This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Man is created by thought; that which he thinks upon in our life becomes in another." - Annie Besant
"Giving much thought to the future is vain. Only one task is worthy of the doing and that is to express the Here and Now. And to express means building, out of the infinite diversity of the Here and Now, a visage dominating it. It means shaping silence out of stones. Any other claim is but an ado of words that weave the wind." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"Only a small mind traffics in scorn; a mind whose truth accords no place to others’. But we who knew that different truths can coexist thought not that we were lowering ourselves by countenancing another’s truth, unpalatable though it might seem." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
"He who cannot change the very fabric of his thought will never be able to change reality, and will never, therefore, make any progress." - Anwar Sadat, fully Muhammad Anwar El Sadat
"If thinking is perceiving, it must be either a process in which the soul is acted upon by what is capable of being thought, or a process different from but analogous to that. The thinking part of the soul must therefore be, while impassable, capable of receiving the form of an object; that is, must be potentially identical in character with its object without being the object. Mind must be related to what is thinkable, as sense is to what is sensible." - Aristotle NULL
"The happy life is thought to be virtuous; now a virtuous life requires exertion, and does not consist in amusement." - Aristotle NULL
"The primary objects of desire and of thought are the same. For the apparent good is the object of appetite, and the real good is the primary object of rational wish. But desire is consequent of opinion rather than opinion on desire; for the thinking is the starting-point." - Aristotle NULL
"Without friends no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods; even rich men and those in possession of office and of dominating power are thought to need friends most of all; for what is the use of such prosperity without the opportunity of beneficence, which is exercised chiefly and in its most laudable form towards friends?... With friends men are more able both to think and to act." - Aristotle NULL
"The activity of philosophic wisdom is admittedly the pleasantest of virtuous activities; at all events the pursuit of it is thought to offer pleasures marvelous for their purity and their enduringness, and it is to be expected that those who know ill pass their time more pleasantly than those who inquire. And the self-sufficiency that is spoken of must belong most to the contemplative activity." - Aristotle NULL
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." - Aristotle NULL
"What we have to do is to see as deep as we can into the truth of things, not to invent paradises of thought, sheltered gardens, from which grief and suffering shall tear us, naked and protesting; but to gaze into the heart of God, and then to follow as faithfully as we can the imperative voice that speaks within the soul." -
"What we have to do is to see as deep as we can into the truth of things, not to invent paradises of thought, sheltered gardens, from which grief and suffering shall tear us, naked and protesting; but to gaze into the heart of God, and then to follow as faithfully as we can the imperative voice that speaks within the soul." - A.C. Benson, fully Arthur Christopher “A.C.” Benson
"The man who believes firmly that the Creator of the universe loves him and cares infinitely what he dose with his life - this man is automatically freed from much of the self-distrust that afflicts less certain men. Fear, guilt, hostility, anger - these are the emotions that stifle thought and impede action. By reducing or eliminating them, religious faith makes boldness possible, and boldness makes achievement possible." - Arthur Gordon
"Clarity in language depends on clarity in thought." - Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr., born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger
"There are glimpses of heaven to us in every act, or thought, or word, that raises us above ourselves." - Arthur Penrhyn Stanley, known as Dean Stanley
"Truth is most beautiful undraped; and in the impression it makes is deep in proportion as its expression has been simple. This is so partly because it then takes unobstructed possession of the hearer’s whole soul, and leaves him no by-thought to distract him; partly, also, because he feels that here he is not being corrupted or cheated by the arts of rhetoric, but that all the effect of what is said comes from the thing itself." - Arthur Schopenhauer
""The world is my idea" - this is a truth which holds good for everything that lives and knows, though man alone can bring it into reflective and abstract thought." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"Our hesitation before such a colossal thought will perhaps be diminished by the recollection... that the ultimate dreamer of the vast life-dream is finally, in a certain sense, but one, namely the Will to Live, and that the multiplicity of appearances follows from the conditioning effects of time and space [the morphogenetic field whereby the Will to Live assumes forms]. It is one great dream dreamed by a single Being, but in such a way that all the dream characters dream too. Hence, everything links and accords with everything else." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"Thus the task is not so much to see what no one yet has seen, but to think what nobody yet has thought about that which everybody sees." - Arthur Schopenhauer
"Better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak out and remove all doubt." - Author Unknown NULL
"A brand new mediocrity is thought more of than accustomed excellence." - Baltasar Gracián
"Experience is the child of Thought, and Thought is the child of Action." - Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield
"Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt." - Bergen Baldwin Evans
"Freedom of speech and freedom of action are meaningless without freedom to think. And there is no freedom of thought without doubt." - Bergen Baldwin Evans
"Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth- even more than death. Thought is subversive, and revolutionary, destructive and terrible; though its merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habits; thought is anarchic and lawless, indifferent to authority, careless to the well-trained wisdom of ages. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid... Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world and the chief glory of man. But if thought is to become the possession of the many, and not the privilege of the few, we must have done with fear. It is fear that holds man back - fear that their cherished beliefs should prove delusions, fear lest the institutions by which they live should prove harmful, fear least they themselves prove less worthy to the respect they have supposed themselves to be." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"Metaphysics, or the attempt to conceive the world as a whole by means of thought, has been developed, from the first, by the union and conflict of two very different human impulses, the one urging men towards mysticism, the other urging them towards science... But the greatest men who have been philosophers have felt the need both of science and mysticism: the attempt to harmonize the two was what made their life, and what always must, for all its arduous uncertainty, make philosophy, to some minds, a greater thing than either science or religion." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"The average man's opinions are much less foolish than they would be if he thought for himself." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"The contention that time is unreal and that the world of sense is illusory must, I think, be regarded as based upon fallacious reasoning... Both in thought and in feeling, to realize the unimportance of time is the gate of wisdom." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"The value of philosophy is to be sought largely in its very uncertainty. He who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the cooperation or consent of his deliberate reason. As soon as we begin to philosophize, on the contrary, we find that even the most everyday things lead to problems to which only very incomplete answers can be given. Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thought and free them from the tyranny of custom." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth more than ruin more even than death.... Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions, and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"Religious toleration, to a certain extent, has been won because people have ceased to consider religion so important as it was once thought to be." - 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
"Thought is free when it is exposed to free competition among beliefs, i.e., when all beliefs are able to state their case, and no legal or pecuniary advantages or disadvantages attach to beliefs." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"Men fear thought as they fear nothing else on earth: more than ruin, more even than death." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"Thought is subversive and revolutionary, destructive and terrible, thought is merciless to privilege, established institutions and comfortable habit. Thought looks into the pit of hell and is not afraid. Thought is great and swift and free, the light of the world, and the chief glory of man." - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"A thinking reed. It is not from space that I must seek my dignity, but from government of my thought. I shall have no more if I possess worlds. By space the universe encompasses and swallows me up like an atom; by thought I comprehend the world." - Blaise Pascal
"All our dignity consists... in thought. By it we must elevate ourselves, and not by space and time which we cannot fill. Let us endeavor, then, to think well; this is the principle of morality." - Blaise Pascal
"Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him: a vapour, a drop of water is enough to kill him But even if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than his slayer, because he knows that he is dying and the advantage the universe has over him. the universe knows none of this. Thus all our dignity consists in thought. It is on thought that we must depend for our recovery, not on space and time, which we could never fill. Let us then strive to think well; that is the basic principle of morality." - Blaise Pascal
"Thought... is the essence of man, and without this we cannot conceive of him." - Blaise Pascal
"It is an easy matter, requiring little thought, generosity or statesmanship to push a weak man down when he is struggling to get up. Anyone can do that. Greatness, generosity, statesmanship are shown in stimulating, encouraging every individual in the body politic to make of himself the most useful, intelligent and patriotic citizen possible." - Booker T. Washington, fully Booker Taliaferro Washington
"Speech is the gift of all, but thought of few." - Cato the Elder, Marcus Porius Cato, aka Censorius (the Censor), Sapiens (the Wise), Priscus (the Ancient) NULL
"Brahman is supreme; he is self-luminous, he is beyond all thought. Subtler than the subtlest is he, farther than the farthest, nearer than the nearest. He resides in the heart of every being." - Chandogya Upanishad
"Reform is a good replete with paradox; it is a cathartic which our political quacks, like our medical, recommend themselves; it is admired by all who cannot effect it, and abused by all who can; it is thought pregnant with danger, for all time that is present, but would have been extremely profitable for that which is past, and will be highly salutary for that which is to come." - Charles Caleb Colton
"The author, however, who has thought more than he has read, read more than he has written, and written more than he has published, if he does not command success, has at least deserved it." - Charles Caleb Colton
"There is no bigotry like that of "free thought" run to seed." - Charles Caleb Colton
"The world is just the materializing of God’s thoughts, for the world is a thought in God’s eye." - Charles Haddon Spurgeon