This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
It often takes more courage to change one's opinion than to stick to it.
The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.
We may think there is willpower involved, but more likely... change is due to want power. Wanting the new addiction more than the old one. Wanting the new me in preference to the person I am now.
Addiction | Change | Preference | Old | Think |
Giordano Bruno, born Filippo Bruno
Everywhere there is incessant relative change in position throughout the universe, and the observer is always at the centre of things.
In the instant of our first breath, we are infused with the single greatest force in the universe--the power to translate the possibilities of our minds into the reality of our world. To fully awaken to our power, however, requires a subtle change in the way we think of our ourselves in life, a shift in belief.
George Moore, fully George Augustus Moore
A very slight change in our habits is sufficient to destroy our sense of our daily reality, and the reality of the world about us; the moment we pass out of our habits we lose all sense of permanency and routine.
Harold Kushner, fully Harold Samuel Kushner
We are here to change the world with small acts of thoughtfulness done daily rather than with one great breakthrough.
In the conduct of life, habits count for more than maxims, because habit is a living maxim, becomes flesh and instinct. To reform one's maxims is nothing: it is but to change the title of the book. To learn new habits is everything, for it is to reach the substance of life. Life is but a tissue of habits.
Change | Conduct | Habit | Life | Life | Maxims | Reform | Title | Learn |
H. G. Wells, fully Herbert George Wells
I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been. It had committed suicide. It had set itself steadfastly towards comfort and ease, a balanced society with security and permanency as its watchword, it had attained its hopes—to come to this at last. Once, life and property must have reached almost absolute safety. The rich had been assured of his wealth and comfort, the toiler assured of his life and work. No doubt in that perfect world there had been no unemployed problem, no social question left unsolved. And a great quiet had followed. It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have to meet a huge variety of needs and dangers.
Absolute | Change | Comfort | Compensation | Doubt | Habit | Harmony | Instinct | Intelligence | Law | Life | Life | Nature | Need | Property | Question | Quiet | Security | Society | Wealth | World | Society | Intellect | Think |
Richard Niebuhr, fully Helmut Richard Niebuhr
God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.
Change | Courage | Distinguish | Grace | Serenity | Wisdom |
Heraclitus or Heraclitus of Ephesus NULL
Whosoever wishes to know about the world must learn about it in its particular details. Knowledge is not intelligence. In searching for the truth be ready for the unexpected. Change alone is unchanging. The same road goes both up and down. The beginning of a circle is also its end. Not I, but the world says it: all is one. And yet everything comes in season.
Beginning | Change | Knowledge | Truth | Wishes | World | Learn |
Marshall McLuhan, fully Herbert Marshall McLuhan
Control over change would seem to consist in moving not with it but ahead of it.
Change |
Helen Schucman, born Helen Cohn
Seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world.
The church is a vast institution with roots reaching wide and deep into the social order that now is. It is so integral to society as a whole that any social reconstruction would mean a reconstruction of the church. It would have to reconstruct itself in order to reconstruct society. But it cannot reconstruct itself until society is reconstructed. So it is caught in a vicious circle so far as concerns leadership in achieving any change in the basic institutions of society.
Evolution is definable as a change from an incoherent homogeneity to a coherent heterogeneity, accompanying the dissipation of motion and integration of matter.
Change | Incoherent | Integration |
Helen Schucman, born Helen Cohn
Ideas leave not their source. Change your mind about yourself and healing will follow.