This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The object of education should be to eliminate these compulsive states and to help the person to acquire the ability for potent action; that is to be able to control the body excitations and act as if in the case of spontaneous action." - Moshé Feldenkreis, fully Moshé Pinchas Feldenkrais
" Killing, cutting, slaughtering, destroying, injuring or abusing another's life is not Islam. But to each one of us is enjoined the Qurban, the sacrifice - the sacrifice of our Nafs, our base desires, our animosities, our egoism. Other than Allah and His Truth, every other thing must be the object of our sacrifice. His Word, His Qualities, His Traits, His Actions, His unique Three- thousand Qualities, - other than these, everything else are all enemies unto you and these must be sacrificed. And to wage total war against such enemies unto oneself, is Islam. Anger, hastiness, rage, fury, impatience, feelings of superiority of 'I' and 'you', pride, jealousy, treachery, selfishness, sorcery and black magic, mesmerism trickery, self-praise, conceit, titles, position and status, exclusiveness as between 'you' and 'I', falsehood, envy, - to cut away these base qualities and more, - is Islam. Such then is the formidable war within. This is one's very own battle, one's own sacrifice or Qurban, this is one's own war of purification, one's own purging of all that are enemies unto oneself. It is these which are the wars of Islam. Islam is certainly vehemently not a war which kills man or another human being or which slaughters or divides human kind or causes dissensions in human societies or annihilates humans. This is not Islam... For, Islam by its definition, has no enmity, no differences, no distinctions. To segregate and divide those who themselves divide and cause separation among the children of Adam, - is not Islam." - Bawa Mahaiyadden, fully Muhammad Raheem Bawa Muhaiyaddeen
"The hand that gives is among the hand that takes. Money has no fatherland, financiers are without patriotism and without decency, their sole object is gain." - Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I
"When a government is dependent upon bankers for money, they and not the leaders of the government control the situation, since the hand that gives is above the hand that takes. Money has no motherland; financiers are without patriotism and without decency; their sole object is gain." - Napoleon Bonaparte, Napoleon I
"I know that I have the ability to achieve the object of my Definite Purpose in life, therefore, I DEMAND of myself persistent, continuous action toward its attainment, and I here and now promise to render such action." - Napoleon Hill
"Nature cannot be tricked or cheated. She will give up to you the object of your struggles only after you have paid her price." - Napoleon Hill
"Among the authorities it is generally agreed that the Earth is at rest in the middle of the universe, and they regard it as inconceivable and even ridiculous to hold the opposite opinion. However, if we consider it more closely the question will be seen to be still unsettled, and so decidedly not to be despised. For every apparent change in respect of position is due to motion of the object observed, or of the observer, or indeed to an unequal change of both. " - Nicholas Copernicus
"A line partakes of the simplicity of a point more than does a surface; and a surface [partakes thereof more] than does a material object—as was evident. From this consideration of a point and a material object elevate yourself unto a likeness of True Being and of the universe; and by means of [this] quite clear symbolism [of a point] make a conjecture about what has been said." - Nicholas of Cusa, also Nicholas of Kues and Nicolaus Cusanus NULL
"We see that God has implanted in all things a natural desire to exist with the fullest measure of existence that is compatible with their particular nature. To this end they are endowed with suitable faculties and activities; and by means of these there is in them a discernment that is natural and in keeping with the purpose of their knowledge, which ensures their natural inclination serving its purpose and being able to reach its fulfilment in that object towards which it is attracted by the weight of its own nature." - Nicholas of Cusa, also Nicholas of Kues and Nicolaus Cusanus NULL
"What grief is not taken away by time? What passion will survive an unequal battle with it? I knew a man in the bloom of his still youthful powers, filled with true nobility and virtue, I knew him when he was in love, tenderly, passionately, furiously, boldly, modestly, and before me, almost before my eyes, the object of his passion - tender, beautiful as an angel - was struck down by insatiable death. I never saw such terrible fits of inner suffering, such furious scorching anguish, such devouring despair as shook the unfortunate lover. I never thought a man could create such a hell for himself, in which there would be no shadow, no image, nothing in the least resembling hope" - Nikolai Gogol, fully Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol or Nikolay Vasilyevich Gogol
"If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. ... I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor." - Nikola Tesla
"Fights between individuals, as well as governments and nations, invariably result from misunderstandings in the broadest interpretation of this term. Misunderstandings are always caused by the inability of appreciating one another's point of view. This again is due to the ignorance of those concerned, not so much in their own, as in their mutual fields. The peril of a clash is aggravated by a more or less predominant sense of combativeness, posed by every human being. To resist this inherent fighting tendency the best way is to dispel ignorance of the doings of others by a systematic spread of general knowledge. With this object in view, it is most important to aid exchange of thought and intercourse." - Nikola Tesla
"You cannot drop anything if there is a desire to gain something else; then that desire is again desire for happiness, pleasure. Be aware of the fact that both are one; pleasure and pain are one. Your interpretation differs, but the thing is always the same. This awareness of the fact becomes the dropping, the turning. And the soul, for the first time, realizes that it has never been identified with any object at all; it is the subjectivity." - Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
"Those who really desire to attain an independence, have only set their minds upon it, and adopt the proper means, as they do in regard to any other object which they wish to accomplish, and the thing is easily done." - P.T. Barnum, fully Phineas Taylor Barnum
"Abstract art is only painting. And what’s so dramatic about that? There is no abstract art. One must always begin with something. Afterwards one can remove all semblance of reality; there is no longer any danger as the idea of the object has left an indelible imprint. It is the object which aroused the artist, stimulated his ideas and set of his emotions. These ideas and emotions will be imprisoned in his work for good... Whether he wants it or not, man is the instrument of nature; she imposes on him character and appearance. In my paintings of Dinard, as in my paintings of Purville, I have given expression to more or less the same vision... You cannot go against nature. She is stronger than the strongest of men. We can permit ourselves some liberties, but in details only." - Pablo Picasso, fully Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso
"There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterwards you can remove all traces of reality. There's no danger then, anyway, because the idea of the object will have left an indelible mark." - Pablo Picasso, fully Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso
"If I do not clasp my hand in worship to Thee, my God, then it is better that I do not have that hand. If I see with my eye an object in which I do not see You directly or indirectly, my God, then it is better that I do not have that eye. If I hear with my ear a word which, directly or indirectly, is not Your name, my God, it is better that I am not possessed of that ear. If I utter with my mouth a single word in which is not contained an entire hymn of praise to You, my God, then let that tongue cease to be. In every flicker of my mind, it is You whose flash becomes my thought, and if there is a flash in my mind that I do not know to be Your flicker, then take my mind away from me, my God, but come and dwell directly within me." - Pandit Usharbudh Arya
"Incorrect knowledge is mistaking the identity of one thing for the other or one object for another." - Patañjali NULL
"Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction, and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?" - Patrick Henry
"Now an extraordinary and helpful fact is that by making Mind the object of our attention, not only does the serenity which is its nature begin to well up of its own accord but its steady unchanging character itself helps spontaneously to repel all disturbing thoughts. " - Paul Brunton, born Hermann Hirsch, wrote under various pseudonyms including Brunton Paul, Raphael Meriden and Raphael Delmonte
"When I judge art, I take my painting and put it next to a God made object like a tree or flower. If it clashes, it is not art." - Paul Cézanne
"One would not object to the prevalent notion that whatever is fashionable is right, if our rulers of the mode would contrive that whatever is right should be fashionable." - Paul Chatfield, pseudonym for Horace Smith
"The object of psychology is to give us a totally different idea of the things we know best. " - Paul Valéry, fully Ambroise-Paul-Toussaint-Jules Valéry
"The object of the senses is in itself indifferent-independent of the disposition or of the judgment; but the object of religion is a selected object; the most excellent, the first, the supreme being; it essentially presupposes a critical judgment, a discrimination between the divine and the non-divine, between that which is worthy of adoration and that which is not worthy. And here may be applied, without and limitation, the proposition: the object of any subject is nothing else than the subject's own nature taken objectively. Such as are a man's thoughts and dispositions, such is his God. " - Paul Johann Feuerbach, fully Paul Johann Anselm Ritter von Feuerbach
"A much more interesting, kind, adventurous, and joyful approach to life is to begin to develop our curiosity, not caring whether the object of our inquisitiveness is bitter or sweet. To lead a life that goes beyond pettiness and prejudice and always wanting to make sure that everything turns out on our own terms, to lead a more passionate, full, and delightful life than that, we must realize that we can endure a lot of pain and pleasure for the sake of finding out who we are and what this world is, how we tick and how our world ticks, how the whole thing just is." - Pema Chödrön, born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown
"There is a common misunderstanding among the human beings who have ever been born on earth that the best way to live is to try to avoid pain and just try to get comfortable. You see this even in insects and animals and birds. All of us are the same. A much more interesting, kind and joyful approach to life is to begin to develop our curiosity, not caring whether the object of our curiosity is bitter or sweet. To lead to a life that goes beyond pettiness and prejudice and always wanting to make sure that everything turns out on our own terms, to lead a more passionate, full, and delightful life than that, we must realize that we can endure a lot of pain and pleasure for the sake of finding out who we are and what this world is, how we tick and how our world ticks, how the whole thing just is. If we are committed to comfort at any cost, as soon as we come up against the least edge of pain, we’re going to run; we’ll never know what’s beyond that particular barrier or wall or fearful thing. " - Pema Chödrön, born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown
"Among the stars that have a different birth,-- And ever-changing, like a joyless eye That finds no object worth its constancy? " - Percy Bysshe Shelley
"True Love in this differs from gold and clay, That to divide is not to take away. Love is like understanding, that grows bright, Gazing on many truths; 'tis like thy light, Imagination! which from earth and sky, And from the depths of human phantasy, As from a thousand prisms and mirrors, fills The Universe with glorious beams, and kills Error, the worm, with many a sun-like arrow Of its reverberated lightning. Bid them love each other and be blest: And leave the troop which errs, and which reproves, And come and be my guest, — for I am Love's. Mind from its object differs most in this: Evil from good; misery from happiness; The baser from the nobler; the impure And frail, from what is clear and must endure. If you divide suffering and dross, you may Diminish till it is consumed away; If you divide pleasure and love and thought, Each part exceeds the whole; and we know not How much, while any yet remains unshared, Of pleasure may be gained, of sorrow spared: This truth is that deep well, whence sages draw The unenvied light of hope; the eternal law By which those live, to whom this world of life Is as a garden ravaged, and whose strife Tills for the promise of a later birth The wilderness of this Elysian earth. " - Percy Bysshe Shelley
"The great object I desire to accomplish by this institution [the Cooper Institute], is to open the avenues of scientific knowledge to the youth of our country, so unfolding the volume of Nature, that the young may see the beauties of creation. " - Peter Cooper
"There is a big difference between having a mission statement and being truly mission-based. To be truly mission-based means that key decisions can be referred back to the mission -- our reason for being. It means that people can and should object to management edicts that they do not see as connected to the mission...In most organizations, no one would dream of challenging a management decision on the grounds that it does not serve the mission. In other words, most organizations serve those in power rather than a mission. [The mission] says rather, that the source of legitimate power in the organization is its guiding ideas...The cornerstone of a truly democratic system of governance is not voting or any other particular mechanism. It is the belief that power ultimately flows from ideas, not people. To be truly mission-based is to be democratic in this way, to make the mission more important than the boss, something that not too many corporations have yet demonstrated an ability to do." - Peter Senge, fully Peter Michael Senge
"Legally, the doctor should not [kill the infant], and in this respect the law reflects the sanctity of life view. Yet people who would say this about the infant do not object to the killing of nonhuman animals. How can they justify their different judgments? Adult chimpanzees, dogs, pigs, and members of many other species far surpass the brain-damaged infant in their ability to relate to others, act independently, be self-aware, and any other capacity that could reasonably be said to give value to life. The only thing that distinguishes the infant from the animal, in the eyes of those who claim it has a "right to life," is that it is, biologically, a member of the species Homo sapiens...But to use this difference as the basis for granting a right to life to the infant and not to the other animals is, of course, pure speciesism. It is exactly the kind of arbitrary difference that the most crude and overt kind of racist uses in attempting to justify racial discrimination. " - Peter Singer
"Without its meanings, a book --say Plato's Republic-- simply becomes a physical (paper) object possessed of a certain geometrical form, with certain physical and chemical properties which are noticeable even to mice and which they may nibble now and then. On the other hand, the meaning of Plato's Republic can be objectified and "materialized" not only in the paper book, but through quite different physical media, such as phonograph records, or air-waves when it is just read aloud or sung, or other physical "vehicles". Physically and biologically there are no human organisms that are "kings", "patriarchs", "popes", "generals", "scientists", "laborers", "peasants", "merchants", "prisoners", "criminals", "heroes", "saints", and so on. All these and thousands of other 'meanings' are superimposed upon the biological organisms by the sociocultural world or by persons and groups functioning not only as physical objects and biological organisms but mainly as 'mindful human personalities,' as bearers, creators, and agents of 'immaterial' meanings, values and norms. Thus any phenomenon that is an 'incarnation' or 'objectification' of mind and meanings superimposed upon its physical and biological properties is by definition a sociocultural phenomenon." - Pitirim A. Sorokin, fully Pitirim Alexandrovich (Alexander) Sorokin
"After all the rest, Moses tells us that man was created after the image of God and after His likeness (Genesis, I, 26). Right well does he say this, for nothing earth-born is more like God than man. Let no one represent the likeness as one to a bodily form; for neither is God in human form, nor is the human body God-like. No, it is in respect of the Mind, the sovereign element of the soul, that the word 'image' is used; for after the pattern of a single Mind, even the Mind of the Universe as an archetype, the mind in each of those who successively came into being was moulded. It is in a fashion a god to him who carries and enshrines it as an object of reverence; for the human mind evidently occupies a position in men precisely answering to that which the great Ruler occupies in all the world. It is invisible while itself seeing all things, and while comprehending the substances of others, it is as to its own substance unperceived." - Philo, aka Philo of Alexandria, Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia, "Philon", and Philo the Jew NULL
"For God, being God, assumed that a beautiful copy would never be produced apart from a beautiful pattern, and that no object of perception would be faultless which was not made in the likeness of an original discerned only by the intellect. . . . He first fully formed the intelligible world, in order that He might have the use of a pattern wholly God-like and incorporeal in producing the material world." - Philo, aka Philo of Alexandria, Philo Judaeus, Philo Judaeus of Alexandria, Yedidia, "Philon", and Philo the Jew NULL
"Evolution is gaining the psychic zones of the world... life, being and ascent of consciousness, could not continue to advance indefinitely along its line without transforming itself in depth. The being who is the object of his own reflection, in consequence, of that very doubling back upon himself becomes in a flash able to raise himself to a new sphere. " - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
"An intelligence which at a given instant knew all the forces acting in nature and the position of every object in the universe – if endowed with a brain sufficiently vast to make all necessary calculations – could describe with a single formula the motions of the largest astronomical bodies and those of the smallest atoms. To such an intelligence, nothing would be uncertain; the future, like the past, would be an open book. " - Pierre-Simon Laplace, Compte de Laplace, Marquis de Laplace
"It is remarkable that a science which began with the consideration of games of chance should have become the most important object of human knowledge. " - Pierre-Simon Laplace, Compte de Laplace, Marquis de Laplace
"The emotion of beauty is always obscured by the appearance of the object. Therefore the object must be eliminated from the picture." - Piet Mondrian, fully Pieter Cornelis "Piet" Mondriaan, after 1906 Mondrian
"If you wish to behold God, you may see Him in every object around; search in your breast, and you will find Him there. And if you do not yet perceive where He dwells, confute me, if you can, and say where He is not." - Pietro Metastasio, aka Metastasio, pseudonymn for Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi
"One person has the sense of the possible is to be deceived, as the eye of staff in the vision of something existing in the water, because he judges it to be broken and in the truth of the matter is not broken, but that the object of all or several senses dectpiantur about the same thing does not happen, because (the one) verifies that the other as part of his staff that he did not touch us verifies that is a fraction, in a dream when he is condemned to be broken was broken, and appears to us to Remus .... we do not say that it is broken, and so it is true that nothing truly felt if I did not present an existing thing. " - Pietro Pomponazzi, aka Petrus Pomponatius
"For the object of education is to teach us to love beauty. " - Plato NULL
"The object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful. " - Plato NULL
"The object of knowledge is what exists and its function to know about reality. " - Plato NULL
"The philosopher is in love with truth, that is, not with the changing world of sensation, which is the object of opinion, but with the unchanging reality which is the object of knowledge. " - Plato NULL
"An object in possession seldom retains the same charm that it had in pursuit." - Pliny the Elder, full name Casus Plinius Secundus NULL
"When a man is laboring under the pain of any distemper, it is then that he recollects there are gods, and that he himself is but a man; no mortal is then the object of his envy, his admiration, or his contempt, and having no malice to gratify, the tales of slander excite not his attention." - Pliny the Younger, full name Casus Plinius Caecilius Secundus, born Gaius Caecilius or Gaius Caecilius Cilo NULL
"In this state of absorbed contemplation, there is no longer any question of holding an object in view; the vision is such that seeing and seen are one; object and act of vision have become identical. " - Plotinus NULL
"It is now time, leaving every object of sense far behind, to contemplate, by a certain ascent, a beauty of a much higher order; a beauty not visible to the corporeal eye, but alone manifest to the brighter eye of the soul, independent of all corporeal aid. However, since, without some previous perception of beauty it is impossible to express by words the beauties of sense, but we must remain in the state of the blind, so neither can we ever speak of the beauty of offices and sciences, and whatever is allied to these, if deprived of their intimate possession. Thus we shall never be able to tell of virtue's brightness, unless by looking inward we perceive the fair countenance of justice and temperance, and are convinced that neither the evening nor morning star are half so beautiful and bright. But it is requisite to perceive objects of this kind by that eye by which the soul beholds such real beauties. Besides it is necessary that whoever perceives this species of beauty, should be seized with much greater delight, and more vehement admiration, than any corporeal beauty can excite; as now embracing beauty real and substantial. Such affections, I say, ought to be excited about true beauty, as admiration and sweet astonishment; desire also and love and a pleasant trepidation. For all souls, as I may say, are affected in this manner about invisible objects, but those the most who have the strongest propensity to their love; as it likewise happens about corporeal beauty; for all equally perceive beautiful corporeal forms, yet all are not equally excited, but lovers in the greatest degree." - Plotinus NULL