This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
P. T. Forsyth, fully Peter Taylor Forsyth
Peace at any price can be the abnegation of morality entirely, the refusal of even a negative contribution to righteousness.
Morality | Peace | Price | Righteousness |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
The lower animals are our brethren. I include among them the lion and the tiger. We do not know how to live with these carnivorous beasts and poisonous reptiles because of our ignorance. When man learns better, he will learn to befriend even these. Today he does not even know how to befriend a man of a different religion or from a different country.
W. R. Forrester, fully William Roxburgh Forrester
Apocalyptic religion has its merits, but tolerance is not one of them.
Religion |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
True morality consists not in following the beaten track, but in finding out the true path for ourselves and in fearlessly following it.
Ronald Garet, fully Ronald Reed Garet
It seems to me that religion is part of life. To strike down laws because they are partially religiously motivated would be to strike down most laws.
Moral ambiguity creates mental cramps of various sorts, which lead to reflection, discussion, and argument… Morality resists theoretical unification under either a set of special-purpose rules or single general-purpose rule or principle, such as the categorical imperative or the principle of unity. If this is right, and if it is right because the ends of moral life are plural and heterogeneous in kind and because our practices of moral education rightly reflect this, then we have some greater purchase on why the project of finding a single theoretically satisfying moral theory has failed.
Ambiguity | Argument | Discussion | Education | Ends | Life | Life | Morality | Purpose | Purpose | Reflection | Right | Rule | Unity | Theoretical |
Amitai Etzioni, born Welker Falk
We need to recognize that both the society and the individual are essential to a morality which we can use in the next century. If we could enter the next century with a wider recognition of the balance - and get away form either collectivistic excesses or the celebration of radical individualism - I think we’d be better for it.
Balance | Better | Individual | Morality | Need | Society | Society | Think |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as “moral indignation,” which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue. The “indignant” person has for once the satisfaction of despising and treating a creature as “inferior,” coupled with the feeling of his own superiority and rightness.
Envy | Hate | Indignation | Superiority | Virtue | Virtue |
David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
In humans, social conditioning establishes acceptable versus unacceptable behaviors and belief systems. Pejorative denunciations and condemnations are institutionalized, and judgmentalism is supported and encouraged. Behaviors are identified with morality and ethics and simply classified as good versus bad or right versus wrong.
Eric Gill, fully Arthur Eric Rowton Gill
Without philosophy man cannot know what he makes; without religion he cannot know why.
Man | Philosophy | Religion |
Whatever else religion may be, it is also anthropology - in the sense that it fosters conceptions of human authenticity on whose basis moral codes can be drawn up and the actual behavior of individuals and societies assessed, challenged, and altered. Religion speaks not only of the divine but of the divine intention for the human.
Authenticity | Behavior | Intention | Moral codes | Religion | Sense | Moral codes |