This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Our very psychology has been shaken to its foundation. To grasp the meaning of the world today we use a language created to express the world of yesterday. The life of the past seems to us nearer our true nature, but only for the reason that it is nearer our language.
Language | Life | Life | Meaning | Nature | Past | Psychology | Reason | World |
Peace is present when man can see the face that is composed of things that have meaning and are in their place. Peace is present when things form part of a whole greater than their sum, as the diverse minerals in the ground collect to become the tree.
Prison walls cannot confine him who loves, for he belongs to an empire that is not of this world, being made not of material things but of the meaning of things; and thus he mocks at walls.
It is not what we get. But who we become, what we contribute... that gives meaning to our lives.
Meaning |
We may divide thinkers into those who think for themselves, and those who think through others. The latter are the rule, and the former the exception. The first are original thinkers in a double sense, and egotists in the noblest meaning of the world. It is from them only that the world learns wisdom. For only the light which we have kindled in ourselves can illuminate others.
Light | Meaning | Rule | Sense | Thinkers | Wisdom | World | Think |
Arthur Compton, fully Arthur Holly Compton
I should be inclined to claim that the person who limits his interests to the means of living without consideration of the content or meaning of his life is defeating God's great purpose when he brought into existence a creature with the intelligence and godlike powers that are found in man. It is in living wisely and fully that one's soul grows.
Consideration | Existence | God | Intelligence | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Means | Purpose | Purpose | Soul |
Ayn Rand, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum
Anything may be betrayed, anyone may be forgiven. But not those who lack the courage of their own greatness… It does not matter that only a few in each generation will grasp and achieve the full reality of man’s proper stature – and the rest will betray it. It is those few that move the world and give it meaning – and it is those few that I have always sought to address. The rest are of no concern of mine; it is not me or “The Fountainhead” that they will betray: it is their own souls.
Courage | Greatness | Man | Meaning | Reality | Rest | Will | World |
Baal Shem Tov, given name Yisroel ben Eliezer
Each prayer has it own proper meaning and it is therefore the specific key to a door in the Divine Palace, but a broken heart is an axe which opens all the gates.
Wisdom is meaningless until our own experience has given it meaning and there is wisdom in the selection of wisdom.
Experience | Meaning | Wisdom |
Life is so mysterious. People are in misery, and they don’t know how to get out, get help or free themselves. Life is total freedom, but we’re trapped in our own civilization, culture, religion, teachings. We’re equipped with fear, ignorance, unhappiness. Desire is the big evil, the big temptation. Many people carry on in life without knowing this. We do so much for our bodies but not for our souls. Pay attention to yourself, monitor your thinking and capture the villains within. Know what it is in you that would make people suffer more, make people suffer less. Know this and you know how to use your thinking and abilities to bring peace. Certain people have certain duties, a talent. The meaning of life is to see this mission, fulfill it and make the maximum use of your life and your benefit and mankind’s.
Attention | Civilization | Culture | Desire | Evil | Fear | Freedom | Ignorance | Knowing | Life | Life | Mankind | Meaning | Mission | Peace | People | Religion | Temptation | Thinking | Unhappiness |
Carl Friedrich Freiherr von Weizsäcker
There is not even a meaning to the word experience which would not presuppose the distinction between past and future.
Distinction | Experience | Future | Meaning | Past |