This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Religion, according to the Hindu, is not compounded of dogmas and creeds. Religion is a way of life in consonance with rationality and Truth. Truth is not and cannot be revealed once and for all - it must ever be a progressive revelation.
Life | Life | Rationality | Religion | Revelation | Truth |
The purpose of the Holy Life does not consist in acquiring alms [or] honor... nor in gaining morality [or] concentration... That unshakable deliverance of the heart: that indeed, is the object of the Holy Life, that is its essence, that is its goal.
Alms | Heart | Honor | Life | Life | Morality | Object | Purpose | Purpose |
Whereas the old morality saw things as so simple that moral judgment was always easy, the new morality sees things so complicated that moral judgment becomes practically impossible.
Power can be invested with a sense of direction only by moral principles. It is the function of morality to command the use of power, to forbid it, to limit it.
Morality | Power | Principles | Sense |
Patrick O’Boyle, fully Patrick Aloysius O'Boyle, Cardinal O'Boyle
Many people are turning to religion as they would to a benign sedative, to soothe their nerves and to settle their minds.
Madison C. Peters, fully Madison Clinton Peters
Strange inconsistency! to persecute in the name of religion those who had given the religion.
Toleration… is not true liberty when it is only a gracious concession by the state to the individual. Gracious concessions are incompatible with liberty of religion which is not something that a state, or an absolutist church offers, but that which the citizen claims and the law protects.
Church | Individual | Law | Liberty | Religion | Toleration |
John Henry Newman, aka Cardinal Newman and Blessed John Henry Newman
Why should we be willing to go by faith? We do all things in this world by faith in the word of others. by faith only we know our position in the word of others. by faith only we know our position in the world, our circumstances, our rights and privileges, our fortunes, our parents, our brothers and sisters, our age, our mortality. Why should Religion be an exception?
Age | Circumstances | Faith | Parents | Position | Religion | Rights | World |
Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman
Human morality is composed of four interconnecting principles: a genetic predisposition toward survival, the neural development of the brain, a social imperative toward group cohesion, and a cognitive propensity to make distinctions between right and wrong and good and evil. Our moral continuum appears to be strongly influenced by the degrees of connectedness we feel with others; the more connected we feel, the more we act with generosity, compassion and fairness.
Compassion | Evil | Fairness | Generosity | Good | Morality | Principles | Right | Survival | Wrong |
John Henry Newman, aka Cardinal Newman and Blessed John Henry Newman
True religion is slow in growth, and, when once planted, is difficult of dislodgment; but its intellectual counterfeit has no root in itself: it springs up suddenly, it suddenly withers.
It is reasonable to concur where Conscience does not forbid compliance; for Conformity is at least a Civic Virtue... it is a Weakness in Religion and Government where it is carried to Things of an Indifferent Nature, since... Liberty is always the Price of it.
Compliance | Conformity | Conscience | Government | Liberty | Nature | Price | Religion | Virtue | Virtue | Weakness | Government |
Organized religion is too respectable, too much at home in America, and so too much inclined to abdicate its responsibility as a judge of society.
Religion | Responsibility | Society |
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, fully Sir or Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
We miss the true spirit of religion if we recommend it on account of its secular advantages.
It is customary to blame secular science and anti-religious philosophy for the eclipse of religion in modern society. It would be more honest to blame religion for its own defeats. Religion declined not because it was refuted, but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless.
Authority | Blame | Compassion | Creed | Discipline | Faith | Habit | Love | Past | Philosophy | Religion | Science | Society | Worship | Crisis |
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, fully Sir or Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
A study of comparative religion gives insight into the values of the various faiths, values which transcend different symbols and creeds and in transcending penetrate to the depths of the spiritual consciousness where the symbols and formulas shrink into insignificance.
Consciousness | Insight | Insignificance | Religion | Study |