This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
"Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind... the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. " - Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
"A very Faustian choice is upon us: whether to accept our corrosive and risky behavior as the unavoidable price of population and economic growth, or to take stock of ourselves and search for a new environmental ethic. " - E. O. Wilson, fully Edward Osborne "E.O." Wilson
"Our society is changing so rapidly that none of us can know what it is or where it is going. All of us who are mature feel that there are historic principles of behavior and morality, of things that we all believe in that are being lost, not because young people couldn't believe in them, but because there is no language for translating them into contemporary terms. The search for that language, the search for the ways to tell young people what we know as we grow older — the permanent and wonderful things about life — will be one of the great functions of this system. We are losing this generation. We all know that. We need a way to get them back." - Edwin Herbert Land
"When a person feels he has not been able to make sense of his own life, he tries to make some sense of it in terms of the lives of his children. But one is bound to fail oneself and one's children. The former because the problem of existence can only be solved by each one only for himself, and not by proxy; the latter because one lacks in the very qualities which one needs to guide the children in their own search for an answer. " - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"I believe that the nature of man is a contradiction rooted in the conditions of human existence that requires a search for solutions, which in their turn create new contradictions and now the need for answers." - Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
"The unique personality which is the real life in me, I can not gain unless I search for the real life, the spiritual quality, in others. I am myself spiritually dead unless I reach out to the fine quality dormant in others. For it is only with the god enthroned in the innermost shrine of the other, that the god hidden in me, will consent to appear." - Felix Adler
"Look into the nature of things. Search out the grounds of your opinions, the for and against. " - Frances Wright, known as Fanny Wright
""I know perfectly well that at this moment the whole universe is listening to us," Jean Giraudoux wrote in The Madwoman of Chaillot, "and that every word we say echoes to the remotest star."That poetic paranoia is a perfect description of what the Sun, as a gravitational lens, could do for the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence." - Frank Drake
"I first believed without any hesitation in the existence of the soul, and then I wondered about the secret of its nature. I persevered and strove in search of the soul, and found at last that I myself was the cover over my own soul. I realized that that in me which believed and that in me that wondered, that which was found at last, was no other than my soul. I thanked the darkness that brought me to the light, and I valued this veil that prepared for me the vision in which I saw myself reflected, the vision produced in the mirror of my soul. Since then, I have seen all souls as my soul, and realized my soul as the soul of all. And what bewilderment it was when I realized that I alone was, if there were anyone, that I am whatever and whoever exists, and that I shall be whoever there will be in the future" - Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
"How was it possible, I asked myself, to walk for an hour through the woods and see nothing worthy of note? I who cannot see find hundreds of things to interest me through mere touch. I feel the delicate symmetry of a leaf. I pass my hands lovingly about the smooth skin of a silver birch, or the rough, shaggy bark of a pine. In spring I touch the branches of trees hopefully in search of a bud, the first sign of awakening Nature after her winter’s sleep. I feel the delightful, velvety texture of a flower, and discover its remarkable convolutions; and something of the miracle of Nature is revealed to me." - Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
"The search for love is but the honest searching out of everything that interferes with love." - Helen Schucman, born Helen Cohn
"The search for divine truth is like gold washing; nothing is of any value until most has been swept away. " - H. G. Wells, fully Herbert George Wells
"An educator is not merely a giver of information; he is one who points the way to wisdom, to truth. Truth is far more important than the teacher. The search for truth is religion, and truth is of no country, of no creed, it is not to be found in any temple, church or mosque. Without the search for truth, society soon decays." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
"The inward desire for security expresses itself outwardly through exclusion and violence, and as long as its process is not fully understood there can be no love. Love is not another refuge in the search for security. The desire for security must wholly cease for love to be." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
"Society in which we live, we have created, we are responsible for it - each one of us. It has not come into being because of some fictitious, spiritual forces. It has come about through our greed, through our ambition, through our personal likes and dislikes and enmities, through our frustrations, through our search for pleasure and satisfaction. We have created the religions, the beliefs, the dogmas, out of fear. It is in that society that you live. Either you run away from that society because you cannot understand it, or cannot bring about a change in that society of which you are a part; or you become so completely engrossed in your own particular travail that you lose complete interest in the radical demand of a human mind that says that it must change." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
"To find out what is truth there must be great love and a deep awareness of man's relationship to all things- which means that one is not concerned with one's own progress and achievements. The search for truth is true religion, and the man who is seeking truth is the only religious man." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
"The search for truth gives an explosive creativeness to the mind, which is true revolution, because in this search the mind is uncontaminated by the edicts and sanctions of society. Being free of all that, the religious man is able to find out what is true; and it is the discovery of what is true from moment to moment that creates a new culture." - Jiddu Krishnamurti
"The fear-oriented religion is the religion of 'don't': don't do this, don't do that -- because fear is negative. The Ten Commandments are all fear-oriented -- don't do this, don't do that -- as if religion is nothing but avoiding -- don't do this, don't do that -- closing oneself in safety and security, never taking any risk, never moving on the dangerous path, in fact not allowing yourself to be alive. Just as the first type of religion is stupid, fanatic, the second type of religion is negative. It gives a certain stiffness, up-tightness. It is childish. It is a search for security which is nowhere possible, because life exists as insecurity. God exists as insecurity, danger, and risk." - Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
"Reality has no security and that is its beauty. Life has no security and that is its beauty. Because there is no security, there is adventure. Because the future is unknown, nobody knows what is going to happen the next moment. That's why there is challenge, growth, adventure. If you miss adventure, you miss all. If your life is not that of an adventure, of a search into the unknown, then you are living in vain." - Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
"To search means, first, I need Being, Truth; second, I do not know where to find it; and third, an action takes place that is not based on fantasies of certainty— while at the same time a waiting takes place that is rooted not in wishful thinking but in a deep sense of urgency" - Jacob Needleman
"Come, seek, for search is the foundation of fortune: every success depends upon focusing the heart." - Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
"A man only begins to be a man when he ceases to whine and revile, and commences to search for the hidden justice which regulates his life. And he adapts his mind to that regulating factor, he ceases to accuse others as the cause of his condition, and builds himself up in strong and noble thoughts; ceases to kick against circumstances, but begins to use them as aids to his more rapid progress, and as a means of the hidden powers and possibilities within himself." - James Allen
"Truth, after all, wears a different face to everybody, and it would be too tedious to wait till all are agreed. She is said to lie at the bottom of a well, for the very reason, perhaps, that whoever looks down in search of her sees his own image at the bottom, and is persuaded not only that he has seen the goddess, but that she is far better-looking than he had imagined." - James Russell Lowell
"In-depth studies have an influence on general ideas, whereas theories, in turn, in order to maintain themselves, push their spectators to search for new evidence. The mind's activity that is maintained by the debates about these works, is probably the source of the greatest joys given to man to experience on Earth. " - Louis Agassiz, fully Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz
"Man must search for what is right, and let happiness come on its own. " - Johann Pestalozzi, fully Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi
"The art of governing the passions is more useful, and more important, than many things in the search and pursuit of which we spend our days. Without this art, riches and health, and skill and knowledge, will give us little satisfaction; and whatsoever else we be, we can be neither happy, nor wise, nor good." - John Jortin
"He that would seriously set upon the search of truth, ought in the first place to prepare his mind with a love of it. For he that loves it not, will not take much pains to get it; nor be much concerned when he misses it. " - John Locke
"The search of reason ends at the shore of the known; on the immense expanse beyond it only the sense of the ineffable can glide. It alone knows the route to that which is remote from experience and understanding. " - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"When you are the leader in your field, it takes a greater level of innovation and commitment to stay there. Make a point to continually search for a better way of doing things, even when things are going well, to ensure that a better alternative has not been overlooked and to keep your creative talents in practice. Practice mental agility: Before you write off a far-fetched idea, back up and look at the big picture, because it might fit perfectly on another level. Have fun: When you are truly having fun in your work, creativity flows freely." - John C. Maxwell
"The continual search for happiness is a primary reason that so many people are miserable. If you make happiness your goal, you are almost certainly destined to fail. You will be on a continual roller coaster, changing from successful to unsuccessful with every mood change. Life is uncertain, and emotions aren’t stable. Happiness simply cannot be relied upon as a measure of success." - John C. Maxwell
"The human being is uniquely graced with the ability to search the soul and reflect, For what purpose am I alive? Does my life have a meaning, a reason? Is there a need for my existence? Will anything on earth be impaired by my disappearance? Would my absence create a vacuum in the world? And if we say that there would be a void and an impairment in the world, and that this means that my life has value beyond its simple existence, is it incumbent upon me to fulfill a purpose in this life? Do I exist that I might build or restore?" - Abraham Joshua Heschel
"Create a vision and then ignite your organization to make this vision a reality. Get people so passionate about what they are doing that they cannot wait to execute this plan. Have great energy, competitive spirit and the ability to spark excitement and achieve results. Search for leaders who have the same qualities." - Jack Welch, fully John Francis "Jack" Welch, Jr.
"There is an internal landscape, a geography of the soul; we search for its outlines all our lives. Those who are lucky enough to find it ease like water over a stone, onto its fluid contours, and are home. Some find it in the place of their birth; others may leave a seaside town, parched, and find themselves refreshed in the desert. There are those born in rolling countryside who are really only at ease in the intense and busy loneliness of the city. For some, the search is for the imprint of another; a child or a mother, a grandfather or a brother, a lover, a husband, a wife, or a foe. We may go through our lives happy or unhappy, successful or unfulfilled, loved or unloved, without ever standing cold with the shock of recognition, without ever feeling the agony as the twisted iron in our soul unlocks itself and we slip at last into place." - Josephine Hart, Lady Saatchi
"There is an eternal landscape, a geography of the soul; we search for its outlines all our lives." - Josephine Hart, Lady Saatchi
""What is the meaning of life?" This question has no answer except in the history of how it came to be asked. There is no answer because words have meaning, not life or persons or the universe itself. Our search for certainty rests in our attempts at understanding the history of all individual selves and all civilizations. Beyond that, there is only awe." - Julian Jaynes
"All things living are in search of a better world. Men, animals, plants, even unicellular organisms are constantly active. They are trying to improve their situation, or at least to avoid its deterioration… Every organism is constantly preoccupied with the task of solving problems. These problems arise from its own assessments of its condition and of its environment; conditions which the organism seeks to improve… We can see that life — even at the level of the unicellular organism — brings something completely new into the world, something that did not previously exist: problems and active attempts to solve them; assessments, values; trial and error." - Karl Popper, fully Sir Karl Raimund Popper
"In any evolutionary process, even in the arts, the search for novelty becomes corrupting." - Kenneth Boulding, fully Kenneth Ewart Boulding
"The dangers and the difficulties of the present time are great.... The troubles of the 20th century are not unlike those of adolescence -- rapid growth beyond the ability of organizations to manage, uncontrollable emotion, and a desperate search for identity. Out of adolescence, however, comes maturity in which physical growth with all its attendant difficulties comes to an end, but in which growth continues in knowledge, in spirit, in community, and in love; it is to this that we look forward as a human race. This goal, once seen with our eyes, will draw our faltering feet toward it." - Kenneth Boulding, fully Kenneth Ewart Boulding
"Refraining from all evil, not clinging to birth and death, working in deep compassion for all sentient beings, respecting those over you and pitying those below you, without any detesting or desiring, worrying or lamentation - this is what is called Buddha. Do not search beyond it." - Dōgen, aka Dōgen Kigen, Eihei Dōgen, titled as Dōgen Zenji NULL
"Sometimes in the pursuit of fame and the search for significance and the desire for that elusive excellence we all remember the slaps and forget the kisses." - Krish Khanam
"Philosophy has been called the search for the Permanent amid the changing. With this account of philosophy there is no need to quarrel. But having accepted it, a distinction remains to be observed, a distinction of capital importance, which we are in constant danger of forgetting. It is one thing to find the Permanent; it is another thing to find a form of words in which the Permanent shall stand permanently expressed. It is one thing to experience something fixed and changeless; it is another thing to fix this something by a changeless definition. The first may be possible, while the second remains impossible for ever." - L. P. Jacks, fully Lawrence Pearsall Jacks
"The search for the ultimate foundation is as much an unremovable part of human culture as it is the denial of the legitimacy of this search." - Leszek Kolakowski
"Science is the search for the truth--it is not a game in which one tries to beat his opponent, to do harm to others. We need to have the spirit of science in international affairs, to make the conduct of international affairs the effort to find the right solution, the just solution of international problems, and not an effort by each nation to get the better of other nations, to do harm to them when it is possible. I believe in morality, in justice, in humanitarianism." - Linus Pauling, fully Linus Carl Pauling
"Science is the search for truth - it is not a game in which one tries to beat his opponent to do harm to others." - Linus Pauling, fully Linus Carl Pauling
"I think most artists create out of despair. The very nature of creation is not a performing glory on the outside, it's a painful, difficult search within." - Louise Nevelson, fully Louise Berliawsky Nevelson
"The noblest search is the search for excellence." - Lyndon Johnson, fully Lyndon Baines Johnson, aka LBJ
"There is a part of a child's soul that has always been unknown but which must be known. With a spirit of sacrifice and enthusiasm we must go in search like those who travel to foreign lands and tear up mountains in their search for hidden gold. This is what the adults must do who seeks the unknown factor that lies hidden in the depths of a child's soul. This is a labor in which all must share, without distinction of nation, race, or social standing since it means the bringing forth of an indispensable element for the moral progress of mankind." - Maria Montessori