This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
All are waves on the same, one ocean, composed, as ocean water is, of the same substance: Spirit. Some of the waves are higher then others. Some waves don't even want to distance themselves from the ocean. All waves, no matter how high, are in essence one and the same. The difference between the Guru and the disciples, then, lies only in their respective closeness to the ocean: in how conscious each one is of his essential reality. The greater the sense of ego, the taller the wave, and the greater, in consequence, the ignorance. The greater one's awareness of the ocean as one's soul reality, the smaller the wave, and also the less his sense of having a separate individuality.
I believe this movement will prevail. I don’t mean it will defeat, conquer, or create harm to someone else. Quite the opposite. I don’t tender the claim in an oracular sense. I mean that the thinking that informs the movement’s goals will reign. It will soon suffuse most institutions, but before then, it will change a sufficient number of people so as to begin the reversal of centuries of frenzied self-destructive behavior. Some say it is too late, but people never change when they are comfortable. Helen Keller threw aside the gnawing fears of chronic bad news when she declared, “I rejoice to live in such a splendidly disturbing time!” In such a time, history is suspended and thus unfinished. It will be the stroke of midnight for the rest of our lives. My hopefulness about the resilience of human nature is matched by the gravity of our environmental and social condition. If we squander all our attention on what is wrong, we will miss the prize: In the chaos engulfing the world, a hopeful future resides because the past is disintegrating before us. If that is difficult to believe, take a winter off and calculate what it requires to create a single springtime. It’s not too late for the world’s largest institutions and corporations to join in saving the planet, but cooperation must be on the planet’s terms. The “Help Wanted” signs are everywhere. All people and institutions including commerce, governments, schools, churches and cities, need to learn from life and reimagine the world from the bottom up, based on the first principles if justice and ecology. Ecological restoration is extraordinarily simple: You remove whatever prevents the system from healing itself. Social restoration is no different. We have the heart, knowledge, money and sense to optimize out social and ecological fabric. It is time for all that is harmful to leave. One million escorts are here to transform the nightmares of empire and the disgrace of war on people and place. We are the transgressors and we are the forgivers. “We” means all of us, everyone. There can be no green movement unless there is also a black, brown and copper movement. What is more harmful resides within is, the accumulated wounds of the past, the sorrow, shame, deceit, and ignominy shared by every culture, passed down to every person, as surely as DNA, as history of violence and greed. There is not question that the environmental movement is most critical to our survival. Our house is literally burning, and it is only logical that environmentalists expect the social justice movement to get on the environmental bus. But is actually the other way around; the only way we are going to put out this fire is to get on the social justice bus and heal our wounds, because in the end, there is only one bus. Armed with that growing realization, we can address all that is harmful externally. What will guide us is a living intelligence that creates miracles every second, carried forth by a movement with no name.
Attention | Change | Cooperation | Disgrace | Future | Goals | Harm | History | Human nature | Ignominy | Intelligence | Justice | Life | Life | Means | Miracles | Money | Nature | Need | News | Past | People | Principles | Question | Resilience | Rest | Sense | System | Thinking | Time | War | Will | World | Learn |
The "Help Wanted" signs are everywhere. All people and institutions, including commerce, governments, schools, churches, and cities, need to learn from life and reimagine the world from the bottom up, based on first principles of justice and ecology. Ecological restoration is extraordinarily simple: You remove whatever prevents the systems from healing itself. Social restoration is no different. We have the heart, knowledge, money, and sense to optimize our social and ecological fabric. It is time for all that is harmful to leave. One million escorts are here to transform the nightmares of empire and the disgrace of war on people and place. We are the transgressors and we are the forgivers. "We" means all of us, everyone. There can be no green movement unless there is also a black, brown, and copper movement. What is most harmful resides within us, the accumulated wounds of the past, the sorrow, shame , deceit, and ignominy shared by every culture, passed down to every person, as surely as DNA, a history of violence, and greed. There is no question that the environmental movement is critical to our survival. Our house is literally burning, and it is only logical that environmentalists expect the social justice movement to get on the environmental bus. But it is the other way around; the only way we are going to put out the fire is to get on the social justice bus and heal our wounds, because in the end, there is only one bus
Disgrace | History | Ignominy | Justice | Life | Life | Means | Need | People | Principles | Question | Sense | Shame | Time | War | World | Learn |
Paul Ehrlich, fully Paul Ralph Ehrlich
Overdrafts on aquifers are one reason some of our geologist colleagues are convinced that water shortages will bring the human population explosion to a halt. There are substitutes for oil; there is no substitute for fresh water.
Paul Ehrlich, fully Paul Ralph Ehrlich
The idea that we can just keep growing forever on a finite planet is totally imbecilic... Julian Simon, a professor of junkmail marketing, and his kind, think technology will solve everything... We can use up the Earth then we can just jump into spaceships and fly somewhere else... Technology does nothing to solve problems of biodiversity or living space or arable cropland... Fresh water and arable cropland are finite resources... We are already far beyond what we can support sustainably... The provincial view you get from someone living in some wealthy American East Coast city is wildly different from reality. Most of the world is tropical, hungry and poor. Visit the developing world and southern hemisphere and you get a very different view of reality.
Earth | Nothing | Problems | Space | Technology | Will | World | Think |
Love is much like a dam; if you allow a tiny crack to form through which only a trickle of water can pass, that trickle will quickly bring down the whole structure and soon no one will be able to control the force of the current… Certain things in life simply have to be experienced -and never explained. Love is such a thing. Love is the most powerful love can manifest its weakness. Anyway, if my love is real (and not just how to distract themselves, deceive themselves, and so for the time-something that always seems to stand still in the city-well lapse) , then freedom will conquer jealousy and any pain that it caused me, because pain is a natural part of the process. Anyone who has played sports knows this: if you want to achieve your goals, you must be prepared to undergo the discomfort every day, that is the pain and discomfort. Initially, it can be devastating and gradually fade motivated action, but at the same time you find it again is a receptor during the good things, and when that time comes, if you do not feel pain, you will have a feeling that the exercise does not work as expected.
Control | Force | Freedom | Good | Jealousy | Life | Life | Love | Pain | Time | Will | Work |
Love can take us to heaven or hell, but it always takes us somewhere. Therefore, be prepared to travel… Love does not ask many questions, because if we start thinking began to be afraid. It is an inexplicable fear, and not worth trying to translate it into words. It may be the fear of contempt, unless accepted, to break the spell. It sounds ridiculous, but true. So no wonder: it operates. As you yourself have said many times, take the risks... Love doesn't need to be discussed; it has its own voice and speaks for itself… Love fills everything. It cannot be desired because it is an end in itself. It cannot betray because it has nothing to do with possession. It cannot be held prisoner because it is a river and will overflow its banks. Anyone who tries to imprison love will cut off the spring that feeds it, and the trapped water will grow stagnant… Love is fused with the people we love and find a spark of God in him.
Fear | God | Heaven | Love | Need | Nothing | People | Thinking | Will | Worth | God |
Paul Ehrlich, fully Paul Ralph Ehrlich
A series of things have come up since then that have made the problem incredibly grimmer…. The ozone hole… acid rain… Three hundred million people have starved to death since THE POPULATION BOMB was written. The famines weren’t as large as agriculturists thought they would be… due to the spread of… Green Revolution technology into the poor countries…. What makes us nervous right now is that we’re faced with again having to do something desperate to increase our food production greatly... In 1965 we knew exactly how to do it, the question was could we deploy it fast enough—Today we have nothing left to deploy—that’s very scary... As a species we’re not able to live on our income; we’re living on our capital, our deep rich agricultural soils are being destroyed, water is being over-pumped, and our biodiversity, our life support system—we’re already far beyond what we can support.
Death | Life | Life | Nothing | People | Question | Revolution | Right | Technology | Thought | Thought |
There is no time to leave important words unsaid… The most important thing in all human relationships is conversation, but people don’t talk anymore, they don’t sit down to talk and listen. They go to the theater, the cinema, watch television, listen to the radio, read books, but they almost never talk. If we want to change the world, we have to go back to a time when warriors would gather around a fire and tell stories… The more attention you pay an enemy, the stronger you make him. Be attentive, but don't be paranoiac.
Pema Chödrön, born Deirdre Blomfield-Brown
It's said that when we die, the four elements - earth, air, fire and water - dissolve one by one, each into the other, and finally just dissolve into space. But while we're living, we share the energy that makes everything, from a blade of grass to an elephant, grow and live and then inevitably wear out and die. This energy, this life force, creates the whole world.
Sometimes I go days or weeks without hearing a single kind word from anyone. These are difficult times, then it seems that human goodness is gone and life seems just existence. The teacher said: We need to explore their own fireplace. We need to add more fuel to try to illuminate the dark room that has become our lives. When we hear that our fire and burning wood boom throws sparks when read stories passionately told, us back hope. If we are able to love us and we can love. This is only a matter of time… Sometimes the best of God’s gifts arrive by the shattering of all the window panes.
Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker
The people who work within these industries or public services know that there are basic flaws. But they are almost forced to ignore them and to concentrate instead on patching here, improving there, fighting the fire or caulking that crack. They are thus unable to take the innovation seriously, let alone to try to compete with it. They do not, as a rule, even notice it until it has grown so big as to encroach on their industry or service, by which time it has become irreversible. In the meantime, the innovators have the field to themselves.
Fighting | Industry | Innovation | People | Public | Time | Work |
When one realizes that one deceives oneself, that one is asleep and one's house is on fire, always, permanently on fire, and that it is only by accident that the fire has not reached one's room at this very moment, when one realizes this, one will want to make efforts to awake and one will not expect any special reward. Since we do not realize that our house is on fire we always expect a special reward. What can one do in sleep? One can only have different dreams -- bad dreams, good dreams, but in the same bed. The dreams may be different, but the bed is the same.
Peter Senge, fully Peter Michael Senge
It’s common to say that trees come from seeds. But how could a tiny seed create a huge tree? Seeds do not contain the resources needed to grow a tree. These must come from the medium or environment within which the tree grows. But the seed does provide something that is crucial: a place where the whole of the tree starts to form. As resources such as water and nutrients are drawn in, the seed organizes the process that generates growth. In a sense, the seed is a gateway through which the future possibility of the living tree emerges.
Future |
Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin
The critics analyze the sources of law, and find there either a god, product of the terrors of the savage, and stupid, paltry, and malicious as the priests who vouch for its supernatural origin, or else, bloodshed, conquest by fire and sword. They study the characteristics of law, and instead of perpetual growth corresponding to that of the human race, they find its distinctive trait to be immobility, a tendency to crystallize what should be modified and developed day by day.