This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Mankind will never see an end of trouble until... lovers of wisdom come to hold political power, or the holders of power... become lovers of wisdom." - Plato NULL
"There is a dishonor in being overcome by the love of money, or of wealth, or of political power, whether a man is frightened into surrender by the loss of them, or, having experienced the benefits of money and political corruption, is unable to rise above the seductions of them. For none of these are of a permanent or lasting nature; not to mention that no generous friendship ever sprang from them." - Plato NULL
"Education is not in reality what some people proclaim it to be in their professions. What they aver is that they can put true knowledge into a soul that does not possess it, as if they were inserting vision into blind eyes… But our present argument indicates that the true analogy for this indwelling power in the soul and the instrument whereby each of us apprehends is that of an eye that could not be converted to the light from the darkness except by turning the whole body." - Plato NULL
"It is an observation no less just than common, that there is no stronger test of a man’s real character than power and authority, exciting, as they do, every passion, and discovering every latent vice." - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
"Laughing at his own son, who got his mother, and by his mother's means his father also, to indulge him, he told him that he had the most power of any one in Greece: "For the Athenians command the rest of Greece, I command the Athenians, your mother commands me, and you command your mother."" - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
"To make no mistakes is not the power of man; but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future." - Plutarch, named Lucius Mestrius Plutarchus after becoming Roman citizen NULL
"Religious life is not threatened merely by vexing restrictions. It can also be threatened by the spread of false values - such as hedonism, power-seeking, greed - which are making headway in various countries and which in practice stifle the spiritual aspirations of large numbers of people." - Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL
"The most basic and powerful way to connect to another person is to listen. Just listen. Perhaps the most important thing we ever give each other is our attention…. A loving silence often has far more power to heal and to connect than the most well-intentioned words." - Rachel Naomi Remen
"How much longer will you allow this $20 part to imperil the public?" - Ralph Nader
"I have a theory of power: That if it's going to be responsible, it has to have something to lose." - Ralph Nader
"A good intention clothes itself with sudden power." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Eloquence is the power to translate a truth into language perfectly intelligible to the person to whom you speak." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"He that would know hot to be always pleased, glad of success and glad of disappointment should accustom himself to reflect that every event of whatever complexion, increases his knowledge and in consequence his power." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Power obeys reality, and not appearances; power is according to quality, and not quantity." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Talent for talents’ sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new power as a benefactor." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"That which befits us, embosomed in beauty and wonder as we are, is cheerfulness, and courage, and the endeavor to realize our aspirations. Shall not the heart which has received so much trust the power by which it lives?" - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The Americans have no faith, they rely on the power of a dollar; they are deaf to sentiment." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance, that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better or for worse, as his portion; that though the wide universe is full of good, no kernel of nourishing corn can come to him but through his toil bestowed on that plot of ground which is given him to till. The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Valor consists in the power of self-recovery." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Vigor is contagious; and whatever makes us either think or feel strongly adds to our power and enlarges our field of action." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"A vivid thought brings the power to paint it; and in proportion to the depth of its source is the force of its projection." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"A vivid thought brings the power to paint it; and in proposition to the depth of its source is the force of its projection." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"All history is a record of the power of minorities, and of minorities of one." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"All violence, all that is dreary and repels, is not power, but the absence of power." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Beside the general infusion of wit to heighten civility, the direct splendor of intellectual power is ever welcome in fine society, as the costliest addition to its rule and its credit." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Conservatism stands on man's confessed limitations; reform on his indisputable infinitude; conservatism on circumstance; liberalism on power; one goes to make an adroit member of the social frame; the other to postpone all things to the man himself." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Eyes are bold as lions, roving, running, leaping, here and there, far and near. They speak all languages; they wait for no introduction; they are no Englishmen; ask no leave of age or rank; they respect neither poverty nor riches, neither learning nor power, nor virtue, nor sex, but intrude, and come again, and go through and through you in a moment of time. What inundation of life and thought is discharged from one soul into another through them!" - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Genius is sacrificed to talent every day... The difference between Talent and Genius is, that Talent says things which he has never heard but once, and Genius things which he has never heard... Genius is power; talent is applicability." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"If we must accept fate, we are not less compelled to assert liberty, the significance of the individual, the grandeur of duty, the power of character. We are sure, though we know not how, that necessity does comport with liberty, the individual with the world, my polarity with the spirit of the times." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Life is a series of surprises. We do not guess today the mood, the pleasure, the power of tomorrow, when we are building up our being." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"No power of genius has ever yet have the smallest success in explaining existence. The perfect enigma remains." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Nothing external to you has any power over you." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Power educates the potentate." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Talent finds its models, and ends in society, exists for exhibition, and goes to the soul only for power to work. Genius is its own end, and draws its means and the style of its architecture from within." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Talent for talent's sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to a new power as a benefactor." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The first act in which the state really comes forward as the representative of society as a whole - the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society - is at the same time its last independent act as a state. The interference of the state power in social relations becomes superfluous in one sphere after another, and then ceases of itself. The government of persons is replaced by the admission of things and the direction of the processes of production. The state is not “abolished,” it withers away." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The imbecility of men is always inviting the impudence of power." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The less government we have the better - the fewer laws and less confided power." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The less government we have the better - the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal government is the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual; the appearance of the principal to supersede the proxy; the appearance of the wise man; of whom the existing government is, it must be owned, but a shabby imitation." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The pulpit and the press have many commonplaces denouncing the thirst for wealth, but if men should takes these moralists at their word, and leave off aiming to be rich, the moralists would rush to rekindle at all hazards this love or power in the people, lest civilization should be undone." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The test of the poet is the power to take the passing day, with its news, its cares, its fears, as he shares them, and hold it up to a divine reason, till he sees it to have a purpose and beauty. Then the dry twig blossoms in his hand." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The true scholar grudges every opportunity of action passed by, as a loss of power." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"There is no knowledge that is not power." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"Tobacco, coffee, alcohol, hashish, prussic acid, strychnine, are weak dilutions; the surest poison is time. This cup which nature puts to our lips, has a wonderful virtue, surpassing that of any other draught. It opens the senses, adds power, fills us with exalted dreams, which we call hope, love, ambition, science; especially it creates a craving for larger draughts of itself." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"We cannot describe the natural history of the soul, but we know that it is divine. All things are known to the soul. It is not to be surprised by any communication. Nothing can be greater than it, let those fear and those fawn who will. The soul is in her native realm; and it is wider than space, older than time, wide as hope, rich as love. Pusillanimity and fear she refuses with a beautiful scorn; they are not for her who putteth on her coronation robes, and goes out through universal love to universal power." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"What a strange power there is in silence! How many resolutions are formed, how many sublime conquests effected, during that pause when lips are closed, and the soul secretly feels the eye of her Maker upon her! They are the strong ones of earth who know how to keep silence when it is a pain and grief unto them, and who gives time to their own souls to wax strong against temptation." - Ralph Waldo Emerson