This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Philosophy is the science which considers truth.
Philosophy | Science | Truth |
Man’s dwelling place, who could found you on reasoning, or build your walls with logic? You exist, and you exist not. You are, and are not. True, you are made out of diverse materials, but for your discovery an inventive mind was needed. Thus if a man pulled his house to pieces, with the design of understanding it, all he would have before him would be heaps of bricks and stones and tiles. he would not be able to discover therein the silence, the shadows and the privacy they bestowed. Nor would he see what service this mass of bricks, stones and tiles could render him, now that they lacked the heart and soul of the architect, the inventive mind which dominated them. For in mere stone the heart and soul of man have no place. But since reasoning can deal with only such material things as bricks and stones and tiles, and there is no reasoning about the heart and soul that dominate them and thus transform them into silence - inasmuch as the heart and soul have no concern with the rules of logic or the science of numbers - this is where I step in and impose my will. I, the architect; I, who have a heart and soul; I, who wield the power of transforming stone into silence. I step in and mold that clay, which is the raw material, into the likeness of the creative vision that comes to me from God; and not through any faculty of reason. Thus, taken solely by the savor it will have, I build my civilization; as poets build their poems, bending phrases to their will and changing words, without being called upon to justify the phrasing of the changes, but taken solely by the savor these will have, vouched by their hearts.
Civilization | Design | Discovery | God | Heart | Justify | Logic | Man | Mind | Power | Reason | Science | Service | Silence | Soul | Understanding | Vision | Will | Words | Discovery |
Young men have strong passions, and tend to gratify them indiscriminately... They have as yet met with few disappointments. Their lives are mainly spent not in memory but in expectation; for expectation refers to the future, memory to the past, and youth has a long future before it and a short past behind it: on the first day of one’s life one has nothing at all to remember, and can only look forward... They would always rather do noble deeds than useful ones: their lives are regulated more by moral feeling than by reasoning; and whereas reasoning leads us to choose what is useful, moral goodness leads us to choose what is noble. They are fonder of their friends, intimates, and companions than older men are, because they like spending their days in the company of others, and have not yet come to value either their friends or anything else by their usefulness to themselves. All their mistakes are in the direction of doing things excessively and vehemently. They disobey Chilon’s precept by overdoing everything; they love too much and hate too much, and the same thing with everything else. They think they know everything, and are always quite sure about it.
Day | Deeds | Expectation | Future | Hate | Life | Life | Love | Memory | Men | Nothing | Past | Precept | Usefulness | Youth | Deeds | Youth | Expectation | Friends | Think | Value |
The pursuit of science in itself is never materialistic. It is a search for the principles of law and order in the universe, and as such an essentially religious endeavor.
Arthur Compton, fully Arthur Holly Compton
Science cannot supply a definite answer to this question. Immortality relates to an aspect of life which is not physical, that is which cannot be detected and measured by any instrument, and to which the application of the laws of science can at best be only a well-considered guess.
Immortality | Life | Life | Question | Science |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
Metaphysics, or the attempt to conceive the world as a whole by means of thought, has been developed, from the first, by the union and conflict of two very different human impulses, the one urging men towards mysticism, the other urging them towards science... But the greatest men who have been philosophers have felt the need both of science and mysticism: the attempt to harmonize the two was what made their life, and what always must, for all its arduous uncertainty, make philosophy, to some minds, a greater thing than either science or religion.
Life | Life | Means | Men | Metaphysics | Mysticism | Need | Philosophy | Religion | Science | Thought | Uncertainty | World |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
Men sometimes speak as though the progress of science must necessarily be a boon to mankind, but that, I fear, is one of the comfortable nineteenth century delusions which our more disillusioned age must discard.
Coventry Patmore, fully Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore
What the world, which truly knows nothing, calls “mysticism” is the science of ultimates… the science of self-evident Reality, which cannot be “reasoned about,” because it is the object of pure reason or perception.
Mysticism | Nothing | Object | Perception | Reality | Reason | Science | Self | World |
The thesis that there is an inherent conflict between science and our immortal souls is simply untrue.
Science |
Nothing tends so much to the corruption of science as to suffer it to stagnate; these waters must be troubled before they can exert their virtues.
Corruption | Nothing | Science |
Dwight Eisenhower, fully Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower
Modern man worships at the temple of science, yet science tells him only what is possible, not what is right.
If we could have ended the war by showing the power of science without killing a single person, all of us would be much happier, more reasonable, and much safer.
Confrontation with expectation is manipulation. We must share, we must speak our truth, but not simply to get the reaction we want.
Expectation | Truth | Expectation |
François Guizot, fully François Pierre Guillaume Guizot
Neither experience nor science has given man the idea of immortality… The ideal of immortality rises from the very depths of his soul - he feels, he sees, he knows that he is immortal.
Experience | Immortality | Man | Science | Soul |
Frédéric Bastiat, fully Claude Frédéric Bastiat
A science of economics must be developed before a science of politics can be logically formulated. Essentially, economics is the science of determining whether the interests of human beings are harmonious or antagonistic. This must be known before a science of politics can be formulated to determine the proper functions of government.
Economics | Government | Politics | Science |
Hope is the most beneficial of all the affections, and doth much to the prolongation of life, if it be not too often frustrated; but entertaineth the fancy with expectation of good.
Expectation | Good | Hope | Life | Life | Expectation |