This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Your values are your belief systems about right and wrong, good and bad. Our values are the things we all fundamentally need to move toward... Our values change when we change goals or self-image... There is no real success except in keeping your basic values.
Belief | Change | Goals | Good | Need | Right | Self | Success | Wrong |
Christianity has this peculiar disadvantage, that unlike other religions, it is not a pure system of doctrine: its chief and essential feature is that it is a history, a series of events, a collection of facts, a statement of the actions and sufferings of individuals: it is this history which constitutes dogma, and belief in it is salvation.
Belief | Doctrine | Dogma | Events | History | Salvation | System |
The way of exoteric religion is to progressively replace egoism by submission to the will of God. Its four cardinal demands are faith, love, humility, and good deeds. In so far as they are complied with, they effectively bring a man towards Self-realization, even though he does not consciously envisage this. True, the Goal is not likely to be attained in this lifetime, but in God’s patience a lifetime is very little. Faith strengthens the intuitional conviction of the reality of God or the Self. Humility, its counterpart, weakens the belief in the ego and lessens the importance attached to it. Love strives to surrender the ego to God and its welfare to others. Good deeds deny egoism in practice and are alike the fruit and proof of love and humility.
Belief | Deeds | Ego | Faith | God | Good | Humility | Little | Love | Man | Patience | Practice | Reality | Religion | Self | Self-realization | Submission | Surrender | Will | Deeds | God |
What roots are to a tree, belief is to the soul. Great oak trees have great roots. Great souls have great faith. However, the faith that holds has spiritual qualities. The stable man has that intangible confidence in himself with capacities to be and to do, a recognition of God who may transform and empower his life, and a determined effort to realize man's highest ideals.
Belief | Confidence | Effort | Faith | God | Ideals | Life | Life | Man | Qualities | Soul | God |
Ayn Rand, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum
Love is an expression and assertion of self-esteem, a response to one’s own values in the person of another. One gains a profoundly personal, selfish joy fro the mere existence of the person one loves. It is one’s own personal, selfish happiness that one seeks, earns, and derives from love.
Assertion | Esteem | Existence | Joy | Love | Self | Self-esteem | Happiness |
A belief is a wise wager. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He Exists.
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
If you think your belief is based upon reason, you will support it by argument rather than by persecution, and will abandon it if the argument goes against you. But if your belief is based upon faith, you will realize that argument is useless, and will therefore resort to force either in the form of persecution or by stunting or distorting the minds of the young in what is called 'education.'
Argument | Belief | Education | Faith | Force | Reason | Will | Think |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
A fanatical belief in democracy makes democratic institutions impossible.
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
There can never be any reason for rejecting one instinctive belief except that it clashes with others. It is of course possible that all or any of our beliefs may be mistaken, and therefore all ought to be held with at least some element of doubt. But we cannot have reason to reject a belief except on the ground of some other belief.
Elton Trueblood, fully David Elton Trueblood
Faith is not belief without proof, but trust without reservations.
Frank Lloyd Wright, born Frank Lincoln Wright
The thing always happens that you really believe in; and the belief in a thing makes it happen.
Belief |
Imagination I understand to be the representation of an individual thought. Imagination is of three kinds: joined with belief of that which is to come; joined with memory of that which is past; and of things present.
Belief | Imagination | Individual | Memory | Past | Present | Thought | Understand |