thoughts, words and deeds… Awareness is important… Am I moving in the right direction? Is my sense of responsibility growing, deepening, becoming sharper and more insistent?.. A sense of responsibility is an attitude, a feeling." - Robert K. Greenleaf
"Our society has progressed largely because of our creativity and inquisitiveness – and because we’re competitive. We’re driven by the desire to develop products and services which are more ingenious than what others have put forth. Competition is inherently good, but when it is tainted with excess greed or negative motives, there can be harmful results. How we compete is very important to our Souls." - Tom Gregory
"Speculating will not do. It takes the forward movement of deliberate, dynamic living to make this journey – especially the longest and most important journey of all, the journey from our heads to our hearts and from our hearts to our wills. If the journey is life, then only through living will truths gain force that are otherwise barren platitudes." - Os Guiness
"The all-important question is not whether human life will survive upon this planet. Rather, it is whether the souls of men will be fit to use God’s gift of personal survival in an eternal fellowship." - Georgia Harkness
"Spiritual goals tend to become increasingly important and integrity becomes the yardstick of happiness. This leads to the evolution of consciousness in which the ultimate goal becomes the perfection of one’s relationship with God." - David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
"How a report is framed, which facts it contains and emphasizes and which it ignores, and in what context, are as important to sharing opinion as the bare facts themselves." - Mark Hertsgaard
"Man is in process of becoming the perfected being whom God is seeking to create. However, this is not taking place – it is important to add – by a natural and inevitable evolution, but through a hazardous adventure in individual freedom." - John Hick, fully John Harwood Hick
"It is not learning but doing that is the most important thing." - Hillel NULL
"If your goals are not important, your influence will be minimal." - Peter W. Jedlicka
"Four senses in which something may be meaningless: (1) worthless where it has no intrinsic value, (2) pointless where it is not directed to any goal, (3) trivial where its point is insufficiently important to justify it, and (4) futile where the way the world is prevents the required end from being achieved. Something is fully meaningful if it has none of these shortcomings." - W. D. Joske, fully William "Bill"
"The unreflective person thinks and imagines that when he prays, the important thing, the thing he must concentrate upon, is that God should hear what he is praying for. And yet in the true, eternal sense it is just the reverse; the true relation in prayer is not when God hears what is prayed for, but when the person continues to pray until he is the one who hears, who hears what God wills." -