This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Social grace, inner discipline and joy. These are the birthright of the human being who has been allowed to develop essential human qualities.
May Sarton, pen name of Eleanore Marie Sarton
Each day, and the living of it, has to be a conscious creation in which discipline and order are relieved with some play and pure foolishness.
Discipline | Order | Play |
Meditation is a mental discipline that enables us to do one thing at a time.
Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson
I believe that the most important single thing, beyond discipline and creativity is daring to dare.
Creativity | Daring | Discipline | Important |
Merce Cunningham, born Mercier Philip Cunningham
The most essential thing in dance discipline is devotion, the steadfast and willing devotion to the labor that makes the classwork not a gymnastic hour and a half, or at the lowest level, a daily drudgery, but a devotion that allows the classroom discipline to become moments of dancing too.
Devotion | Discipline | Labor |
Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani
Aggression must be met with resistance, and non-violence of the brave is possible only for advanced souls, who have through rigorous discipline eradicated from their minds all forms of greed and hate. But so far as people in general are concerned, it is undesirable to ask them to observe the external formula of non-violence when it is their clear duty to resist aggression in self-defence or in the defence of weaker brothers. General insistence upon non-violence can only lead to people becoming cowardly, irresponsible, and inert, putting the responsibility upon others.
Aggression | Discipline | Duty | Greed | People | Responsibility |
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
These examples suggest what one needs to learn to control attention. In principle any skill or discipline one can master on one’s own will serve: meditation and prayer if one is so inclined; exercise, aerobics, martial arts for those who prefer concentrating on physical skills. Any specialization or expertise that one finds enjoyable and where one can improve one’s knowledge over time. The important thing, however, is the attitude toward these disciplines. If one prays in order to be holy, or exercises to develop strong pectoral muscles, or learns to be knowledgeable, then a great deal of the benefit is lost. The important thing is to enjoy the activity for its own sake, and to know that what matters is not the result, but the control one is acquiring over one’s attention.
Control | Discipline | Important | Knowledge | Meditation | Order | Prayer | Skill | Will | Learn |
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
Repression is not the way to virtue. When people restrain themselves out of fear, their lives are by necessity diminished. Only through freely chosen discipline can life be enjoyed and still kept within the bounds of reason.
Discipline | Life | Life | Necessity | People |
Ludwig Mies Van Der Rohe, born Ludwig Mies
Let us guide our students over the road of discipline from materials, through function, to creative work. Let us lead them into the healthy world of primitive building methods, where there was meaning in every stroke of an axe, expression in every bite of chisel.
Discipline | Meaning | World |
Mike Ditka, fully Michael Keller Ditka, Jr., aka "Iron" Mike Ditka
Success isn't measured by money or power or social rank. Success is measured by your discipline and inner peace.
Discipline | Money | Power | Success |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
Non-cooperation is a measure of discipline and sacrifice, and it demands respect for the opposite views.
Discipline | Respect | Respect |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
There will have to be rigid and iron discipline before we achieve anything great and enduring, and that discipline will not come by mere academic argument and appeal to reason and logic. Discipline is learnt in the school of adversity.
Argument | Discipline | Reason | Will |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
The highest form of freedom carries with it the greatest measure of discipline and humility. Unbridled license is a sign of vulgarity, injurious alike to self and one's neighbors.
Discipline | Freedom | Self |
Day after day train your heart out, refining your technique: Use the One to strike the Many! That is the discipline of the Warrior.
Day | Discipline | Heart |
This pursuit of security in the past, this attempt to find a haven in a fixed dogma and an organizational hierarchy as substitutes for creative thought and praxis is bitter evidence of how little many revolutionaries are capable of ‘revolutionizing themselves and things,’ much less of revolutionizing society as a whole. The deep-rooted conservatism of the People’s Labor Party ‘revolutionaries’ is almost painfully evident; the authoritarian leader and hierarchy replace the patriarch and the school bureaucracy; the discipline of the Movement replaces the discipline of bourgeois society; the authoritarian code of political obedience replaces the state; the credo of ‘proletarian morality’ replaces the mores of puritanism and the work ethic. The old substance of exploitative society reappears in new forms, draped in a red flag, decorated by portraits of Mao (or Castro or Che) and adorned with the little ‘Red Book’ and other sacred litanies.
Conservatism | Discipline | Dogma | Evidence | Labor | Little | Obedience | Sacred | Security | Society | Thought | Work | Society | Leader | Old | Thought |
I have no doubt that certain learned men, now that the novelty of the hypotheses in this work has been widely reported—for it establishes that the Earth moves, and indeed that the Sun is motionless in the middle of the universe—are extremely shocked, and think that the scholarly disciplines, rightly established once and for all, should not be upset. But if they are willing to judge the matter thoroughly, they will find that the author of this work has committed nothing which deserves censure. For it is proper for an astronomer to establish a record of the motions of the heavens with diligent and skilful observations, and then to think out and construct laws for them, or rather hypotheses, whatever their nature may be, since the true laws cannot be reached by the use of reason; and from those assumptions the motions can be correctly calculated, both for the future and for the past. Our author has shown himself outstandingly skilful in both these respects. Nor is it necessary that these hypotheses should be true, nor indeed even probable, but it is sufficient if they merely produce calculations which agree with the observations... For it is clear enough that this subject is completely and simply ignorant of the laws which produce apparently irregular motions. And if it does work out any laws—as certainly it does work out very many—it does not do so in any way with the aim of persuading anyone that they are valid, but only to provide a correct basis for calculation. Since different hypotheses are sometimes available to explain one and the same motion (for instance eccentricity or an epicycle for the motion of the Sun) an astronomer will prefer to seize on the one which is easiest to grasp; a philosopher will perhaps look more for probability; but neither will grasp or convey anything certain, unless it has been divinely revealed to him. Let us therefore allow these new hypotheses also to become known beside the older, which are no more probable, especially since they are remarkable and easy; and let them bring with them the vast treasury of highly learned observations. And let no one expect from astronomy, as far as hypotheses are concerned, anything certain, since it cannot produce any such thing, in case if he seizes on things constructed for another other purpose as true, he departs from this discipline more foolish than he came to it.
Discipline | Doubt | Earth | Eccentricity | Enough | Future | Nature | Nothing | Novelty | Purpose | Purpose | Will | Work | Novelty | Think |
The strongest affection and utmost zeal should, I think, promote the studies concerned with the most beautiful objects. This is the discipline that deals with the universe's divine revolutions, the stars' motions, sizes, distances, risings and settings . . . for what is more beautiful than heaven?
Discipline | Zeal |
Teamwork remains a sustainable competitive advantage that has been largely untapped because it is hard to measure (teamwork impacts the outcome of an organization in such comprehensive and invasive ways that it’s virtually impossible to isolate it as a single variable) and because it is extremely hard to achieve (it requires levels of courage and discipline that few executives possess) – ironically, building a strong team is very simple (it doesn’t require masterful insights or tactics).
Courage | Discipline | Organization |
Peter Senge, fully Peter Michael Senge
New insights fail to get put into practice because they conflict with deeply held internal images of how the world works... images that limit us to familiar ways of thinking and acting. That is why the discipline of managing mental models -- surfacing, testing, and improving our internal pictures of how the world works -- promises to be a major breakthrough for learning organizations.
Discipline | Learning | Practice | Thinking | World |
Peter Senge, fully Peter Michael Senge
People with a high level of personal mastery are able to consistently realize the results that matter most deeply to them – in effect; they approach their life as an artist would approach a work of art. They do that by becoming committed to their own lifelong learning. Personal mastery is the discipline of continually clarifying and deepening our personal vision, of focusing our energies, of developing patience, and of seeing reality objectively. As such, it is an essential cornerstone of the learning organization – the learning organization’s spiritual foundation.
Discipline | Learning | Life | Life | Organization | Reality | Work |