This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
César Chávez, fully César Estrada Chávez
The end of all education should surely be service to others. We cannot seek achievement for ourselves and forget about the progress and prosperity of our community. Our ambitions must be broad enough to include the aspirations and needs of others for their sake and for our own.
Achievement | Education | Enough | Progress | Prosperity | Service |
Winston Churchill, fully Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill
Censure is often useful, praise often deceitful.
Didache or The Didache, "The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles" NULL
And every prophet that teaches the truth if he does not what he teaches is a false prophet… But whosoever shall say in the spirit: Give me money, or any other thing, ye shall not listen to him: but, if he bid you give for others that are in need, let no man judge him.
As a solid rock cannot be moved by the wind, the wise are not shaken by praise or blame.
If you compare yourself with others you may become vain and bitter; for there will always be greater and lesser persons than yourself.
Will |
Mirza Asadullah Baig Khan Ghalib
My yearning has loosened the veil hiding Beauty. She is now mine - but alas, my own sight is there blocking the view. The beat of my own heart sounds in my ear. The wish to live as others do has long been silenced. What does their world have to offer? Nothing but the echo of voices yelling, “more, more.”
Most often faith is understood as belief in certain propositional, doctrinal formulations that in some essential ands static way are supposed to “contain” truth. But if faith is relational, a pledging of trust and fidelity to another, and a way of moving into the force field of life trusting in dynamic center of value and power, then the “truth” of faith takes on a different quality. Truth is lived: it is a pattern of being in relation to others and to God. In this light, doctrines and creeds come to be seen as playing a different though still crucial role. Rather than being the repositories of truth, like treasure chests to be honored and assented to, they becomes guides for the construction of contemporary ways of seeing and being.
Belief | Dynamic | Faith | Fidelity | Force | God | Life | Life | Light | Power | Trust | Truth | Value |
Faith is people’s evolved and evolving ways of experiencing self, others and world (as they construct them) as related to and affected by the ultimate conditions of existence (as they construct them) and of shaping their lives’ purposes and meaning, trusts and loyalties, in light of the character of being, value and power determining the ultimate conditions of existence (as grasped in their operative images – conscious and unconscious of them).
Character | Existence | Faith | Light | Meaning | People | Power | Self | World | Value |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
The inability to act spontaneously, to express what one genuinely feels and thinks, and the resulting necessity to present a pseudo-self to others and oneself, are the root of the feeling of inferiority and weakness.
Inferiority | Necessity | Present | Self | Weakness |
Edgar Albert Guest, aka Eddie Guest
`Tis better to have tried in vain sincerely striving for a goal, than to have lived upon the plain an idle and timid soul. `Tis better to have fought and spent your courage, missing all applause, than to have lived in smug content and never ventured for a cause. For he who tries and fails may be the founder of a better day; though never his the victory, form him shall others learn the way.
Our society has progressed largely because of our creativity and inquisitiveness – and because we’re competitive. We’re driven by the desire to develop products and services which are more ingenious than what others have put forth. Competition is inherently good, but when it is tainted with excess greed or negative motives, there can be harmful results. How we compete is very important to our Souls.
Competition | Creativity | Desire | Excess | Good | Greed | Important | Inquisitiveness | Motives | Society | Society |
Every one of us is endowed at birth with all sorts of magnificent possibilities and potentialities. There is a capacity for idealism, a yearning for truth and beauty and nobility, a sensitivity to the hurt of others and to the dreams and needs of our fellow man. In the hopeful dawn of youth we feel these stirrings within us and we promise to bring them to life. And yet so often as the years pass by we permit these promises to be swept under the rug of expediency. We chalk them up to immaturity and we go on to live “more realistically.”
Beauty | Birth | Capacity | Dawn | Dreams | Idealism | Life | Life | Man | Nobility | Promise | Truth | Youth | Youth | Beauty |
The deepest, the only theme of human history, compared to which all others are of subordinate importance, is the conflict of skepticism with faith.
Faith | History | Skepticism |