This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
John Rawls, fully John Bordley Rawls
Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought. A theory however elegant and economical must be rejected or revised if it is untrue; likewise laws and institutions no matter how efficient and well-arranged must be reformed or abolished if they are unjust. Each person possesses an inviolability founded on justice that even the welfare of society as a whole cannot override. For this reason justice denies that the loss of freedom for some is made right by a greater good shared by others. It does not allow that the sacrifices imposed on a few are outweighed by the larger sum of advantages enjoyed by many. Therefore in a just society the liberties of equal citizenship are taken as settled; the rights secured by justice are not subject to political bargaining or to the calculus of social interests.
Citizenship | Freedom | Good | Justice | Reason | Right | Rights | Society | Thought | Truth | Virtue | Virtue | Society | Loss |
Being morally good, for the majority of Americans, means following the norms and values of their society or culture - whether this be their peer culture, their church, their country, or a combination of these. The theory that morality is relative to societal norms is known in moral philosophy as cultural relativism. Many others claim that morality is relative to the individual and is different for every person depending on what they feel. This theory is known in philosophy as ethical subjectivism.
Church | Culture | Good | Individual | Majority | Means | Morality | Philosophy | Society | Society | Following |
Marcel Proust, fully Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust
In theory one is aware that the earth revolves, but in practice one does not perceive it, the ground upon which one treads seems not to move, and one can live undisturbed. So it is with Time in one's life.
The dispute between the theory of a predestined future and the theory of a free future is an endless dispute. This is so because both theories are too literal, too rigid, too material, and the one excludes the other... The opposites are both equally wrong because the truth lies in the unification of these two opposite understandings into one whole. At any given moment all the future of the world is predestined and existing - provided no new factor comes in. And a new factor can only come in from the side of consciousness and the will resulting from it.
Consciousness | Dispute | Future | Theories | Truth | Will | World | Wrong |
I have a theory of power: That if it's going to be responsible, it has to have something to lose.
Power |
The astonishment of life is the absence of any appearance of reconciliation between the theory and the practice of life.
Absence | Appearance | Life | Life | Practice | Reconciliation |
Arthur Eddington, fully Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington
It has hitherto seemed that physics comes down heavily on the side of predestination. The quantum theory has entirely removed this bias. Whatever view we may take of free will on philosophical grounds we cannot appeal to physics against it.
Free will | Predestination | Will |
Do not be idolatrous about or bound to any doctrine, theory or ideology. All systems of thought are guiding means; they are not absolute truth. Do not think that the knowledge you presently possess is changeless, absolute truth. Avoid being narrow-minded and bound to present views. Learn and practice non-attachment from views in order to be open to receive others’ viewpoints. Truth is found in life and not merely in conceptual knowledge. Be ready to learn throughout your entire life and to observe reality in yourself and in the world at all times.
Absolute | Doctrine | Knowledge | Life | Life | Means | Order | Practice | Present | Reality | Receive | Thought | Truth | World | Learn | Think | Thought |
The human species, according to the best theory I can form of it, is composed of two distinct races, the men who borrow, and the men who lend.
Men |
Douglas Adams, fully Douglas Noel Adams
There is a theory which states that if ever anybody discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger
Physical theory in its present stage strongly suggests the indestructibility of Mind in Time.
Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger
A careful analysis of the process of observation in atomic physics has shown that the subatomic particles have no meaning as isolated entities, but can only be understood as interconnections between the preparation of an experiment and the subsequent measurement. Quantum physics thus reveals a basic oneness of the universe. The mathematical framework of quantum theory has passed countless successful tests and is now universally accepted as a consistent and accurate description of all atomic phenomena. The verbal interpretation, on the other hand, i.e. the metaphysics of quantum physics, is on far less solid ground. In fact, in more than forty years physicists have not been able to provide a clear metaphysical model.
Experiment | Meaning | Metaphysics | Observation | Oneness |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
Psychoanalysis is essentially a theory of unconscious strivings, of resistance, of falsification of reality according to one's subjective needs and expectations.
Reality |
If the substance of the spiritual experience is always and everywhere the same, differences in its expression and interpretation are secondary and not a valid cause for conflict and intolerance. The world to which our quantum brain connects us is fundamentally one, whether its oneness is due to an information field within the natural world or the work of a divine transcendent intelligence. To enter into communion with this oneness has been the quest of all the great teachers and spiritual masters. And to understand the nature of this oneness has been, and is, the ultimate quest of all great scientists. Still today, physicists seek the one equation that would anchor their famous "Theory of Everything," the theory that would account for all the laws of nature and explain everything that ever happened in our integrally whole universe. Einstein said that knowing this equation would be reading the mind of God.
Cause | Experience | Famous | Knowing | Mind | Nature | Oneness | Reading | Work | World | Understand |