This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"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." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The whole course of things goes to teach us faith. We need only obey. There is guidance for each of us, and by lowly listening we shall hear the right word... Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which flows into you as life, place yourself in the full center of that flood, then you are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect contentment." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"If we must accept Fate, we are no less compelled to affirm liberty, the significance of the individual, the grandeur of duty, the power of character." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"The less government we have, the better: the fewer laws and less confided power." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"There are many who are living far below their possibilities because they are continually handing over their individualities to other. Do you want to be a power in the world? Then be yourself. Be true to the highest within your soul, and then allow yourself to be governed by no customs or conventionalities or arbitrary man-made rules that are not founded on principle." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"There is a soul at the center of nature, and over the will of every man... Place yourself in the middle of the stream of power and wisdom which animates all whom it floats, and you are without effort impelled to truth, to right, and a perfect contentment." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
"True, not many deaths are due to boredom. But if we think of the time it kills, the vitality it lowers and the productive power it lessens we see that it takes a terrific toll." - Ralph Washington Sockman
"We cannot save life by hoarding it... The power of love or sympathy is never exhausted by use." - Ralph Washington Sockman
"One of the paradoxes of our time is that we have more power at our disposal than ever before, and yet we seem more powerless than ever." - Ralph Washington Sockman
"Willpower should be understood to be the strength of mind which makes it capable of meeting success or failure with equanimity… Success develops arrogance, and the man’s spiritual progress is thus arrested. Failure, on the other hand, is beneficial, inasmuch as it opens the eyes of the man to his limitations and prepares him to surrender himself. Self-surrender is synonymous with eternal happiness. Therefore, one should try to gain the equipoise of mind under all circumstances: that is will-power." -
"The fragmentary character of human life is not regarded as evil in Biblical faith because it is seen from the perspective of a center of life and meaning in which each fragment is related to the plan of the whole, to the will of God. The evil arises when the fragment seeks by its own wisdom to comprehend the whole or attempts by its own power to realize it." -
"Goodness, armed with power, is corrupted; and pure love without power is destroyed." - Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr
"Except our own thoughts, there is nothing absolutely in our power... The principal effect of the passions is that they incite and persuade the mind to will the events for which they prepared the body... If you would be a real seeker after truth, it is necessary that at least once in your life you doubt, as far as possible, all things." - René Descartes
"Good sense is the best distributed thing in the world: for everyone thinks himself so well endowed with it that even those who are the hardest to please in everything else do not usually desire more of it than they possess. In this it is unlikely that everyone is mistaken. It indicates rather that the power of judging well and of distinguishing the true from the false - which is what we properly call ‘good sense’ - is naturally equal in all men." - René Descartes
"You are never given a wish without being given the power to make it true. You may have to work for it, however. [Often attributed, but not a Richard Bach quote]" - Richard Bach, fully Richard David Bach
"One of the primary tests of the mood of a society at any given time is whether its comfortable people tend to identify, psychologically, with the power and achievements of the very successful or with the needs and sufferings of the underprivileged." - Richard Hofstadter
"Once demystified, the dismal science (of economics) is nothing less than the study of power." - Richard Barnet, fully Richard Jackson Barnet
"The celebration of duty is an effective way to disguise the lust for power from oneself as much as from the outside world." - Richard Barnet, fully Richard Jackson Barnet
"The problem of power is how to achieve its responsible use rather than its irresponsible and indulgent use - of how to get men of power to live for the public rather than off the public." - Robert Kennedy, fully Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy
"Nothing discloses real character like the use of power. It is easy for the weak to be gentle, most people can bear adversity. Bit if you wish to know what a man really is, give him power. This is the supreme test. It is the glory of Lincoln that, having almost absolute power, he never abused it, except under the side of mercy." - Robert Ingersoll, fully Robert Green "Bob" Ingersoll
"Property may be destroyed and money may lose its purchasing power; but, character, health, knowledge and good judgment will always be in demand under all conditions." - Roger Babson, fully Roger Ward Babson
"Addictive spirituality creates dependence in the practitioner (frequently to authoritarian leaders and their communities), an avoidance of personal responsibility, and loss of individuality through social controls, such as fear, guilt, or greed for power or bliss. It also tends to suppress rational inquiry into the teachings. Healthy spirituality, on the other hand, supports the practitioner's freedom, autonomy, self-esteem, and social responsibility. It is based on experience, rather than belief or dogma; it does not create idols out of spiritual teachers; and it empowers students by emphasizing democratic forms of learning and teaching, rather than the authoritarian model that has dominated spiritual life for millennia." - Ronald S. Miller
"The power of little things to give instruction and happiness should be the first lesson in life, and it should be inculcated deeply." - Russell H. Conwell, fully Russell Herman Conwell
"The highest endowments do not create - they only discover. All transcendent genius has the power to make us know this as utter truth. Shakespeare, Bethoveen - it is inconceivable that they have fashioned the works of their lives; they only saw and heard the universe that is opaque and dumb to us." - Ruth Benedict, born Ruth Fulton
"The wise man is free, since one who does as he wishes is free. Because he does what he wishes, the free man is wise. One who acts with wisdom has nothing to fear, for fear lives in sin. Where there is no fear there is liberty; where there is liberty there is power of doing what one wishes. Therefore, only the wise man is free." - Saint Ambrose, born Aurelius Ambrosius NULL
"Our free will can hinder the course of inspiration, and when the favourable gale of god’s grace swells the sails of our soul, it is in our power to refuse consent and thereby hinder the effect of the wind’s favour; but when our spirit sails along and makes it voyage prosperously, it is not we who make the gale of inspiration blow for us, nor we who make our sails swell with it, nor we who give motion to the ship of our heart; but we simply receive the gale, consent to its motion and let our ship sail under it, not hindering it by; our resistance." - Saint Francis de Sales NULL
"Where is the foolish person who would think in his power to commit more than God could forgive." - Saint Francis de Sales NULL
"The height of intellect is distinguishing between the real and the impossible, and submission to what is beyond one's power." - Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
"Character makes life immortal. It survives even death. Some say knowledge is power, but this is not true. Character is power." - Sathya Sai Baba, fully Sri Sathya Sai Baba
"Not the power to remember, but its very opposite, the power to forget, is a necessary condition for our existence." - Sholem Asch, born Szalom Asz, also written Shalom Asch
"The value of human life lies in the fact of suffering, for where there is no suffering, no consciousness of karmic bondage, there will be no power of attaining spiritual experience and thereby reaching the field of non-distinction. Unless we agree to suffer we cannot be free from suffering." - Shunryu Suzuki, also Daisetsu Teitaro or D.T. Suzuki or Suzuki-Roshi
"In the relation of master to slave the master does not make a point of the need that he has for the other; he has in his grasp the power of satisfying this need through his own action; whereas the slaver, in his dependent condition, his hope and fear, is quiet conscious of the need he has for his master. Even if the need is at bottom equally urgent for both, it always works in favor of the oppressor and against the oppressed." - Simone de Beauvoir, fully Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir
"Our minds are so constructed that we can keep the attention fixed on a particular object until we have, as it were, looked all around it; and the mind that possesses this faculty in the highest degree of perfection will take cognizance of relations of which another mind has no perception. It is this, much more than any difference in the abstract power of reasoning, which constitutes the vast difference between the minds of different individuals. This is the history alike of the poetic genius and of the genius of discovery in science. “I keep the subject,” said Sir Isaac Newton, “constantly before me, and wait until the dawnings open by little and little into a full light.” It was thus that after long meditation he was led to the invention of fluxions, and to the anticipation of the modern discovery of the combustibility of the diamond. It was thus that Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood, and that those views were suggested by Davy which laid the foundation of that grand series of experimental researches which terminated in the decomposition of the earths and alkalies." - Benjamin Collins Brodie, fully Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, 1st Baronet
"The failure of the mind in old age is often less the results of natural decay, than of disuse. Ambition has ceased to operate; contentment bring indolence, and indolence decay of mental power, ennui, and sometimes death. Men have been known to die, literally speaking, of disease induced by intellectual vacancy." - Benjamin Collins Brodie, fully Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, 1st Baronet
"I had no special sagacity, only the power of patient thought. I kept the subject constantly before me and waited until the first dawnings opened little by little into the full light." - Isaac Newton, fully Sir Isaac Newton
"Free will was granted to humanity. Man became conscious of good and evil, and his power of free choice. He acquired simultaneously Freedom and Responsibility. Henceforth he could help or he could hinder." - Oliver Lodge, fully Sir Oliver Joseph Lodge
"No possessions are good but by the good use we make of them; without which wealth, power, friends, and servants, do not help to make our lives more unhappy." - William Temple, fully Sir William Temple, 1st Baronet
"Whatever you do in life, do with love! We have no alternative save to act from motives of hate - yet how doleful to make this our choice! For hate is the destroyer of life, where love is its guardian. Hate blinds our vision and warps our talents; but love releases our energies for the creative action that sustains mankind. while all human behavior springs from a mixture of both these great forces of nature, it is within our power to determine which shall prevail as we journey through life... We must tip the balance ever in favor of love if we wish to hurdle the obstacles before us on the road to normal happiness and success." - Smiley Blanton
"There are no barriers whatever between what we call “life” and what we call “death.” The radiant power and warmth of the compassionate heart can reach out to help in all states and all realms." - Sogyal Rinpoche
"It is not easy matter to discern the temper of a man, his mind and will, till he be proved by exercise of power." - Sophocles NULL
"For the unified mind in accord with the Way all self-centered striving ceases. Doubts and irresolutions vanish and life in true faith is possible. With a single stroke we are freed from bondage; nothing clings to us and we hold nothing. All is empty, clear, self-illuminating, with no exertion of the mind’s power. Here thought, feeling, knowledge, and imagination are of no value. In this world of Suchness there is neither self nor other-than-self." - Sosan Zenji, aka Chien-chih Seng-Tsan or Ch'an Seng-ts'an
"Many people cannot begin to feel the life-giving attraction for Divine Reality until they pass through the painful experiences associated with grasping at habitual enjoyment. This desperate grasping includes selfishly accumulating wealth, arrogantly cultivating power over others, and welcoming flattery, as well as enjoying absurdly refined comforts and ever more bizarre diversions. We must unequivocally see through this deceptive surface in order to enter the depth of ecstatic Divine Enjoyment." -
"Our ultimate freedom is the right and power to decide how anybody or anything outside ourselves will affect us." - Stephen Covey, fully Stephen Richards Covey
"The unlearned lose the power of clear thinking as they grow old, but scholars gain in it as their years advance." - Talmud or The Talmud NULL
"It is safe to say that the prosperity of our people depends directly on the energy and intelligence with which our natural resources are used. It is equally clear that these resources are the final basis of national power and perpetuity. Finally, it is ominously evident that these resources are in the course of rapid exhaustion." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"Power always brings with it responsibility. You cannot have power to work well without having so much power as to be the able to work ill." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt
"Power undirected by high purpose spells calamity; and high purpose by itself is utterly useless if the power to put it into effect is lacking." - Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt