This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Computational irreducibility tends to make infinite questions undecidable. The presence of universality implies that there must at some level be computational irreducibility… This means that today’s mathematics will be viewed as small and surprisingly uncharacteristic sample of what is possible. If a system is computationally irreducible this means that there is in effect a tangible separation between the underlying rules for the system and its overall behavior associated with the irreducible amount of computational work needed to go from one to the other. And it is this separation that the basic origin of the apparent freedom we see in all sorts of system lie – whether those systems are abstract cellular automata or actual living brains." - Stephen Wolfram
"Replacing religious institutions that are thousands of years old and hostile to reason with a reason-based belief system would transform society in a positive way more than any mere political change or economic-policy change ever could." - David B Anthony
"Men's manners have improved markedly since Genghis Khan's day. Harems went out of style centuries ago and even despots now disavow pillage and oppression as ideals. At heart, though, we're the same animals we were 800 years ago. Which is to say we are status seekers. We may talk of equality and fraternity. We may strive for classless societies. But we go right on building hierarchies and jockeying for status within them. Can we abandon the tendency? Probably not. For as scientists are now discovering, status seeking is not just a habit or cultural tradition. It's a design of the male psyche - a biological drive that is rooted in the nervous system and regulated by hormones and brain chemicals." -
"In our nation, the people are sovereign, not the government. It is the people, not the media or the financial system or megacorporations or the two political parties, who have the power to create change." - Howard Dean
"Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing." - Thomas Edison, fully Thomas Alva Edison
"This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career." - Albert Einstein
"What makes the United States special in the history of nations is our commitment to the rule of law and our carefully constructed system of checks and balances. Our national distrust of concentrated power and our devotion to openness and democracy are what have led us as a people to consistently choose good over evil in our collective aspirations." - Al Gore, Albert Arnold "Al" Gore, Jr.,
"The educational system will always be applied toward serving the role of cultural transmission and preserving the status quo." - Henry M. Levin
"How freely we live life depends both on our political system and on our vigilance in defending its liberties. How long we live depends both on our genes and on the quality of our health care. How well we live ~ that is, how thoughtfully, how nobly, how virtuously, how joyously, how lovingly - depends both on our philosophy and on the way we apply it to all else. The examined life is a better life." - Lou Marinoff
"The organs are correlated by the organic fluids and the nervous system. Each element of the body adjusts itself to the others, and the others to it. This mode of adaptation is essentially teleological. If we attribute to tissues an intelligence of the same kind as ours, as mechanists and vitalists do, the physiological processes appear to associate together in view of the end to be attained. The existence of finality within the organism is undeniable. Each part seems to know the present and future needs of the whole, and acts accordingly. The significance of time and space is not the same for our tissues as for our mind. The body perceives the remote as well as the near, and the future as well as the present." - Alexis Carrel
"Christianity has this peculiar disadvantage, that unlike other religions, it is not a pure system of doctrine: its chief and essential feature is that it is a history, a series of events, a collection of facts, a statement of the actions and sufferings of individuals: it is this history which constitutes dogma, and belief in it is salvation." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"Whether you know the shape of a pebble or the structure of a solar system, the axioms remain the same: that it exists and that you know it." - Ayn Rand, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum
"Whenever you see a man who is successful in society, try to discover what makes him pleasing, and if possible adopt his system." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
"Our Creator has given us five senses to help us survive threats from the external world, and a sixth sense, our healing system, to help us survive internal threats." - Bernie S. Siegel
"All the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and the whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"In the visible world, the Milky Way is a tiny fragment; within this fragment, the solar system is an infinitesimal speck, and of the spec our planet is a microscopic dot. On this dot, tiny lumps of impure carbon and water, of complicated structure, with somewhat unusual physical and chemical qualities, crawl about for a few years, until they are dissolved again into the elements of which they are compounded." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and fears, his loves and beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual beyond the grave; that all the laborers of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man’s achievements must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins – all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"If an international system could be established which would remove the fear of war, the improvement in everyday mentality of everyday people would be enormous and very rapid. Fear, at present, overshadows the world." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"It is certain that the soul is either mortal or immortal. The decision of this question must make a total difference in the principles of morals. Yet philosophers have arranged their moral system entirely independent of this. What an extraordinary blindness!" - Blaise Pascal
"Are you the servant of time? Are you aware of time? Time devours us all. How much time are you wasting on little thoughts and personalities? Time can be best understood by meditating on the Solar System... on outer space... and on you" - Blanche DeVries Bernard
"Prestige involves at least two persons: one to claim it and another to honor the claim… In the status system of a society these claims are organized as rules and expectations which regulate who successfully claims prestige, from whom, in what ways, and on what basis. The level of self-esteem enjoyed by given individuals is more or less set by this status system." -
"The most striking defect of our system of government is that it divides political power and thereby conceals political responsibility." - Carl Lotus Becker
"The success of any legal system is measured by its fidelity to the universal ideal of justice." - Earl Warren
"The writers against religion, whilst they oppose every system, are wisely careful never to set up any of their own." - Edmund Burke
"Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. ...The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive." - Frank Herbert, formally Franklin Patrick Herbert, Jr.
"The sun is 93 million miles from the Earth; it is the center of the solar system, and by the power of gravity holds every planet in its orbit. Yet that very same sun can ripen a bunch of grapes as though that was all it had to do." - Galileo Galilei, known simply as Galileo
"Trust in memory, in expectation, in mutual communication of many minds might have issued in a system like modern psychologism: the view that all we see, say, and think is false, but that the only truth is that we see, say and think it. If nothing be real except experience, nothing can be true except biography." - George Santayana
"Empires have no interest in operating within an international system; they aspire to be the international system." - Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger
"The committee system, which is an attempt to reduce the inner insecurity of our top personnel, has the paradoxical consequence of institutionalizing it." - Henry Kissinger, fully Henry Alfred Kissinger
"Men esteem truth remote, in the outskirts of the system, behind the farthest star, before Adam and after the last man. In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages." - Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
"Our days are a kaleidoscope. Every instant a change takes place in the contents. New harmonies, new contrasts, new combinations of every sort. Nothing ever happens twice alike. The most familiar people stand each moment in some new relation to each other, to their work, to surrounding objects. The most tranquil house, with the most serene inhabitants, living upon the utmost regularity of system, is yet exemplifying infinite diversities." - Henry Ward Beecher
"A good educational system should have three purposes: it should provide all who want to learn with access to available resources at anytime in their lives; empower all who want to share what they know to find those who want to learn it from them; and finally, furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to make their challenge known." - Ivan Illich
"Evil unchecked grows, evil tolerated poisons the whole system." - Jawaharlal Nehru
"Myth is a kind of lensing system for the mind of God. It carries the codings of existence." - Jean Houston
"I can neither seek within myself the true condition which will impel me to act, nor apply to a system of ethics for concepts which will permit me to act... No general ethics can show you what is to be done; there are no omens in the world." - Jean-Paul Sartre
"Nature has placed mankind under the governance of two sovereign asters, pain and pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do, as well as to determine what we shall do. On the one hand the standard of right and wrong, on the other the chain of causes and effects, are fastened to their throne. They govern us in all we do, in all we say, in all we think: every effort we can make to throw off our subjection will serve but to demonstrate and confirm it. In words a man may pretend to abjure their empire: but in reality he will remain subject to it all the while. The principle of utility recognizes this subjection, and assumes it for the foundation of that system, the object of which is to rear the fabric of felicity by the hands of reason and law. Systems which attempt to question it deal in sounds instead of sense, in caprice instead of reason, in darkness instead of light." - Jeremy Bentham
"In a closed system of energy based on fear and lack, abundance in one place creates lack in another. In an open system of energy, based on faith and love, abundance begets more abundance, and creativity flourishes." - Joan Borysenko
"The urge to consume is fathered by the value system which emphasizes the ability of society to produce." - John Kenneth Galbraith, aka "Ken"
"Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, Governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens." - John Maynard Keynes
"An economic system is not only an institutional device for satisfying existing wants and needs but a way of fashioning wants in the future." - John Rawls, fully John Bordley Rawls
"The ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursing his own education. This will not be a widely shared pursuit until we get over our odd conviction that education is what goes on in school buildings and nowhere else. " - John W. Gardner, fully John William Gardner
"Hell is the place of people who could not yield their ego system to allow the grace of a transpersonal power to move them." - Joseph Campbell