This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL
It would be simplistic to say that Divine Providence caused the fall of Communism. In a certain sense Communism as a system fell by itself. It fell as a consequence of its own mistakes and abuses. It proved to be a medicine more dangerous than the disease itself. It did not bring about true social reform, yet it did become a powerful threat and challenge to the entire world. But it fell by itself, because of its own inherent weakness.
Challenge | Disease | Providence | Sense | System |
In almost every profession - whether it's law or journalism, finance or medicine or academia or running a small business - people rely on confidential communications to do their jobs. We count on the space of trust that confidentiality provides. When someone breaches that trust, we are all worse off for it.
Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav or Breslov, aka Reb Nachman Breslover or Nachman from Uman NULL
Many people make the mistake of turning the means through which something comes about into an intermediary between themselves and God. They do believe in God, but they also believe in the intermediary, saying that we have no option but to depend upon a particular means in order to bring about a certain result. For example, they put their faith in their business activities as the cause of their livelihood, placing all the emphasis on their own endeavors as if God would somehow not be able to provide their livelihood without them. Likewise people put all the emphasis on the means through which a cure comes about - the medicine - as if without medicine God does not have the power to heal. That is not so. The Holy One, blessed be He, is the Cause of all causes, and there is absolutely no need for any one particular means. Even while resorting to a given means to try to bring something about, we must believe only in God, and not put our faith in the means.
Business | Cause | Faith | God | Means | Mistake | Need | Order | People | Power | Business | God | Blessed |
What does it mean to a physician to practice medicine without mystery? When I was a medical student, my school had a large, black-tie retirement dinner for a very famous man on the medical faculty, whose scientific contribution had earned him a Nobel prize. He was 80 years old. The entire school gathered to honor him, and famous medical people came from all over the world. This doctor gave a wonderful speech describing the progress of scientific knowledge during the 50 years that he had been a physician. We gave him a standing ovation. After we sat down he remained at the podium. There was a brief silence and then he said, There's something else important that I want to say. And I especially want to tell the students. I have been a physician for 50 years and I don't know anything more about life now than I did at the beginning. I am no wiser. It slipped through my fingers. We were stunned into silence. I remember thinking that perhaps he was senile. In retrospect, it was a very remarkable thing he did. He took an opportunity to warn us about the cage of ideas and roles and self-expectations that was closing around us, even as he spoke to us - the cage that would keep us from achieving our good purpose, which is healing. Healing is a matter of wisdom, not of scientific knowledge.
Famous | Good | Honor | Ideas | Important | Knowledge | Life | Life | Man | Opportunity | People | Practice | Progress | Retirement | Silence | Speech | Thinking |
A way to make people generally more wise and more skillful than they have been in the past, I believe that we should look for it in medicine. It is true that medicine as it is currently practiced contains little of much use.
Richard Halverson, fully Richard Christian Halverson
The program of our church is everything all the members are doing between Sundays. The church keeps house, goes to school, teaches, practices law, medicine and dentistry, runs business and industry, farms, works on construction jobs, researches in many fields, sits on school boards, city councils, county councils, state legislatures and congress. Between Sundays the church is involved in everything productive and constructive that is happening in our community... And what of the church work which is done in and for the church organization? Its purpose is to equip each member to do the work for the church Monday through Saturday. All the programs within the church are for the purpose of enabling the church to do the work of ministry between Sundays when she is invisible as a congregation.
Either it is true that a medicine works or it isn't. It cannot be false in the ordinary sense but true in some alternative sense. If a therapy or treatment is anything more than a placebo, properly conducted double-blind trials, statistically analyzed, will eventually bring it through with flying colours. Many candidates for recognition as orthodox medicines fail the test and are summarily dropped. The alternative label should not (though, alas, it does) provide immunity from the same fate.
A faithful friend is better than gold--a medicine for misery, an only possession.
Samora Machel, fully Samora Moisés Machel
International solidarity is not an act of charity: It is an act of unity between allies fighting on different terrains toward the same objective. The foremost of these objectives is to aid the development of humanity to the highest level possible.
Ronald Reagan, fully Ronald Wilson Reagan
As government expands, liberty contracts.
Family | Fear | Government | Power | Public | Temptation | Time | Will | Government | Afraid | Temptation |
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
I am amazed at the seeker of purity who when it's time to be polished complains of rough handling.
Love |
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
Where there is ruin, there is hope for a treasure.
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
There is a void in your soul, ready to be filled. You feel it, don't you? You feel the separation from the Beloved. Invite Him to fill you up, embrace the fire.
John Chrysostom, fully Saint John Chrysostom
Fasting is the change of every part of our life, because the sacrifice of the fast is not the abstinence but the distancing from sins. Therefore, whoever limits the fast to the deprivation of food, he is the one who, in reality, abhors and ridicules the fast. Are you fasting? Show me your fast with your works. Which works? If you see someone who is poor, show him mercy. If you see an enemy, reconcile with him. If you see a friend who is becoming successful, do not be jealous of him! If you see a beautiful woman on the street, pass her by. In other words, not only should the mouth fast, but the eyes and the legs and the arms and all the other parts of the body should fast as well. Let the hands fast, remaining clean from stealing and greediness. Let the legs fast, avoiding roads which lead to sinful sights. Let the eyes fast by not fixing themselves on beautiful faces and by not observing the beauty of others. You are not eating meat, are you? You should not eat debauchery with your eyes as well. Let your hearing also fast. The fast of hearing is not to accept bad talk against others and sly defamations.
The study of philosophy is not that we may know what men have thought, but what the truth of things is.
Salomon ibn Gabirol, aka Solomon ben Judah or Avicebron
Thou hast created me not from necessity but from grace.
Need |
Shrimad Bhagavatam, or the Bhâgavata Purâna, Śrīmad Bhāgavatam, or Bhāgavata NULL
Kr?s?n?a is our most intimate master, friend, father or son and object of conjugal love. Forgetting Kr?s?n?a, we have created so many objects of questions and answers, but none of them are able to give us complete satisfaction. All things—but Kr?s?n?a—give temporary satisfaction only, so if we are to have complete satisfaction we must take to the questions and answers about Kr?s?n?a.
I would rather label the whole enterprise of setting a biological value upon groups for what it is: irrelevant, intellectually unsound, and highly injurious.
Age | Children | Fault | History | Past | Survival | Temptation | Time | Worth | Fault | Temptation | Understand |