This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"It is both dangerous and easy to hate man as he is because he is not what he ought to be. If we do not first respect what he is we will never suffer him to become what he ought to be: In our impatience we do away with him altogether." - Thomas Merton
"It is useless to try to make peace with ourselves by being pleased with everything we have done. In order to settle down in the quiet of our own being we must learn to be detached from the results of our own activity. We must withdraw ourselves, to some extent, from the effects that are beyond our control and be content with the good will and the work that are the quiet expression of our inner life. We must be content to live without watching ourselves live, to work without expecting any immediate reward, to love without an instantaneous satisfaction, and to exist without any special recognition." - Thomas Merton
"Only when we see ourselves in our true human context, as members of a race which is intended to be one organism and “one body,” will we begin to understand the positive importance not only of the successes but of the failures and accidents in our lives. My successes are not my own. The way to them was prepared by others. The fruit of my labors is not my own: for I am preparing the way for the achievements of another. Nor are my failures my own. They may spring from failure of another, but they are also compensated for by another’s achievement. Therefore the meaning of my life is not to be looked for merely in the sum total of my own achievements. It is seen only in the complete integration of my achievements and failures with the achievements and failures of my own generation, and society, and time." - Thomas Merton
"The monk in hiding himself from the world becomes not less than himself, not less of a person, but more of a person, more truly and perfectly himself: for his personality and individuality are perfected in their true order, the spiritual, interior order, of union with God, the principle of all perfection" - Thomas Merton
"True sanctity does not consist in trying to live without creatures. It consists in using the goods of life in order to do the will of God. It consists in using God’s creation in such a way that everything we touch and see and use and love gives new glory to God. To be a saint means to pass through the world gathering fruits for heaven from every tree and reaping God’s glory in every field. The saint is one who is in contact with God in every possible way, in every possible direction. He is united to God by the depths of his own being. He sees and touches God in everything and everyone around him. Everywhere he goes, the world rings and resounds (though silently) with the deep harmonies of God’s glory." - Thomas Merton
"Communitarianism -- the ambition of collective self-realization -- is one of the most persistent threats to the human spirit." - Thomas Nagel
"It is clear that the power of complex modern states depends on the deeply ingrained tendency of most of their members to follow the rules, obey the laws, and do what is expected of them by the established authorities without deciding case by case whether they agree with what is being done. We turn ourselves easily into instruments of higher-order processes; the complex organizational hierarchies typical of modern life could not function otherwise -not only armies, but all bureaucratic institutions rely on such psychological dispositions. This gives rise to what can be called the German problem. The generally valuable tendency to conform, not to break ranks conspicuously, not to attract attention to oneself, and to do one’s job and obey official instructions without substituting one’s own personal judgment can be put to the service of monstrous ends, and can maintain in power the most appalling regimes. The same procedural correctness that inhibits people from taking bribes may also turn them into obedient participants in well-organized official policies of segregation, deportation, and genocidal extermination. The problem is whether it is possible to have the benefits of conformity and bureaucratic obedience without the dangers." - Thomas Nagel
"Article 8 - The United Nations shall place no restrictions on the eligibility of men and women to participate in any capacity and under conditions of equality in its principal and subsidiary organs." - United Nations NULL
"The mystical theory of ethics is logically forced into the position of maintaining that all love (though not necessarily all kinds of appetition), whether in men or in animals, arises out of mystical experience either explicit or latent. The mystical theory can thus only maintain itself by supposing that mystical experience is latent in all living beings, but that in most men and in all animals it is profoundly submerged in the subconscious; and that it throws up influences above the threshold in the form of feelings of sympathy and love. To say that I love or sympathize with another living being is to say that I feel his feelings -- for instance that I suffer when he suffers or rejoice when he rejoices. The mystical theory will allege that this phenomenon is an incipient and partial breaking down of the barriers and partitions which separate the two individual selves; and if this breakdown were completed, it would lead to an actual identity of the “I” and the “he.” Love is thus a dim groping towards that disappearance of individuality in the Universal Self which is part of the essence of mysticism." - W. T. Stace, fully Walter Terence Stace
"He [Norman Rockwell] probably had the same compassion for me like he does for the people in his pictures." - Willem de Kooning
"If I studied all my life, I couldn’t think up half the number of funny things passed in one session of Congress." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
"The only way you can beat the lawyers is to die with nothing." - Will Rogers, fully William Penn Adair "Will" Rogers
"In general, scientific progress calls for no more than the absorption and elaboration of new ideas— and this is a call most scientists are happy to heed." - Werner Heisenberg, fully Werner Karl Heisenberg
"The reality we can put into words is never reality itself." - Werner Heisenberg, fully Werner Karl Heisenberg
"The cry for freedom is a sign of suppression. It will not cease to ring as long as man feels himself captive. As diverse as the cries for freedom may be, basically they all express one and the same thing: The intolerability of the rigidity of the organism and of the machine-like institutions which create a sharp conflict with the natural feelings for life. Not until there is a social order in which all cries for freedom subside will man have overcome his biological and social crippling, will he have attained genuine freedom. Not until man is willing to recognize his animal nature — in the good sense of the word — will he create genuine culture." - Wilhelm Reich
"A simultaneous change of our whole economic and social system in favor of drastic decentralization of cities and industries, of the restoration of some more `natural order', more rural, but less urbanized, mechanized, industrialized, proletarized and commercialized. People will not like to face competition unless they have some firm stand. They must not feel lost in this present dehumanized world. Competition is a necessary social arrangement not a social gospel likely to make us enthusiastic. It is a negative concept which derives its strength from the fact that we like the alternatives, i.e., monopoly and collectivism, even less. It must be supplemented by something which is humanly positive." - Wilhelm Röepke
"There is no symmetry in the market economy between the forces favoring this extraordinarily widespread modern form of sales promotion and the forces which impede it. Yet the warmest supporter of installment buying will not deny that it is in danger of excess and degeneration. As in the first case, asymmetry is due to the fact that the impulses originating in the market work to the benefit of consumer credit because the interests of those who want to sell their wares are joined by the special interests of the finance institutes making money out of installment-plan sales." - Wilhelm Röepke
"Dreams, ideas, and plans not only are an escape, they give me purpose, a reason to hang on." - Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney
"I don't like formal gardens. I like wild nature. It's just the wilderness instinct in me, I guess." - Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney
"My fun is working on a project and solving the problems." - Walt Disney, fully Walter Elias "Walt" Disney
"Bearing the bandages, water and sponge, straight and swift to my wounded I go, where they lie on the ground after the battle brought in, where their priceless blood reddens the grass the ground, or to the rows of the hospital tent, or under the roof'd hospital, to the long rows of cots up and down each side I return, to each and all one after another I draw near, not one do I miss, an attendant follows holding a tray, he carries a refuse pail, soon to be fill'd with clotted rags and blood, emptied, and fill'd again." - Walt Whitman, fully Walter "Walt" Whitman
"Sin is a social force. It runs from man to man along the lines of social contact. Its impact on the individual becomes most overwhelming when sin is most completely socialized. Salvation too, is a social force. It is exerted by groups that are charged with divine will and love." - Walter Rauschenbusch
"We were marginalized in the public eye as a presidential party. What Clinton did is an enormous accomplishment. I myself even wondered if we'd do it again." - Walter Mondale, fully Walter Frederick "Fritz" Mondale
"As contemplation [of a work of art or literature] enters upon a more serious stage, the human being is driven by the whole economy of what it is to be man to find opposite himself, in that which he contemplates, a person capable of reacting in turn. This drive is primordial and will not be denied." - Walter J. Ong, fully Walter Jackson Ong
"Leaders must encourage their organizations to dance to forms of music yet to be heard." - Warren Bennis, fully Warren Gamaliel Bennis
"Most people get interested in stocks when everyone else is. The time to get interested is when no one else is. You can’t buy what is popular and do well." - Warren Buffett, fully Warren Edward Buffett, aka Oracle of Omaha
"If I am here, everyone is here. If I am not here, no one is here." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
"Just getting started generates an energy and excitement that helps push you forward." - Wayne Dyer, fully Wayne Walter Dyer
"As Gill says, every man is called to give love to the work of his hands. Every man is called to be an artist. The small family farm is one of the last places - they are getting rarer every day - where men and women (and girls and boys, too) can answer that call to be an artist, to learn to give love to the work of their hands. It is one of the last places where the maker - and some farmers still do talk about making the crops - is responsible, from start to finish, for the thing made. This certainly is a spiritual value, but it is not for that reason an impractical or uneconomic one. In fact, from the exercise of this responsibility, this giving of love to the work of the hands, the farmer, the farm, the consumer, and the nation all stand to gain in the most practical ways: They gain the means of life, the goodness of food, and the longevity and dependability of the sources of food, both natural and cultural. The proper answer to the spiritual calling becomes, in turn, the proper fulfillment of physical need." - Wendell Berry
"The care of the earth is our most ancient and most worthy and, after all, our most pleasing responsibility. To cherish what remains of it, and to foster its renewal, is our only legitimate hope." - Wendell Berry
"The river and the garden have been the foundations of my economy here. Of the two I have liked the river best. It is wonderful to have the duty of being on the river the first and last thing every day. I have loved it even in the rain. Sometimes I have loved it most in the rain." - Wendell Berry
"We are going to have to gather up the fragments of knowledge and responsibilities that have been turned over to governments, corporations, and specialists, and put those fragments back together again in our own minds and in our families and household and neighborhoods." - Wendell Berry
"Liberty trains for liberty. Responsibility is the first step in responsibility." - W. E. B. Du Bois, fully William Edward Burghardt Du Bois
"Choice of aim is clearly a matter of clarification of values, especially on the choice between possible options." - W. Edwards Deming, fully William Edwards Deming
"People are born with intrinsic motivation, self-esteem, dignity, curiosity to learn, joy in learning." - W. Edwards Deming, fully William Edwards Deming
"The various segments of the system of profound knowledge proposed here cannot be separated. They interact with each other. Thus, knowledge of psychology is incomplete without knowledge of variation." - W. Edwards Deming, fully William Edwards Deming
"Most teachers who are honest with themselves are forced to admit that, in the main, the class would make the same progress if the teacher were not there at all, the clever remaining clever and the dull remaining dull." - W. W. Sawyer, fully Walter Warwick Sawyer
"In my new freedom I remember thinking: If one knows what he wants to do, others will not only not stand in the way but will lend a hand from simple curiosity and amazement." - Walker Percy
"We love those who know the worst of us and don't turn their faces away." - Walker Percy
"And what have I to give my friends in the last resort? An awkwardness, a shyness, and a scrap." - Vita Sackville-West, fully The Hon Victoria Mary Sackville-West, Lady Nicolson
"Furthermore, since I have observed that our citizens are distracted with public affairs and private business, I have thought it best to write briefly, so that my readers, whose intervals of leisure are small, may be able to comprehend in a short time." - Vitruvius, fully Marcus Vitruvius Pollio NULL
"Monopolies, oligarchy, the striving for domination and not for freedom, the exploitation of an increasing number of small or weak nations by a handful of the richest or most powerful nations — all these have given birth to those distinctive characteristics of imperialism which compel us to define it as parasitic or decaying capitalism." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
"The class-conscious proletariat can give its consent to a revolutionary war, which would really justify revolutionary defensism, only on condition: (a) that the power pass to the proletariat and the poorest sections of the peasants aligned with the proletariat; (b) that all annexations be renounced in deed and not in word; (c) that a complete break be effected in actual fact with all capitalist interests." - Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
"This, and much more, she accepted - for after all living did mean accepting the loss of one joy after another, not even joys in her case – mere possibilities of improvement. She thought of the endless waves of pain that for some reason or other she and her husband had to endure; of the invisible giants hurting her boy in some unimaginable fashion; of the incalculable amount of tenderness contained in the world; of the fate of this tenderness, which is either crushed, or wasted, or transformed into madness; of neglected children humming to themselves in unswept corners; of beautiful weeds that cannot hide from the farmer and helplessly have to watch the shadow of his simian stoop leave mangled flowers in its wake, as the monstrous darkness approaches." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
"We have it all arranged in our minds, and the less often we see a particular person the more satisfying it is to check how obediently he conforms to our notion of him every time we hear of him. Any deviation in the fates we have ordained would strike us as not only anomalous but unethical. We would prefer not to have known at all our neighbor, the retired hot-dog stand operator, if it turns out he has just produced the greatest book of poetry his age has seen." - Vladimir Nabokov, fully Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov
"Viewing the world as a large pieced-together collection of fragments, some of which are labeled as friend and others as foe, begins internally. We map out our internal territories with the same positive or negative designations as we do external territories, and wars go on there as they do in the world. Internally, we are divided against ourselves; the emotions want one thing, the intellect another, the impulses of the body yet another, and a conflict takes place which is no different in quality, although it is in scale, from that of the world wars. If we are not related to ourselves in wholeness, is it any surprise that we cannot perceive the wholeness of the world? If we believe ourselves each to be a patched-together, unmatched assortment of desirable and undesirable features, motives at odds with each other, undigested beliefs and prejudices, fears, and insecurities, will we not project all this on the world?" - Vimala Thakar
"We have accepted the watertight compartments of society, the fragmentation of living as factual and necessary. We live in relationship to these fragments and accept the internalized divisions—the various roles we play, the contradictory value systems, the opposing motives and priorities—as reality. We are at odds with ourselves internally; we believe that the inner is fundamentally different from the outer, that what is me is quite separate from the not-me, that divisions among people and nations are necessary, and yet we wonder why there are tensions, conflicts, wars in the world. The conflicts begin with minds that believe in fragmentation and are ignorant of wholeness." - Vimala Thakar
"Perfection is not attainable, but if we chase perfection we can catch excellence." - Vince Lombardi, fully Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi
"Cosmic confidence grows with the simple realization that truth exists — which few people really realize." - Vernon Howard, fully Vernon Linwood Howard