This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
After the day’s struggle there is no freedom like unfettered thoughts, no sound like the music of silence. And though behind you lies a road of dust and heat and discouragement, and before you the challenge and uncertainty of untried paths, in this brief hour you are master of all highways, and the universe nestles in your soul.
Challenge | Day | Freedom | Music | Silence | Soul | Sound | Struggle | Uncertainty | Universe |
It is not enough to teach a man a specialty. Through it he may become a kind of useful machine but not a harmoniously developed personality. It is essential that the student acquire an understanding of and a lively feeling for values. He must acquire a vivid sense of the beautiful and the morally good. Otherwise, he – with his specialized knowledge – more closely resembles a well-trained dog than a harmoniously developed person. He must learn to understand the motives of human beings, their illusions, and their sufferings in order to acquire a proper relationship to individual fellow-men and to the community.
Enough | Good | Individual | Knowledge | Man | Men | Motives | Order | Personality | Relationship | Sense | Teach | Understanding | Learn | Understand |
The free man acts morally because he has a moral idea. He does not act in order that morality may come into being. A moral idea, born of intuition without compulsion, inner or outer, would be at one and the same time the highest motive and the highest driving force in man.
Eric D’Arcy, fully Joseph Eric D'Arcy
A person who holds for the moral authority of conscience will also hold for the individual’s freedom to follow his conscience without interference from the State.
Authority | Conscience | Freedom | Individual | Will |
Thomas Edison, fully Thomas Alva Edison
There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death in order to inflict torture and death, will be appalled, and so abandon war forever. What man's mind can create, man's character can control.
Character | Day | Death | Force | Man | Mind | Order | Science | Torture | War | Will |
Robert W. Fuller, fully Robert Works Fuller
Not every age is an age of heroes. In order for there to be such larger-than-life figures among us, there must be great social causes, such as just wars or liberation movements that call for extraordinary leadership. Otherwise there are no heroic niches to be filled, and we look elsewhere – to business, sports, entertainment – for people to admire.
Age | Business | Entertainment | Life | Life | Order | People |
We narratively represent our selves in part in order to answer certain questions of identity. It is useful to distinguish two different aims of self-representation that in the end are deeply intertwined. First, there is self-representation for the sake of self-understanding. This is the story we tell ourselves to understand ourselves for who we are. The ideal here is convergence between self-representation and an acceptable version of the story of our actual identity. Second, there is self-representation for public dissemination, whose aim is underwriting successful social interaction.
Aims | Distinguish | Order | Public | Self | Story | Understanding | Understand |
Nels F. S. Ferré, fully Nels Fredrick Solomon Ferré
No man can build a bridge to God. But God never forces man to cross the bridge he builds for him. God never drags man across unwillingly to a relationship of love and communion. Even man’s obedience, in order to be real, must be from the heart; it must be willed by man.
God | Heart | Love | Man | Obedience | Order | Relationship | God |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
The outward freedom that we shall attain will only be in exact proportion to the inward freedom to which we may have grown at a given moment. And if this is a correct view of freedom, our chief energy must be concentrated on achieving reform from within.
Intelligence is that faculty of mind, by which order is perceived in a situation previously considered disordered.
Intelligence | Mind | Order |
Evil is like a shadow - it has no real substance of its own, it is simply a lack of light. You cannot cause a shadow to disappear by trying to fight it, stamp on it, by railing against it, or any other form of emotional or physical resistance. In order to cause a shadow to disappear, you must shine light on it.
It is not doubtful, but the most certain of all certainties, n- nay, the foundation of all certainties - the one absolutely valid objective truth - that there is a moral order in the world.
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes [err].
B. H. Liddell Hart, fully Captain B. H. Liddell
For collective action it suffices if the mass can be managed; collective growth is only possible through the freedom and enlargement of individual minds.
Action | Freedom | Growth | Individual |
David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
In spiritual work, there is no tangible worldly gain to be acquired, but there is instead an inner reward of pleasure, satisfaction, and even joy. Goals replace gains as motives. There is a greater freedom from living on the exciting knife edge of the moment than being a prisoner of the past or having expectations of the future.
Freedom | Future | Goals | Joy | Motives | Past | Pleasure | Reward | Work |