This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"It cannot be that the people should grow in grace unless they give themselves to reading. A reading people will always be a knowing people. " - John Wesley
"Success comes from knowing that you did your best to become the best that you are capable of becoming. " - John Wooden, fully John Robert Wooden
"Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you did your best to become the best you are capable of becoming. " - John Wooden, fully John Robert Wooden
"Success is... knowing your purpose in life, growing to reach your maximum potential, and sowing seeds that benefit others." - John C. Maxwell
"In charity to all mankind, bearing no malice or ill will to any human being, and even compassionating those who hold in bondage their fellow men, not knowing what they do." - John Quincy Adams
"The only way in which a human being can make some approach to knowing the whole of a subject, is by hearing what can be said about it by persons of every variety of opinion, and studying all modes in which it can be looked at by every character of mind. No wise man ever acquired his wisdom in any mode but this; nor is it in the nature of human intellect to become wise in any other manner." - John Stuart Mill
"I feel ashamed that so many of us cannot imagine a better way to do things than locking children up all day in cells instead of letting them grow up knowing their families, mingling with the world, assuming real obligations, striving to be independent and self-reliant and free." - John Taylor Gatto
"Now, in a widening sphere of decisions, the costs of error are so exorbitant that we need to act on theory alone, which is to say on prediction alone. It follows that the reputation of scientific prediction needs to be enhanced. But that can happen, paradoxically, only if scientists disavow the certainty and precision that they normally insist on. Above all, we need to learn to act decisively to forestall predicted perils, even while knowing that they may never materialize. We must take action, in a manner of speaking, to preserve our ignorance. There are perils that we can be certain of avoiding only at the cost of never knowing with certainty that they were real." - Jonathan Schell, fully Jonathan Edward Schell
"The characteristic of the hour is that the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be commonplace, has the assurance to proclaim the rights of the commonplace and to impose them wherever it will. " - José Ortega y Gasset
"The characteristic note of our time is the dire truth that, the mediocre soul, the commonplace mind, knowing itself to be mediocre, has the gall to assert its right to mediocrity, and goes on to impose itself where it can." - José Ortega y Gasset
"False opinions are like false money, struck first of all by guilty men and thereafter circulated by honest people who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they are doing." - Joseph de Maistre, fully Joseph-Marie, comte de Maistre
"We may regret death while at the same time knowing that its inevitability is what makes life so valuable in the first place." - Julian Baggini
"For in the sight of God all man is one man, and one man is all man. This man was hurt in his might and made full feeble; and he was stunned in his understanding so that he turned from the beholding of his Lord. But his will was kept whole in God’s sight; — for his will I saw our Lord commend and approve. But himself was letted and blinded from the knowing of this will; and this is to him great sorrow and grievous distress: for neither doth he see clearly his loving Lord, which is to him full meek and mild, nor doth he see truly what himself is in the sight of his loving Lord. And well I wot when these two are wisely and truly seen, we shall get rest and peace here in part, and the fulness of the bliss of Heaven, by His plenteous grace." - Julian of Norwich NULL
"Study is for the sake of knowing tao. Studying poorly and not knowing tao is the same as not having studied. Furthermore, knowing tao is for the sake of practicing it. Studying and knowing tao without practicing it is the same as not having learned it." - Kaibara Ekken, or Ekiken, also known as Atsunobu NULL
"A wise man, knowing the nature of excessive pride and deceit, giving them all up, brings about his liberation." - Sutrakritanga Sutra
"True knowledge consists in knowing things, not words." - Lady Mary Wortley Montagu
"The form of the formless. The image of the imageless. It is called indefinable and beyond imagination. Stand before it and there is no beginning. Follow it and there is no end. Stay with the ancient Tao, move with the present. Knowing the ancient beginning is the essence of Tao." - Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
"Life is not a thing of knowing only — nay, mere knowledge has properly no place at all save as it becomes the handmaiden of feeling and emotion." - Learned Hand, fully Billings Learned Hand
"Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible." - Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
"I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Being willing is not enough; we must do." - Leonardo da Vinci, fully Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci
"To find the point where hypothesis and fact meet; the delicate equilibrium between dream and reality; the place where fantasy and earthly things are metamorphosed into a work of art; the hour when faith in the future becomes knowledge of the past; to lay down one's power for others in need; to shake off the old ordeal and get ready for the new; to question, knowing that never can the full answer be found; to accept uncertainties quietly, even our incomplete knowledge of God; this is what man's journey is about, I think." - Lillian Smith, fully Lillian Eugenia Smith
"I think knowing what you cannot do is more important than knowing what you can." - Lucille Ball, fully Lucille Désirée Ball
"Every true man, sir, who is a little above the level of the beasts and plants does not live for the sake of living, without knowing how to live; but he lives so as to give a meaning and a value of his own to life." - Luigi Pirandello
"Doing what's right isn't the problem. It's knowing what's right. " - Lyndon Johnson, fully Lyndon Baines Johnson, aka LBJ
"The wise should surrender speech in mind, mind in the knowing self, the knowing self in the Spirit of the universe, and the Spirit of the universe in the Spirit of peace." - Maitri Upanishad or Maitrayaniya Upanishad
"Finance is a gun. Politics is knowing when to pull the trigger." - Mario Puzo, fully Mario Gianluigi Puzo
"Body work must be approached with the same respect and attentiveness that one gives to dreams. The body has a wisdom of its own. However slowly and circuitously that wisdom manifests, once it is experienced it is a foundation, a basis of knowing that gives confidence and total support to the ego. To reach its wisdom requires absolute concentration: dropping the mind into the body, breathing into whatever is ready to be released, and allowing the process of expression until the negative, dammed energy is out, making room for the positive energy, genuine Light, to flood in." - Marion Woodman
"Give the world the best you have, and the best will come back to you. The go-getter doesn't look around to see how much the other fellow is doing. Instead, she sets her own pace, knowing that is she can do a little thing well, she can do bigger things better. It's the spirit that makes people great. Be doers, not wishers. Have the will to win. " - Mary Kay Ash, fully Mary Kathlyn Wagner Ash
"When you do nothing you feel overwhelmed and powerless. But when you get involved you feel the sense of hope and accomplishment that comes from knowing you are working to make things better." - Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson
"We are all strangers in a strange land, longing for home, but not quite knowing what or where home is. We glimpse it sometimes in our dreams, or as we turn a corner, and suddenly there is a strange, sweet familiarity that vanishes almost as soon as it comes." - Madeleine L’Engle
"To act without clear understanding, to form habits without investigation, to follow a path all one's life without knowing where it really leads -- such is the behavior of the multitude." - Mencius, born Meng Ke or Ko NULL
"We change who we are to fit the exogenous of our time, and not just strategically or to our own advantage, sometimes sympathetically without our even knowing it for the betterment of the whole group." - Meryl Streep, born Mary Louise Streep
"If you enter this world knowing you are loved and you leave this world knowing the same, then everything that happens in between can be dealt with." - Michael Jackson, fully Michael Joseph Jackson, aka MJ or King of Pop
"The finest thing in the world is knowing how to belong to oneself." - Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
"Between these two unique and symmetrical events, something happens whose ambiguity has left the historians of medicine at a loss: blind repression in an absolutist regime, according to some; but according to others, the gradual discovery by science and philanthropy of madness in its positive truth. As a matter of fact, beneath these reversible meanings, a structure is forming which does not resolve the ambiguity but determines it. It is this structure which accounts for the transition from the medieval and humanist experience of madness to our own experience, which confines insanity within mental illness. In the Middle Ages and until the Renaissance, man's dispute with madness was a dramatic debate in which he confronted the secret powers of the world; the experience of madness was clouded by images of the Fall and the Will of God, of the Beast and the Metamorphosis, and of all the marvelous secrets of Knowledge. In our era, the experience of madness remains silent in the composure of a knowledge which, knowing too much about madness, forgets it. But from one of these experiences to the other, the shift has been made by a world without images, without positive character, in a kind of silent transparency which reveals— as mute institution, act without commentary, immediate knowledge—a great motionless structure; this structure is one of neither drama nor knowledge; it is the point where history is immobilized in the tragic category which both establishes and impugns it." - Michel Foucault
"There are moments in life where the question of knowing whether one might think otherwise than one thinks and perceive otherwise than one sees is indispensable if one is to continue to observe or reflect… What is philosophy today… if it does not consist in, instead of legitimizing what we already know, undertaking to know how and how far it might be possible to think otherwise?… The ‘essay’ —which must be understood as a transforming test of oneself in the play of truth and not as a simplifying appropriation of someone else for the purpose of communication—is the living body of philosophy, if, at least, philosophy is today still what it was once, that is to say, an askesis, an exercise of the self, in thought." - Michel Foucault
"But then, what is philosophy today - philosophical activity, I mean - if it is not the critical work of thought on itself? And if it does not consist in the endeavour of knowing how and to what extent it might be possible to think differently, rather than legitimating what is already known? There is always something ludicrous in philosophical discourse when it tries, from the outside, to dictate to others, to tell them where their truth is and how to find it, or when it presumes to give them naively positivistic instruction. But it is its right to explore what might be changed, in its own thought, through the practice of a knowledge that is foreign to it. The "essay" - which should be understood as the test by means of which one modifies oneself through the play of truth and not as the simplistic appropriation of others for the purpose of communication - is the living body of philosophy, at least if we assume that philosophy is still what it was in times past, i.e., an "ascesis", an exercise of the self, in thought." - Michel Foucault
"Showing that scientific demonstration is basically only a ritual, that the supposedly universal subject of knowledge is really only an individual historically qualified according to certain modalities, and that the discovery of truth is really a certain modality of the production of truth; putting what is given as the truth of observation or demonstration back on the basis of rituals, of the qualifications of the knowing individual, of the truth-event system, is what I would call the archaeology of knowledge." - Michel Foucault
"I see nothing wrong in the practice of a person who, knowing more than others in a specific game of truth, tells those others what to do, teaches them and transmits knowledge and techniques to others. The problem in such practices where power which is not in itself a bad thing must inevitably come into play is knowing how to avoid the kind of domination effects where a kid is subjected to the arbitrary and unnecessary authority of a teacher, or a student is put under the thumb of a professor who abuses his authority. I believe this problem must be framed in terms of law, rational techniques of government and ethos, practices of the self and freedom." - Michel Foucault
"The majority of people lead their existence within a small idyllic circle bounded by their family, their home, and their work... They live in a secure realm somewhere between good and evil. They are sincerely horrified by the sight of a killer. And yet all you have to do is remove them from this peaceful circle and they, too, turn into murderers, without quite knowing how it happened. " - Milan Kundera
"Inexperience is a quality of the human condition. We are born one time only; we can never start a new life equipped with the experience we've gained from a previous one. We leave childhood without knowing what youth is; we marry without knowing what it is to be married; and even when we enter old age, we don't know what it is we're heading for: The old are innocent children of their old age. In that sense, man's world is the planet of inexperience." - Milan Kundera
"All worldly pursuits have but one unavoidable and inevitable end, which is sorrow; acquisitions end in dispersion; buildings in destruction; meetings in separation; births in death. Knowing this, one should, from the very first, renounce acquisitions and storing-up, and building, and meeting; and, faithful to the commands of an eminent Guru, set about realizing the Truth. That alone is the best of religious observances." - Milarepa, fully Jetsun Milarepa NULL
"May I be far removed from contending creeds and dogmas. Ever since my Lord's grace entered my mind, My mind has never strayed to seek such distractions. Accustomed long to contemplating love and compassion, I have forgotten all difference between myself and others. Accustomed long to meditating on my Guru as enhaloed over my head, I have forgotten all those who rule by power and prestige. Accustomed long to meditating on my guardian deities as inseparable from myself, I have forgotten the lowly fleshly form. Accustomed long to meditating on the secret whispered truths, I have forgotten all that is said in written or printed books. Accustomed, as I have been, to the study of the eternal Truth, I've lost all knowledge of ignorance. Accustomed, as I've been, to contemplating both nirvana and samsara as inherent in myself, I have forgotten to think of hope and fear. Accustomed, as I've been, to meditating on this life and the next as one, I have forgotten the dread of birth and death. Accustomed long to studying, by myself, my own experiences, I have forgotten the need to seek the opinions of friends and brethren. Accustomed long to applying each new experience to my own spiritual growth, I have forgotten all creeds and dogmas. Accustomed long to meditating on the Unborn, the Indestructible, the Unchanging, I have forgotten all definitions of this or that particular goal. Accustomed long to meditating on all visible phenomena as the Dharmakaya, I have forgotten all meditations on what is produced by the mind. Accustomed long to keeping my mind in the uncreated state of freedom, I have forgotten all conventions and artificialities. Accustomed long to humbleness, of body and mind, I have forgotten the pride and haughty manner of the mighty. Accustomed long to regarding my fleshly body as my hermitage, I have forgotten the ease and comfort of retreats and monasteries. Accustomed long to knowing the meaning of the Wordless, I have forgotten the way to trace the roots of verbs, and the sources of words and phrases. You, 0 learned one, may trace out these things in your books [if you wish]." - Milarepa, fully Jetsun Milarepa NULL
"The success of most things depends upon knowing how long it will take to succeed." - Charles De Montesquieu, formally Charles-Louis de Secondat, Baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu
"There are genuine mysteries in the world that mark the limits of human knowing and thinking. Wisdom is fortified, not destroyed, by understanding its limitations. Ignorance does not make a fool as surely as self-deception." - Mortimer J. Adler, fully Mortimer Jerome Adler
"Here's one who wants to settle doctrinal differences without recognising a supreme judge. Here's another who goes on talking about an 'independent church', without knowing where it is to be found. Here's yet another who defends 'power' and 'rights' but can't say who should exercise them." - Moses Mendelssohn
"Learning is the gift of life. A special kind of learning: that of knowing oneself. (People) learn to know ´how´ they are acting and thus are able to do ´what´ they want – the intense living of their unavowed and sometimes declared dreams. " - Moshé Feldenkreis, fully Moshé Pinchas Feldenkrais
"Wisdom is knowing when you can't be wise." - Muhammad Ali, born Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr.
"Everything in this world changes; only God remains the same forever. If mankind will realize this truth, then we can avert disaster by coming together with faith in God and living in unity and compassion. Do not live divided. With compassion for each other, live in unity and truth, in the presence of God. Live according to justice and conscience, respecting the lives and bodies of all others as your own, and knowing the hunger and the suffering of others as your own. Have patience, contentment, trust in God, and live praising God at all times, and peace will be easy." - Bawa Mahaiyadden, fully Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen