This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
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 |
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.
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 |
It is idle to expect any great advancement in science from the superinducing and engrafting of new things upon old. We must begin anew from the very foundations, unless we would revolve for ever in a circle with mean and contemptible progress.
Both houses of Congress have, by their joint Committee, requested me “To recommend to the People of the United States, a Day of Public Thanksgiving and Prayer, to be observed by acknowledging with grateful Hearts the many Signal Favours of Almighty God, especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a Form of Government for their Safety and Happiness”... That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks for his kind Care and Protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation; for the signal and manifold Mercies, and the favourable Interpositions of his Providence in the Course & Conclusion of the late War; for the great Degree of Tranquillity, Union, and Plenty, which we have since enjoyed; for the peaceable and rational Manner in which we have been enabled to establish Constitutions of Government for our Safety and Happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted; for the civil and religious Liberty with which we are blessed, and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge; and in general, for all the great and various Favours which he hath been pleased to confer upon us... to enable us all, whether in public or private Stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually... to promote the Knowledge and Practice of true Religion and Virtue, and the increase of Science among them and us; and generally to grant unto all mankind such a Degree of temporal Prosperity as He alone knows to be best.
Care | Day | God | Government | Knowledge | Liberty | Mankind | Means | Opportunity | People | Plenty | Practice | Prayer | Prosperity | Providence | Public | Religion | Science | Tranquility | Virtue | Virtue | War | Government |
To feel beauty is a better thing than to understand how we come to feel it. To have imagination and taste, to love the best, to be carried by the contemplation of nature to a vivid faith in the ideal, all this is more, a great deal more, than any science can hope to be.
Beauty | Better | Contemplation | Faith | Hope | Imagination | Love | Nature | Science | Taste | Beauty | Contemplation | Understand |
Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau
There is more religion in men's science than there is science in their religion.