This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Helen Keller. aka Helen Adams Keller
Happiness is the final and perfect fruit of obedience to the laws of life.
If patriotism were defined, not as blind obedience to government, nor as submissive worship to flags and anthems, but rather as love of one's country, one's fellow citizens (all over the world), as loyalty to the principles of justice and democracy, then patriotism would require us to disobey our government, when it violated those principles.
Justice | Love | Loyalty | Loyalty | Obedience | Patriotism | Principles | Worship |
In obedience there is always fear, and fear darkens the mind.
The strongest is never strong enough always to be master, unless he transforms strength into right, and obedience into duty.
John Rawls, fully John Bordley Rawls
The strength of the claims of formal justice, of obedience to system, clearly depend upon the substantive justice of institutions and the possibilities of their reform.
M. C. Richards, fully Mary Caroline Richards
It is for each of us freely to choose whom we shall serve, and find in that obedience our freedom.
Personal and relative duties must be done in obedience to his commands, with due aim at pleasing and honouring him, from principles of holy love and fear of him. But there is an express and direct duty also that we owe to God, namely, belief and acknowledgement of his being and perfections, paying him internal and external worship and homage - loving, fearing, and trusting in Him - depending on Him, and devoting ourselves to Him - observing all those religious duties and ordinances that He has appointed - praying to Him, praising Him, and meditating on His word and works.
Belief | Duty | Fear | Love | Obedience | Principles | Worship |
Audible prayer can never do the works of spiritual understanding, which regenerates; but silent prayer, watchfulness, and devout obedience enable us to follow Jesus example. Long prayers, superstition, and creeds clip the strong pinions of Love.
Max Planck, fully Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck
The worship of god is thus symbolically manifested in a systematic summarization of mythological tradition (Überlieferung) and in obedience of solemn ritual habits ... The holiness (Heiligkeit) of incomprehensible deity is transferred to the holiness of comprehensible symbols ... A work of art has its meaning essentially in itself ... A religious symbol, on the contrary, points always above itself, its value is never exhausted in itself ... a winged angel was considered from ancient times to be the most beautiful symbol of god's servant and messenger. Nowadays we will find among anatomically educated believers some, which are prevented by their scientifically educated imagination from considering such physiological impossibility beautiful, despite their best efforts. This circumstance, however, does not cause the slightes harm to their religious attitudes ... But the overestimation of the importance of religious symbols is threatened still by another – much more serious – danger from the side of the movement of atheists (Gottlosenbewegung). One of the most favorite methods of this movement, aiming at undermining of every genuine religiosity, is to direct its attacks against traditional (alteingebürgerten) religious customs and ridiculing or dishonoring them as obsolete institutions. With such attacks against symbols they hope to hit the religion itself, and they have the easier task (Spiel) the stranger and more striking such views and customs look. Many a religious soul (religiöse Seele) has fallen pray to such a tactics. There is no better defense against such peril than to realize that religious symbol ... does never represent an abolute value but is always only a more or less imperfect reference to something higher which is not directly accessible to our senses.
Art | Better | Cause | Danger | Defense | God | Harm | Hope | Imagination | Impossibility | Meaning | Obedience | Peril | Religion | Soul | Tradition | Will | Work | Worship | Danger | Art | God | Value |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
There are times when you have to obey a call which is the highest of all, i.e. the voice of conscience even though such obedience may cost many a bitter tear, and even more, separation from friends, from family, from the state, to which you may belong, from all that you have held as dear as life itself. For this obedience is the law of our being.
This pursuit of security in the past, this attempt to find a haven in a fixed dogma and an organizational hierarchy as substitutes for creative thought and praxis is bitter evidence of how little many revolutionaries are capable of ‘revolutionizing themselves and things,’ much less of revolutionizing society as a whole. The deep-rooted conservatism of the People’s Labor Party ‘revolutionaries’ is almost painfully evident; the authoritarian leader and hierarchy replace the patriarch and the school bureaucracy; the discipline of the Movement replaces the discipline of bourgeois society; the authoritarian code of political obedience replaces the state; the credo of ‘proletarian morality’ replaces the mores of puritanism and the work ethic. The old substance of exploitative society reappears in new forms, draped in a red flag, decorated by portraits of Mao (or Castro or Che) and adorned with the little ‘Red Book’ and other sacred litanies.
Conservatism | Discipline | Dogma | Evidence | Labor | Little | Obedience | Sacred | Security | Society | Thought | Work | Society | Leader | Old | Thought |
Paramahansa Yogananda, born Mukunda Lal Ghosh
Wise guidance never violates people's Free Will. A superior who demands obedience of his subordinates should show respect for their capacity to understand, and also for their Innate Right to their own Free Will.
Capacity | Guidance | Obedience | Respect | Right | Respect | Guidance |
Peter F. Drucker, fully Peter Ferdinand Drucker
Management means, in the last analysis, the substitution of thought for brawn and muscle, of knowledge for folkways and superstition, and of cooperation for force. It means the substitution of responsibility for obedience to rank, and of authority of performance for the authority of rank.
Authority | Cooperation | Knowledge | Means | Obedience | Responsibility | Thought | Thought |
Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin
A principle or theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government — harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups.
Conduct | Government | Harmony | Life | Life | Obedience | Society | Submission | Society | Government |
Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin
Anarchism, the name given to a principle or theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government — harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized being. In a society developed on these lines, the voluntary associations which already now begin to cover all the fields of human activity would take a still greater extension so as to substitute themselves for the state in all its functions. They would represent an interwoven network, composed of an infinite variety of groups and federations of all sizes and degrees, local, regional, national and international temporary or more or less permanent — for all possible purposes: production, consumption and exchange, communications, sanitary arrangements, education, mutual protection, defense of the territory, and so on; and, on the other side, for the satisfaction of an ever-increasing number of scientific, artistic, literary and sociable needs. Moreover, such a society would represent nothing immutable. On the contrary — as is seen in organic life at large — harmony would (it is contended) result from an ever-changing adjustment and readjustment of equilibrium between the multitudes of forces and influences, and this adjustment would be the easier to obtain as none of the forces would enjoy a special protection from the state.
Conduct | Defense | Government | Harmony | Life | Life | Nothing | Obedience | Organic | Society | Submission | Society | Government |