This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Man’s final end, the purpose of his existence, is to love, know and be united with the immanent and transcendent God head. And this identification of self with spiritual not-self can be achieved only by “dying to” selfness and living to spirit.
Character | Existence | God | Love | Man | Purpose | Purpose | Self | Spirit | God |
I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.
I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.
Character | Control | Discretion | Education | Enough | People | Safe | Society | Society | Think |
Fear of life is one form or other is the great thing to exorcise; but it isn’t reason that will ever do it. Impulse without reason is enough, and reason without impulse is a poor makeshift. I take it that no man is educated who has never dallied with the thought of suicide.
Character | Enough | Fear | Impulse | Life | Life | Man | Reason | Suicide | Thought | Will | Thought |
Petra Kelly, fully Petra Karin Kelley
Since human beings have a moral conscience, a spiritual self and a physical self, we can choose among various options. And we are responsible for the consequences of our choices. We can put the common interests of humankind above the conflicts of ideological, racial, religious and national groups. We can bring together thought and feeling, politics and moral values, women and men, the underprivileged and the privileged.... The essence of life is to search for happiness. To realize this end, we must become one with the human family, one with the universe... We should live as if we were to die today. We should die as if we live forever.
Character | Conscience | Consequences | Family | Life | Life | Men | Politics | Search | Self | Thought | Universe | Thought |
Louis Kossuth, also Lajos Kossuth, fully Lajos Kossuth de Udvard et Kossuthfalva
Justice is immortal, eternal, and immutable, like God Himself; and the development of law is only then a progress when it is directed towards those principles which always like Him, are eternal; and whenever prejudice of error succeeds in establishing in customary law any doctrine contrary to eternal justice.
Character | Doctrine | Error | Eternal | God | Justice | Law | Prejudice | Principles | Progress | God |
Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
A crowd... in its very concept is the untruth, by reason of the fact that it renders the individual completely impenitent and irresponsible, or at least weakens his sense of responsibility by reducing it to a fraction.
Character | Individual | Reason | Responsibility | Sense |
Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
You can exert no influence if you are not susceptible to influence.
The self is revealed only in relationship.
Character | Relationship | Self |
Reality comes into being only when the mind is still, not made still. Therefore, there must be no disciplining of the mind to be still. When you discipline yourself, it is merely a projected desire to be in a particular state. Such a state is not the state of passivity... Liberation is from moment to moment in the understanding of what is, when the mind is free, not made free. It is only a free mind that can discover, not a mind molded by a belief or shaped according to a hypothesis. Such a mind cannot discover. There can be no freedom is there is conflict, for conflict is the fixing of the self in relationship.
Belief | Character | Desire | Discipline | Freedom | Hypothesis | Mind | Reality | Relationship | Self | Understanding |
Principles do not mainly influence even the principled; we talk on principle, but we act on interest.
Character | Influence | Principles |