This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Starhawk, born Miriam Simos NULL
Spirituality leaps where science cannot yet follow, because science must always test and measure, and much of reality and human experience is immeasurable.
When a man has found the Lord, he no longer has to use words when he is praying, for the Spirit Himself will intercede for him with groans that cannot be uttered.
Ideally, schools exist to preserve and regenerate learning and the arts, to give children the tools with which they may create the future. At worst, they produce uniform, media-minded grown-ups to feed the marketplace with workers, with managers, and with consumers. The child we were and are learns by exploring and experimenting, insistently snooping into every little corner that is open to us—and into the forbidden corners too! But sooner or later our wings get clipped. The real world created by grown-ups comes to bear down upon growing children, molding them into progressively more predictable...
Creativity | Work | Learn |
In this crucial sense, the theory of punctuated equilibrium adopts a very conservative position. The theory asserts no novel claim about modes or mechanisms of speciation; punctuated equilibrium merely takes a standard microevolutionary model and elucidates its expected expression when properly scaled into geological time.
Evolution | Life | Life | Question | Religion | Science | Struggle | Wisdom | Understand |
As we discern a fine line between crank and genius, so also (and unfortunately) we must acknowledge an equally graded trajectory from crank to demagogue. When people learn no tools of judgment and merely follow their hopes, the seeds of political manipulation are sown.
In science 'fact' can only mean 'confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional assent'. I suppose that apples might start to rise tomorrow, but the possibility does not merit equal time in physics classrooms.
The outpourings of intuition consist of a continuous, rapid flow of choice, choice, choice, choice. When we improvise with the whole heart, riding this flow, the choices and images open into each other so rapidly that we have no time to get scared and retreat from what intuition is telling us.
Eternal vigilance, as they say, is the price of freedom. Add intellectual integrity to the cost basis.
Evolution | Knowledge | Search | Understand |
I have long recognized the theory and aesthetic of such comprehensive display: show everything and incite wonder by sheer variety. But I had never realized how powerfully the decor of a cabinet museum can promote this goal until I saw the Dublin [Natural History Museum] fixtures redone right… The exuberance is all of one piece—organic and architectural. I write this essay to offer my warmest congratulations to the Dublin Museum for choosing preservation—a decision not only scientifically right, but also ethically sound and decidedly courageous. The avant-garde is not an exclusive locus of courage; a principled stand within a reconstituted rear unit may call down just as much ridicule and demand equal fortitude. Crowds do not always rush off in admirable or defendable directions.
Church | Paradox | Power | Religion | Respect | Respect | Old Testament | Old |
One is always a long way from solving a problem until one actually has the answer.
There is nothing noble about suffering except the love and forgiveness with which we meet it. Many believe that if they are suffering they are closer to God, but I have met very few who could keep their heart open to their suffering enough for that to be true.
Environmentalists have long been fond of saying that the sun is the only safe nuclear reactor, situated as it is some ninety-three million miles away.
Conscience is nothing but an actuated or reflex knowledge of a superior power and on equitable law; a law impressed, and a power above it impressing it. Conscience is not the lawgiver, but the remembrancer to mind us of that law of nature imprinted upon our souls, and actuate the considerations of the duty and penalty, to apply the rule to our acts, and pass judgment upon matter of fact: it is to give the charge, urge the rule, enjoin the practice of those notions of right, as part of our duty and obedience. But man is as much displeased with the directions of conscience, as he is out of love with the accusations and condemning sentence of this officer of God: we cannot naturally endure any quick and lively practical thoughts of God and his will, and distaste our own consciences for putting us in mind of it: they therefore like not to retain God in their knowledge; that is, God in their own consciences; they would blow it out, as it is the candle of the Lord in them to direct them and their acknowledgments of God, to secure themselves against the practice of its principles.
Glory | God | Light | Power | Providence | Reason | Regard | Wisdom | God | Understand |
God is a Spirit infinitely happy, therefore we must approach to him with cheerfulness; he is a Spirit of infinite majesty, therefore we must come before him with reverence; he is a Spirit infinitely holy, therefore we must address him with purity; he is a Spirit infinitely glorious, we must therefore acknowledge his excellency in all that we do, and in our measures contribute to his glory, by having the highest aims in his worship; he is a Spirit infinitely provoked by us, therefore we must offer up our worship in the name of a pacifying Mediator and Intercessor.
Age | Church | Compassion | Little | Men | People | Pity | Power | Providence | Security | World |
Stephen Leacock, fully Stephen Butler Leacock
Coming up home the other night in my car (the Guy Street car), I heard a man who was hanging onto a strap say: “The drama is just turning into a bunch of talk.” This set me thinking; and I was glad that it did, because I am being paid by this paper to think once a week, and it is wearing. Some days I never think from morning till night.
Gloom | Human race | Light | Race |
Long live the weeds that overwhelm My narrow vegetable realm! The bitter rock, the barren soil That force the son of man to toil; All things unholy, marred by curse, The ugly of the universe.
Theodore Dreiser, fully Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser
The most futile thing in this world is any attempt, perhaps, at exact definition of character. All individuals are a bundle of contradictions — none more so than the most capable.
Children | Compassion | Daughter | Father | Giving | Hope | Judgment | Love | Mother | Pride | Strength | Wants |