This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
No matter how or when a person acquired their irrational beliefs and self-sabotaging habits, they now, in the present, choose to maintain them - and that is why they are disturbed. One's past history and present life conditions importantly affect one; but they don't disturb one. A person's present philosophy is the main contributor of their current disturbance.
History | Life | Life | Past | Philosophy | Present | Self |
The philosophy of restorative justice is not a new concept, but one we've forgotten. As a kid, when I broke a window next door, my grandmother took me over there to apologize. I had to find a way to pay for the window - collect bottles or mow the grass. Restorative justice is a return to the values of our grandmothers.
Justice | Philosophy |
How freely we live life depends both on our political system and on our vigilance in defending its liberties. How long we live depends both on our genes and on the quality of our health care. How well we live ~ that is, how thoughtfully, how nobly, how virtuously, how joyously, how lovingly - depends both on our philosophy and on the way we apply it to all else. The examined life is a better life.
Better | Care | Health | Life | Life | Philosophy | System | Vigilance |
Philosophy is akin to poetry, and both of them seek to express that ultimate sense which we term civilization. In each there is reference to form beyond the direct meanings of words. Poetry allies itself to metre, philosophy to mathematic pattern.
Civilization | Philosophy | Poetry | Sense | Words |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical that no one will believe it.
Philosophy | Will | Worth |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
Science is what you know; philosophy is what you don't know.
Philosophy | Science |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
To teach how to live with uncertainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy in our age can still do for those who study it.
Age | Philosophy | Study | Teach | Uncertainty |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
The value of philosophy is to be sought largely in its very uncertainty. He who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense, from the habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which have grown up in his mind without the cooperation or consent of his deliberate reason. As soon as we begin to philosophize, on the contrary, we find that even the most everyday things lead to problems to which only very incomplete answers can be given. Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thought and free them from the tyranny of custom.
Age | Common Sense | Convictions | Cooperation | Custom | Life | Life | Mind | Philosophy | Problems | Reason | Sense | Thought | Tyranny | Uncertainty | Thought | Value |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
That man is the product of causes which had no prevision of the end they were achieving; that his origin, his growth, his hopes and fears, his loves and fears, his loves and beliefs, are but the outcome of accidental collocations of atoms; that no fire, no heroism, no intensity of thought and feeling, can preserve an individual beyond the grave; that all the laborers of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and that the whole temple of man’s achievements must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins – all these things, if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand.
Death | Devotion | Dispute | Genius | Grave | Growth | Hope | Individual | Inspiration | Man | Philosophy | System | Thought | Universe | Thought |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
To teach how to live with uncertainty, and yet without being paralyzed by hesitation is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy in our age can still do for those who study it.
Age | Philosophy | Study | Teach | Uncertainty |
Yoga is not a philosophy though its practice will lead the way to a life that is philosophical. It is not a religion and it is not confined to any particular creed or dogma. There is no "instant Nirvana"...or instant ANYthing. One works hard for what one gets out of Yogic studies.
Creed | Dogma | Life | Life | Philosophy | Practice | Religion | Will |
Dale Carnegie, originally spelled Dale Carnegey
If we can't have all we want, let us not poison our days with worry and resentment. Let us be good to ourselves. Let us be philosophical. And philosophy, according to Epictecal, boils down to this: "The essence of philosophy is that a man should so live that his happiness shall depend as little as possible on external things."
Good | Little | Man | Philosophy | Resentment | Worry | Happiness |
All philosophy lies in two words, sustain and abstain.
Philosophy | Words |