This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Our original Buddha-Nature is, in highest truth, devoid of any trace of objectivity. It is void, omnipresent, silent, pure; it is glorious and mysterious peaceful joy-and that is all. Enter deeply in it by awakening to it yourself. That which is before you is it, in all its fullness, utterly complete. There is naught besides. Even if you go through all the stages of a Bodhisattva's progress toward Buddhahood, one by one, when at last, in a single flash, you attain to full realization, you will only be realizing the Buddha-Nature that has been with you all the time; and by all the foregoing stages you will have added to it nothing at all. You will come to look upon those aeons of work and achievement as no better than unreal actions performed in a dream. That is why the Tathagata [the Buddha] said: I truly attained nothing from complete, unexcelled Enlightenment.
Achievement | Awakening | Better | Nothing | Progress | Will | Work |
The greatest achievement was at first and for a time a dream. The oak sleeps in the acorn, the bird waits in the egg, and in the highest vision of the soul a waking angel stirs. Dreams are the seedlings of realities.
Achievement | Dreams | Soul | Time | Vision |
While tenderness of feeling and susceptibility to generous emotions are accidents of temperament, goodness is an achievement of the will and a quality of the life.
Achievement | Emotions | Tenderness | Will |
Religion is neither a state of mind nor an achievement of intellect. It does not rule hearts by the grace of man; its roots lie not in his inwardness. It is not an event in the soul but a matter of fact outside the soul. Even what starts as an experience in man transcends the human sphere, becoming an objective event outside him. In this power of transcending the soul, time, and space, the pious man sees the distinction of religious acts.
Achievement | Distinction | Experience | Grace | Man | Mind | Pious | Power | Rule | Soul |
Maxwell identifies the following trade-offs that serve as landmarks: 1) achievement over affirmation, 2) excellence over acceptability, 3) personal growth over immediate pleasure, 4) future potential over financial gain, 5) a narrow focus over scattered interests, and significant over security.
Achievement | Excellence | Focus | Future | Growth | Excellence | Following |
John Wooden, fully John Robert Wooden
Remember, results aren’t the criteria for success — it’s the effort made for achievement that is most important.
Achievement | Effort | Success |
Joshua L. Liebman, fully Joshua Loth Liebman
Why should we not believe that which is highest in ourselves is a reflection of that which is deepest in the universe – that we are children of a Power who makes possible the growing achievement of relatedness, fulfillment, goodness?
Achievement | Children | Power | Reflection | Universe |
The achievement of the hero is one that he is ready for and it's really a manifestation of his character. It's amusing the way in which the landscape and conditions of the environment match the readiness of the hero. The adventure that he is ready for is the one that he gets ... The adventure evoked a quality of his character that he didn't know he possessed.
Achievement | Adventure | Character | Hero |
Jules Amédée Barbey d'Aurevilly
Fools – in other words most people – imagine that it would be a wonderful achievement to be able to recover our youth; but those who know life are aware how little it would profit us.
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, born Ferdinand Lewis "Lew" Alcinder, Jr.
Great players are willing to give up their own personal achievement for the achievement of the group. It enhances everybody.
Katharine Anthony, fully Katharine Susan Anthony
People seem to think that life began with the achievement of personal independence.
Achievement | Life | Life | Think |
Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
Useful and useless, achievement and failure, are all relative, and none are necessarily consistent over time.
The three great American vices seem to be efficiency, punctuality, and the desire for achievement and success. They are the things that make the Americans so unhappy and so nervous.
Achievement | Desire |
Arthur Balfour, 1st Earl of Balfour, fully Arthur James Balfour, aka Lord Balfour
His Majesty's government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country. - Balfour Declaration of 1917
Achievement | Government | Nothing | Prejudice | Rights | Will | Government |
Ludwig von Mises, fully Ludwig Heinrich Edler von Mises
To illustrate the difference between the innovator and the dull crowd of routinists who cannot even imagine that any improvement is possible, we need only refer to a passage in Engel's most famous book. Here, in 1878, Engels apodictically announced that military weapons are "now so perfected that no further progress of any revolutionizing influence is any longer possible." Henceforth "all further [technological] progress is by and large indifferent for land warfare. The age of evolution is in this regard essentially closed." This complacent conclusion shows in what the achievement of the innovator consists: he accomplishes what other people believe to be unthinkable and unfeasible.
Achievement | Age | Evolution | Famous | Improvement | Influence | Land | Need | People | Progress | Regard | Weapons |
Liberalism regards life as an adventure in which we must take risks in new situation, in which there is no guarantee that the new will always be the good or the true, in which progress is a precarious achievement rather than inevitability.
Achievement | Adventure | Good | Guarantee | Life | Life | Progress | Will |
Liberalism is an attitude rather than a set of dogmas – an attitude that insists upon questioning all plausible and self-evident propositions, seeking not to reject them but to find out what evidence there is to support them rather than their possible alternatives. This open eye for possible alternatives which need to be scrutinized before we can determine which is the best grounded is profoundly disconcerting to all conservatives.... Conservatism clings to what has been established, fearing that, once we begin to question the beliefs we have inherited, all the values of life will be destroyed. Liberalism, on the other hand, regards life as an adventure in which we must take risks in new situations, in which there is no guarantee that the new will always be the good or the true, in which progress is a precarious achievement rather than inevitability.
Achievement | Adventure | Conservatism | Evidence | Good | Guarantee | Life | Life | Need | Progress | Question | Will |
The aim [of education] is to develop a sincere faith in the holiness of life and sense of responsibility for enabling the... people to make its contribution to the achievement of a good life.
Achievement | Faith | Good | Life | Life | People | Responsibility | Sense |
The entire style of thought in Reform bears the imprint of Protestant theology and philosophy. Jewish Orthodoxy, on the other hand, clearly reflects the style of thought characteristic of Catholic theology. That may explain in party why Orthodoxy attained its greatest strength in the Catholic part of Germany. The reaction of the Orthodox Jews against the modernist emphasis upon reason and the spirit of the times was very similar to that displayed by the Catholics among whom they lived. The spokesmen of Orthodoxy maintained that to recognise the primacy of reason was to place oneself outside of Judaism. They maintained that the authoritative character of traditional Judaism should be sufficient to validate whatever demands it makes on the Jew. Those demands, they argued, are intrinsically meant to be a challenge to whatever happens to be be the spirit of the times, rather than a concession to it. For (Rabbi) Samson Raphael Hirsch, the essence of modernity is the humanist assumption that salvation consists in the achievement of happiness and self-perfection. That assumption, according to him, is morally and spiritually untrue.
Achievement | Challenge | Character | Modernity | Reason | Reform | Salvation | Spirit | Strength | Style | Theology | Thought | Happiness | Thought |