This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"The good life consists in deriving happiness by using your signature strengths every day in the main realms of living. The meaningful life adds one more component: using these same strengths to forward knowledge, power, or goodness. A life that does this is pregnant with meaning, and if God comes at the end, such a life is sacred." - Martin Seligman, Martin E. P. "Marty" Seligman
"He is happiest who hath the power to gather wisdom from a flower." - Mary Howitt
"In what respect are we superior to brute creation, if intellect is not allowed to be the guide of passion? Brutes hope and fear, love and hate; but, without a capacity to improve, a power of turning these passions to good or evil, they neither acquire virtue nor wisdom. - Why? Because the Creator has not given them reason." - Mary Wollstonecraft
"I affirm that there is a power in the soul which is unmoved by time or the flesh: this power floweth from the Spirit, yet abideth therein. Yea, it is all spirit." - Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim
"To the quiet mind all things are possible. What is a quiet mind? A quiet mind is one which nothing weighs on, nothing worries, which, free from ties and from all self-seeking, is wholly merged into the will of God and dead as to its own. Such an one can do no deed however small but it is clothed with something of God’s power and authority." - Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim
"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
"Everyone has power to do evil." - Menander, aka Menander of Athens NULL
"It's not enough that we discern the ethical and effective course; we must follow it. This often takes will power or moral courage: the willingness to do the right thing even when it is inconvenient, scary, difficult or costly." - Michael S. Josephson
"Freedom is a rare and delicate plant. Our minds tell us, and history confirms, that the great threat to freedom is the concentration of power. Government is necessary to preserve our freedom, it is necessary to preserve our freedom. It is an instrument through which we can exercise our political freedom; yet by concentrating power in political hands, it is also a threat to freedom." -
"Our wisdom does not increase nearly at the same rate or proportion to the increase in our power." - Mortimer J. Adler, fully Mortimer Jerome Adler
"The power of thought is the only thing over which any human being has complete, unquestionable means of control - a fact so astounding that it connotes a close relationship between the mind of man and the source of all power - Infinite Intelligence." - Napoleon Hill
"Genius is the ability to act wisely without precedent - power to do the right thing the first time." - Nathaniel Hawthorne
"Humanity will one day find that it is not a diversity of creeds but the very same creed which is everywhere proposed. There can not be but one wisdom. Humans must therefore all agree that there is but one most imple wisdom whose power is infinite. And everyone in explaining the intensity of this beauty must discover that it is a supreme and terrible beauty." - Nicholas of Cusa, also Nicholas of Kues and Nicolaus Cusanus NULL
"Every government has a need to frighten its population, and one way of doing that is to shroud its workings in mystery. ... That's the standard way you cloak and protect power: you make it look mysterious and secret, above the ordinary person - otherwise why should anybody accept it?" - Noam Chomsky, fully Avram Noam Chomsky
"If persons are going to be independent thinkers, they are probably going to pay a cost. One has to begin with the way the world works: the world does not reward honesty and independence, it rewards obedience and service. It's a world of concentrated power, and those who have power are not going to reward people who question that power." - Noam Chomsky, fully Avram Noam Chomsky
"The author who penetrates the deepest into the human soul is the one who has the strongest respect for the awakening power of conscience and the stretching power of commitment." - Norman Cousins
"How do you build confidence in yourself? Take your mind off the things that seem to be against you. Thinking about negative factors simply builds them up into a power they need not have." - Norman Vincent Peale
"The man who lives for himself is a failure. Even if he gains much wealth, position or power he still is a failure. The man who lives for others has achieved true success." - Norman Vincent Peale
"Power immobilizes; it freezes with a single gesture – grandiose, terrible, theatrical, or finally, simply monotonous – the variety which is life." - Octavio Paz, born Octavio Paz Lozano
"When men have realized that time has upset many fighting faiths, they may come to believe even more than they believe the very foundations of their own conduct that the ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas - that the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market, and that truth is the only ground upon which their wishes safely can be carried out." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
"The best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
"The joy of life is to put out one's power in some natural and useful or harmless way. There is no other. And the real misery is not to do this." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
"Thus only can you gain the secret isolated joy of the thinker, who knows that, a hundred years after his is dead and forgotten, men who never heard of him will be moving to the measure of his thought - the subtle rapture of a postponed power, which the world knows not because it has no external trappings, but which to his prophetic vision is more real than that which commands an army." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
"The measure of power is obstacles overcome." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
"The ultimate good desired is better reached by free trade in ideas [and] the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
"You commit a sin of omission if you do not utilize all the power that is within you. All people have claims on man, and to the person with special talents, this is a very special claim. It is required that a person take part in the actions and clashes of their time than the peril of being judged not to have lived at all." - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
"Don’t complain about what you don’t have. Use what you’ve got. To do less than your best is a sin. Every single one of us has the power for greatness, because greatness is determined by service – to yourself and to others." - Oprah Winfrey, born Oprah Gail Winfrey
"Every single one of us has the power for greatness, because greatness is determined by service – to yourself and to others." - Oprah Winfrey, born Oprah Gail Winfrey
"Most people do everything half-heartedly. They use only about one-tenth of their attention. That is why they haven’t the power to succeed." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
"Persons of strong character are usually the happiest. They do not blame others for troubles that can usually be traced to their own actions and lack of understanding. They know that no one has any power to add to their happiness or detract from it unless they themselves are so weak that they allow the adverse thoughts and wicked actions of others to affect them." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
"In the universal sense, love is the divine power of attraction in creation that harmonizes, unites, binds together... Those who live in tune with the attractive force of love achieve harmony with nature and their fellow beings, and are attracted to blissful reunion with God." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
"Remember that when you are unhappy it is generally because you do not visualize strongly enough the great things that you definitely want to accomplish in life, nor do you employ steadfastly enough your will power, your creative ability, and your patience until your dreams are materialized." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
"The greatest influence in your life, stronger even than your will power, is your environment. Change that, if necessary. There are two kinds of environment that you should watch carefully - the outer and the inner." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
"The mind is like an elastic band. The more you pull, the more it stretches. The mind-elastic will never break. Every time you feel limitations, close your eyes and say to yourself, “I am the Infinite,” and you will see what power you have." - Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
"The whole of man’s life on the face of Earth can be summed up by that search for his Soul Mate. He may pretend to be running after wisdom, money, or power, but none of that matter. Whatever he achieves will be incomplete if he fails to find his Soul Mate." - Paulo Coelho
"Wealth is a power usurped by the few, to compel the many to labour for their benefit." - Percy Bysshe Shelley
"When the power of imparting joy is equal to the will, the human soul requires no heaven." - Percy Bysshe Shelley
"We love and live in power; it is the spirit’s end. Mind must subdue; to conquer is its life." - Philip James Bailey
"When you make a mistake, don't look back at it long. Take the reason of the thing into your mind, and then look forward. Mistakes are lessons of wisdom. The past cannot be changed. The future is yet in your power." - Phyllis Bottome, aka Phyllis Forbes Dennis (married name)
"I went down into my inmost self, to the deepest abyss where I feel dimly that my power of action emanates. But as I moved further and further away from the conventional certainties by which social life is superficially illuminated, I became aware that I was losing contact with myself. At each step of the descent a new person was disclosed within me of whose name I was no longer sure, and who no longer obeyed me. And when I had to stop my exploration because the path faded from beneath my steps, I found a bottomless abyss at my feet, and out of it comes - arising I know not from where - the current which I dare call my life." - Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
"My opinion is that in the world of knowledge the idea of good appears last of all, and is seen only with an effort; and, when seen, is also inferred to be the universal author of all things beautiful and right, parent of light and of the lord of light in this visible world, and the immediate source of reason and truth in the intellectual; and that this is the power upon which he who would act rationally either in public or private life must have his eye fixed." - Plato NULL
"Democracy comes into being after the poor have conquered their opponents, slaughtering some and banishing some, while to the remainder they give an equal share of freedom and power; and this is the form of government in which the magistrates are commonly elected by lot." - Plato NULL