This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
And so we discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being. It is not acquired by listening to words, but in virtue of experiences in which the child acts on his environment. The teacher’s task is not to talk, but to prepare and arrange a series of motives for cultural activity in a special environment made for the child.
Education | Listening | Motives | Virtue | Virtue | Child | Teacher |
We must rapidly begin the shift from a "thing-oriented" society to a "person-oriented" society. When machines and computers, profit motives and property rights are considered more important than people, the giant triplets of racism, materialism, and militarism are incapable of being conquered.
Important | Machines | Motives | Property | Rights | Society | Society |
The beginning of self-knowledge: recognizing that your motives are the same as other people's.
I would not be surprised to learn that some branch of our government conspired either actively to promote or passively to allow the attack on 9/11. For those who watched the reactionary political uses made of this tragedy, it’s easy to conjure up a variety of possible conspiratorial motives that would have led the president, the vice president, or some branch of the armed forces or CIA or FBI or other “security” forces to have passively or actively participated in a plot to re-credit militarism and war.
Government | Motives | Government | Learn | Vice |
Miguel de Unamuno, fully Miguel de Unamuno y Jogo
What we believe to be the motives of our conduct are usually but the pretexts for it.
My reluctance to enter into religious controversies has never been the result of fear or weakness, however. I may say that I did not start examining my religion only yesterday. Indeed, early on, I recognized it as a duty to examine my opinions and acts, and if, since my youth, I have dedicated my leisure hours to worldly wisdom and the humanities, it was solely with the intention of preparing myself for this necessary [self-] examination. I could have had no other motives for this. In my situation I could not expect the slightest temporal advantage from such studies. I knew well that I could not prosper in worldly affairs in this way. And as for pleasure? Therefore, as you see, had I lacked a sincere belief in my own religion, the result of my inquiries would have made itself visible in a public act. But because [those inquiries] strengthened me in my fathers' [religion], I was able to continue quietly on my way without having to account for my convictions to the world.
Belief | Convictions | Duty | Fear | Intention | Leisure | Motives | Public | Religion | Wisdom |
The future disappeared, and my selfish motives went with it. I existed only in the present. The one thing keeping me going was being part of a group, knowing each mistake made my comrades a little weaker. Group punishment, shunned in most of American society, was a staple at OCS. Platoons fight as groups. They live or die as groups. So we were disciplined as a group.
Neil Gaiman, fully Neil Richard Gaiman
Words can be worrisome, poeple complex, motives and manners unclear, grant her the wisdom to choose her path right, free from unkindness and fear.
Manners | Motives | Unkindness | Wisdom |
Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
When evening comes, I return home and go into my study. On the threshold I strip off my muddy, sweaty, workday clothes, and put on the robes of court and palace, and in this graver dress I enter the antique courts of the ancients and am welcomed by them, and there I taste the food that alone is mine, and for which I was born. And there I make bold to speak to them and ask the motives of their actions, and they, in their humanity, reply to me. And for the space of four hours I forget the world, remember no vexation, fear poverty no more, tremble no more at death: I pass indeed into their world.
Osho, born Chandra Mohan Jain, also known as Acharya Rajneesh and Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh NULL
Heaven is not somewhere else: it is a way of living. So is hell — a style of life. Hell is living unconsciously; heaven is living consciously. Hell is your own creation, so is heaven. If you go on living unconsciously, through your unconscious desires, instincts, motives — of which you are not the master but only the victim — then you create hell around yourself. But if you start living a conscious life, a life of bringing more and more light to the deep, dark corners of your being, if you start living full of light, your life is moment-to-moment ecstasy.
Heaven | Hell | Life | Life | Light | Motives | Style | Victim |
Objects which are usually the motives of our travels by land and sea are often overlooked and neglected if they lie under our eye... We put off from time to time going and seeing what we know we have an opportunity of seeing when we please.
Land | Motives | Opportunity | Time |
In the temple of science are many mansions, and various indeed are they that dwell therein and the motives that have led them thither. Many take to science out of a joyful sense of superior intellectual power; science is their own special sport to which they look for vivid experience and the satisfaction of ambition; many others are to be found in the temple who have offered the products of their brains on this altar for purely utilitarian purposes. Were an angel of the Lord to come and drive all the people belonging to these two categories out of the temple, the assemblage would be seriously depleted, but there would still be some men, of both present and past times, left inside. Our Planck is one of them, and that is why we love him.
Experience | Lord | Love | Motives | Past | People | Present | Science | Sense |
One of the strongest motives that lead men to art and science is escape from everyday life with its painful crudity and hopeless dreariness, from the fetters of one's own ever-shifting desires. A finely tempered nature longs to escape from the personal life into the world of objective perception and thought.
Art | Life | Life | Men | Motives | Nature | Perception | Science | World | Art |
Quentin Crisp, born Denis Charles Pratt
Living en famille provides the strongest motives for rudeness combined with the maximum opportunity for displaying it.
Motives | Opportunity |
Ramakrishna, aka Ramakrishna Paramhamsa or Sri Ramakrishna, born Gadadhar Chattopadhyay NULL
God can be realized when a man acquires sattva. Householders engage in philanthropic work, such as charity, mostly with a motive. That is not good. But actions without motives are good. Yet it is very difficult to leave motives out of one's actions.
Reinhold Niebuhr, fully Karl Paul Reinhold Niebuhr
The measure of our rationality determines the degree of vividness with which we appreciate the needs of other life, the extent to which we become conscious of the real character of our own motives and impulses, the ability to harmonize conflicting impulses in our own life and in society, and the capacity to choose adequate means for approved ends.
Ability | Capacity | Character | Life | Life | Means | Motives | Rationality |
Animated by Christian motives and directed to Christian ends, it shall in no wise go unrewarded: here, by the testimony of an approving conscience; hereafter, by the benediction of our blessed Redeemer, and a brighter inheritance his Father's house.
Inheritance | Motives | Wise | Blessed |
Robert Southwell, also Saint Robert Southwell
A VALE OF TEARS - A vale there is, enwrapt with dreadful shades, Which thick of mourning pines shrouds from the sun, Where hanging cliffs yield short and dumpish glades, And snowy flood with broken streams doth run. Where eye-room is from rock to cloudy sky, From thence to dales with stony ruins strew'd, Then to the crushèd water's frothy fry, Which tumbleth from the tops where snow is thaw'd. Where ears of other sound can have no choice, But various blust'ring of the stubborn wind In trees, in caves, in straits with divers noise; Which now doth hiss, now howl, now roar by kind. Where waters wrestle with encount'ring stones, That break their streams, and turn them into foam, The hollow clouds full fraught with thund'ring groans, With hideous thumps discharge their pregnant womb. And in the horror of this fearful quire Consists the music of this doleful place; All pleasant birds from thence their tunes retire, Where none but heavy notes have any grace. Resort there is of none but pilgrim wights, That pass with trembling foot and panting heart; With terror cast in cold and shivering frights, They judge the place to terror framed by art. Yet nature's work it is, of art untouch'd, So strait indeed, so vast unto the eye, With such disorder'd order strangely couch'd, And with such pleasing horror low and high, That who it views must needs remain aghast, Much at the work, more at the Maker's might; And muse how nature such a plot could cast Where nothing seemeth wrong, yet nothing right. A place for mated mindes, an only bower Where everything do soothe a dumpish mood; Earth lies forlorn, the cloudy sky doth lower, The wind here weeps, here sighs, here cries aloud. The struggling flood between the marble groans, Then roaring beats upon the craggy sides; A little off, amidst the pebble stones, With bubbling streams and purling noise it glides. The pines thick set, high grown and ever green, Still clothe the place with sad and mourning veil; Here gaping cliff, there mossy plain is seen, Here hope doth spring, and there again doth quail. Huge massy stones that hang by tickle stays, Still threaten fall, and seem to hang in fear; Some wither'd trees, ashamed of their decays, Bereft of green are forced gray coats to wear. Here crystal springs crept out of secret vein, Straight find some envious hole that hides their grace; Here searèd tufts lament the want of rain, There thunder-wrack gives terror to the place. All pangs and heavy passions here may find A thousand motives suiting to their griefs, To feed the sorrows of their troubled mind, And chase away dame Pleasure's vain reliefs. To plaining thoughts this vale a rest may be, To which from worldly joys they may retire; Where sorrow springs from water, stone and tree; Where everything with mourners doth conspire. Sit here, my soul, main streams of tears afloat, Here all thy sinful foils alone recount; Of solemn tunes make thou the doleful note, That, by thy ditties, dolour may amount. When echo shall repeat thy painful cries, Think that the very stones thy sins bewray, And now accuse thee with their sad replies, As heaven and earth shall in the latter day. Let former faults be fuel of thy fire, For grief in limbeck of thy heart to still Thy pensive thoughts and dumps of thy desire, And vapour tears up to thy eyes at will. Let tears to tunes, and pains to plaints be press'd, And let this be the burden of thy song,— Come, deep remorse, possess my sinful breast; Delights, adieu! I harbour'd you too long.
Art | Earth | Grief | Heart | Heaven | Hope | Little | Motives | Mourning | Music | Nature | Noise | Nothing | Order | Rest | Sorrow | Sound | Tears | Terror | Work | Art | Think |