This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The rules of ordinary international morality imply reciprocity. But barbarians will not reciprocate. They cannot be depended on for observing any rules. Their minds are not capable of so great an effort, nor their will sufficiently under the influence of distant motives. In the next place, nations which are still barbarous have not got beyond the period during which it is likely to be for their benefit that they should be conquered and held in subjection by foreigners.
Effort | Influence | Morality | Motives | Nations | Reciprocity | Will |
Joseph Chilton Pearce, aka Joe
The worst is yet to come, however. Far more devastating that this pruning is that nature then brings about a corresponding increase of the connecting links of the emotional circuits in this cyngulate gyrus with the lower survival fight-or-flight structures of the amygdala, that neural module linked directly with our ancient defense and survival system in the reptilian brain. In this way, a sharp curtailment of connections with the higher, transcendent frequencies of mind and heart is brought about in order to shift growth toward the lower, protective survival systems.
Defense | Growth | Heart | Mind | Nature | Order | Survival | System |
M. Scott Peck, fully Morgan Scott Peck
If we overcome laziness, all the other impediments to spiritual growth will be overcome. If we do not, none of the others will be hurdled.
The most generous dreams of the past have not become immediate practical necessities: a word-wide cooperation of people, a more just distribution of al the goods of life; the use of knowledge and energy or the service of life, and the use of life itself for the extension of the human spirit to provinces where human values and purposes could not heretofore penetrate. If we awaken in time to overcome the automatisms and irrational compulsions that are now pushing nations toward destruction, we shall create a universal community.
Cooperation | Dreams | Energy | Knowledge | Life | Life | Nations | Past | People | Service | Spirit | Time |
Life is growth - a challenge of environment. If we cannot meet our everyday surroundings with equanimity and pleasure and grow each day in some useful direction, then this splendid balance of cosmic forces which we call life is on the road toward misfortune, misery and destruction. Therefore, health is the most precious of all things.
Balance | Challenge | Day | Equanimity | Growth | Health | Life | Life | Misfortune | Pleasure |
Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, born Mahesh Prasad Varma
All occurrences of violence, negativity, conflict crisis, or problems in any society are just the expression of growth of stress in collective consciousness. When the level of stress becomes sufficiently great, it bursts out into large-scale violence, war, and civil uprising necessitating military action.
Action | Consciousness | Growth | Problems | Society | War | Society |
In caring I experience the other as having potentialities and the need to grow. In helping the other grow I do not impose my own direction; rather, I allow the direction of the other's growth to guide what I do, to help determine how I am to respond.
Experience | Growth | Need |
The less government we have the better - the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal government is the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual; the appearance of the principal to supersede the proxy; the appearance of the wise man; of whom the existing government is, it must be owned, but a shabby imitation.
Abuse | Appearance | Better | Character | Government | Growth | Imitation | Individual | Influence | Man | Power | Wise | Government |
A man's growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.
We estimate the wisdom of nations by seeing what they did with their surplus capital.
The less government we have the better – the fewer laws, and the less confided power. The antidote to this abuse of formal Government is the influence of private character, the growth of the Individual.
Abuse | Better | Character | Government | Growth | Individual | Influence | Power | Government |
Our growth depends not on how many experiences we devour, but on how many we digest.
Growth |
Woodrow Wilson, fully Thomas Woodrow Wilson
The equality of nations upon which peace must be founded if it is to last must be an equality of rights; the guarantees exchanged must neither recognize nor imply a difference between big nations and small, between those that are powerful and those that are weak.