This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The convictions that leaders have formed before reaching high office are the intellectual capital they will consume as long as they continue in office. There is little time for leaders to reflect. They are locked in an endless battle in which the urgent constantly gains on the important. The public life of every political figure is a continual struggle to rescue an element of choice from the pressure of circumstance." - Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger
"The stronger one’s real position, the less one needs to rub in the other side’s discomfiture. It is rarely wise to inflame a setback with an insult. An important aspect of the art of diplomacy consists of doing what is necessary without producing extraneous motives for retaliation, leaving open the option of later cooperation on other issues." - Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger
"Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind." - Henry James
"When young men are beginning life, the most important period, it is often said, is that in which their habits are formed. That is a very important period. But the period in which the ideas of the young are formed and adopted is more important still. For the ideal with which you go forth to measure things determines the nature, so far as you are concerned, of everything you meet." - Henry Ward Beecher
"The challenges of change are always hard. It is important that we begin to unpack those challenges that confront this nation and realize that we each have a role that requires us to change and become more responsible for shaping our own future." - Hillary Rodham Clinton
"The best use of a journal is to print the largest practical amount of important truth - truth which tends to make mankind wiser, and thus happier." - Horace Greeley
"There were themes of profound importance to me which I found missing in the orthodox histories that dominated American culture. The consequence of those omissions has been not simply to give a distorted view of the past but, more important, to mislead us all about the present." - Howard Zinn
"This is a very important thing to keep in mind: all movements look small and hopeless at the beginning, but they grow because they appeal to people's sensibilities. They concentrate on such simple truths that people understand." - Howard Zinn
"In many spiritual traditions there is only one important question to answer, and that question is: Who am I? When we begin to answer it, we are filled with images and ideals – the negative images of ourselves that we wish to change and perfect and the positive images of some great spiritual potential – yet the path is not so much about changing ourselves as it is about listening to the fundamentals of our being." - Jack Kornfield
"Public education is a great instrument of social change... Education is a social proceeds, perhaps the most important process in determining the future of our country; it should command a far larger portion of our national income than it does today." - James Bryant Conant
"Our convictions on important matters are not the result of knowledge or critical thought, nor, it may be added, are they often dictated by supposed self-interest. Most of them are pure prejudices in the proper sense of that word. We do not form them ourselves. They are the whisperings of “the voice of the herd.”" - James Harvey Robinson
"What matters is not so much whether an interference has or does not have purpose; rather, it is important to look with a purposive eye, seeking value in the unexpected." - James Hillman
"The ability to delude yourself may be an important survival tool." - Jane Wagner
"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, Governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens." - John Maynard Keynes
"As soon as mankind have unanimously accepted a truth, does the truth perish within them? The highest aim and best result of improved intelligence, is has hitherto been thought, is to unite mankind more and more in the acknowledgment of all important truths; and does the intelligence only last as long as it has not achieved its object? Do the fruits of conquest perish by the very completeness of the victory?" - John Stuart Mill
"Justice is a name for certain moral requirements, which, regarded collectively, stand higher in the scale of social utility, and are therefore of more paramount obligation, than any others; though particular cases may occur in which some other social duty is so important, as to overrule any one of the general maxims of justice. Thus, to save a life, it may not only be allowable, but a duty, to steal, or take by force, the necessary food or medicine, or to kidnap, and compel to officiate, the only qualified medical practitioner. In such cases, as we do not call anything justice which is not a virtue, we usually say, not that justice must give way to some other moral principle, but that what is just in ordinary case is, by reason of that other principle, not just in the particular case. By this useful accommodation of language, the character of indefeasibility attributed to justice is kept up, and we are saved from the necessity of maintaining that there can be laudable injustice." - John Stuart Mill
"One of the greatest dangers... of democracy, as of all other forms of government, lies in the sinister interest of the holders of power: it is the danger of class legislation; of government intended for (whether really effecting it or not) the immediate benefit of the dominant class, to the lasting detriment of the whole. And one of the most important questions demanding consideration, in determining the best constitution of a representative government, is how to provide efficacious securities against this evil." - John Stuart Mill
"[Leaders] can express the values that hold the society together. Most important, they can conceive and articulate goals that lift people out of their petty preoccupations, carry them above the conflicts that tear a society apart, and unite them in the pursuit of objectives worthy of their best efforts." - John W. Gardner, fully John William Gardner
"Voluntary simplicity keeps me mindful of what is important, of an ecology of mind and body and world in which everything is interconnected and every choice has far-reaching consequences. You don’t get to control it at all. But choosing simplicity whenever possible adds to life an element of deepest freedom which so easily eludes us, and many opportunities to discover that less may actually be more." - Jon Kabat-Zinn
"Of all kind of knowledge that we can ever obtain, the knowledge of God and the knowledge of ourselves are the most important." - Jonathan Edwards
"One of the most important, but one of the most difficult things to a powerful mind is to be its own master; a pond may lay quiet in a plain, but a lake wants mountains to compass and hold it in." - Joseph Addison
"Tradition is an important help to history, but its statements should be carefully scrutinized before we rely on them." - Joseph Addison
"The mind's direction is more important than its progress." - Joseph Joubert
"A maxim is the exact and noble expression of an important and unquestionable truth." - Joseph Joubert
"The direction [guidance] of the mind is more important than its progress." - Joseph Joubert
"Let your cry be for free souls rather than for freedom. Moral liberty is the only really important liberty." - Joseph Joubert
"Science has always promised two things not necessarily related - an increase first in our powers, second in our happiness or wisdom, and we have come to realize that it is the first and less important of the two promises which it has kept most abundantly." - Joseph Wood Krutch
"Suppose you were compelled to give up - to forget all the words you know except seven - what seven words would you keep?... The most important words to keep are: You and I... without these two there would need to be no others... You, I, Give, God, Love, Beauty, Earth." - Kahlil Gibran
"Attitudes are more important than facts." - Karl Menninger, fully Karl Augustus Menninger
"It is very important if a man is wise or only looks it." - Latin Proverbs
"It is perhaps not important in the end that men either admit or deny God. This neither adds nor takes away anything from His existence." - Lev Shestov, fully Lev Isaakovich Shestov, born Yehuda Leyb Schwarzmann
"Sometimes it is more important to discover what one cannot do, than what one can do." - Lin Yutang
"The manner of your speaking is full as important as the matter." - Lord Chesterfield, Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield
"Nine-tenths of the serious controversies which arise in life result from misunderstandings; result from one man not knowing the facts which to the other man seem important, or otherwise failing to appreciate his point of view." - Louis D. Brandeis, fully Louis Dembitz Brandeis
"Most people believe the achievements of war more important than those of peace, but this is a mistake." - Cicero, fully Marcus Tullius Cicero, anglicized as Tully NULL
"Action is the greatest tonic for depression... Every action you perform is important." - Mary T. Browne
"Religion, the greatest and most important of the efforts by which the human race has manifested its impulse to perfect itself." - Matthew Arnold
"Courage is the most important of all the virtues, because without it we can't practice any other virtue with consistency." - Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson
"Each of us should realize and should exhibit through our actions the following truth: Moral influence and ethical responsibility are more important and more forceful and more important and more forceful and more lasting than mere power. We are here to be moral forces in the universe, in the world of nations, in our communities and in our families." - Menachem Begin
"Fair people do not wait for the truth to come to them; they seek out relevant information and conflicting perspectives before making important judgments." - Michael S. Josephson
"There are two main strategies we can adopt to improve the quality of life. The first is to try making external conditions match our goals. The second is to change how we experience external conditions to make them fit our goals better. For instance, feeling secure is an important component of happiness... risks are inevitable." - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
"It is important for each person to recognize that the values, rules, habits, and attitudes we inherit are useful and necessary, but are not absolute." - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
"Memories, thoughts and feelings are all shaped by how we use it. And it is an energy under our control, to do with as we please; hence, attention is our most important tool in the task of improving the quality of experience." - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
"Almost any description of the creative experience...gives experiential accounts which are in important respects analogous with those obtained from people at play." - Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
"Sometimes you cannot believe what you see, you have to believe what you feel. And if you are ever going to have other people trust you, you must feel that you can trust them too-even when you are in the dark. Even when you're falling. " - Morrie Schwartz, fully Morris "Morrie" S. Schwartz
"So many people walk around with a meaningless life. They seem half-asleep, even when they're busy doing things they think are important. This is because they're chasing the wrong things. The way you get meaning in your life is to devote yourself to loving others, devote yourself to your community around you, and devote yourself to creating something that gives you purpose and meaning." - Morrie Schwartz, fully Morris "Morrie" S. Schwartz
"Why and how are words so important they cannot be too often used." - Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I