This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
When we are no longer able to change a situation -- we are challenged to change ourselves.
Existence | Impossibility | Man | Responsibility | Will |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
It is reserved for man alone to find his very existence questionable, to experience the whole dubiousness of being. More than such faculties as power of speech, conceptual thinking, or walking erect, this factor of doubting the significance of his own existence is what sets man apart from animal.
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
What will it matter to him if he notices that he is growing old? Has he any reason to envy the young people whom he sees or wax nostalgic over his own lost youth? What reasons has he to envy a young person? For the possibilities that a young person has, the future which is in store for him? "No, thank you," he will think. "Instead of possibilities, I have realities in my past, not only the reality of work done and love loved, but of sufferings bravely suffered. These sufferings are even the things of which I am most proud, though these things are things that cannot inspire envy.
Action | Change | Contemplation | Destiny | Fate | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Means | Opportunity | Problems | Responsibility | Right | Suffering | Teach | Unique | Will | Fate | Contemplation | Learn | Think |
Viktor Frankl, fully Viktor Emil Frankl
I refer to what is called mysterium iniquitatis, meaning, as I see it, that a crime in the final analysis remains inexplicable inasmuch as it cannot be fully traced back to biological, psychological and/or sociological factors. Totally explaining one’s crime would be tantamount to explaining away his or her guilt and to seeing in him or her not a free and responsible human being but a machine to be repaired. Even criminals themselves abhor this treatment and prefer to be held responsible for their deeds. From a convict serving his sentence in an Illinois penitentiary I received a letter in which he deplored that 'the criminal never has a chance to explain himself. He is offered a variety of excuses to choose from. Society is blamed and in many instances the blame is put on the victim.
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
What is evil? asked the younger man. The round web, with its black center, seemed to watch them both. A web we men weave. Ged answered.
What I am about to say may sound provocative, but I feel more and more strongly that even these ideas are not enough, that we must go farther and deeper.
Authority | Morality | Order | Responsibility | Science | Understanding | Will |
Let us teach ourselves and others that politics should be an expression of a desire to contribute to the happiness of the community rather than of a need to cheat or rape the community.
Responsibility | World |
He tries to explain why man behaves most improbably, strangely, at variance with his nature, how it is possible for instance that a calm, rather neutral petty bourgeois is all of a sudden capable of commanding a concentration camp, burning to death or gassing thousands of people, and afterwards returning to his clerk's life as if nothing happened
Politics | Responsibility | Will |
This is a confusing and uncertain period, when a thousand wise words can go completely unnoticed, and one thoughtless word can provoke an utterly nonsensical furor.
Prison | Responsibility |
It's not true that you should first think up an idea for a better world and only then put it into practice, but, rather, through the fact of your existence in the world, you create the idea or manifest it — create it, as it were, from the material of the world, articulate it in the language of the world.
Existence | Insight | Responsibility |
There are times when we must sink to the bottom of our misery to understand truth, just as we must descend to the bottom of a well to see the stars in broad daylight.
Ability | Absurd | Awareness | Courage | Good | Gratitude | Irony | Life | Life | Meaning | Responsibility | Sense | Vigilance | Awareness |
There are no exact guidelines. There are probably no guidelines at all. The only thing I can recommend at this stage is a sense of humor, an ability to see things in their ridiculous and absurd dimensions, to laugh at others and at ourselves, a sense of irony regarding everything that calls out for parody in this world. In other words, I can only recommend perspective and distance. Awareness of all the most dangerous kinds of vanity, both in others and in ourselves. A good mind. A modest certainty about the meaning of things. Gratitude for the gift of life and the courage to take responsibility for it. Vigilance of spirit.
Ability | Absurd | Courage | Good | Gratitude | Life | Life | Meaning | Responsibility | Sense | Sensibility |
We must not be afraid of dreaming the seemingly impossible if we want the seemingly impossible to become a reality.
Experience | Order | Responsibility | Sense | Understanding | Will | Work | Understand |
Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness a more humane society will not emerge.
Blame | Democracy | Duty | Freedom | Government | Obligation | Responsibility | Sin | Will | Wrong | Government | Understand |
V. S. Pritchett, fully Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett
To be identified with the public is the divine gift of the best-sellers in popular Romance and, no doubt, in popular realism. E. M. Forster once spoke of the novelist as sending down a bucket into the unconscious; the author of She installed a suction pump. He drained the whole reservoir of the public's secret desires. Critics speak of the reader suspending unbelief; the best-seller knows better; man is a believing animal.
Family | Nothing | Responsibility |
The most important thing is that man should be the measure of all structures, including economic structures, and not that man be made to measure for those structures. The most important thing is not to lose sight of personal relationships —i.e., the relationships between man and his co-workers, between subordinates and their superiors, between man and his work, between this work and its consequences.
Humility | Individual | People | Politics | Responsibility |
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
Yes. There's really only one question that can be answered, Genry, and we already know the answer....The only thing that makes life possible is permanent, intolerable uncertainty: not knowing what comes next.
Disobedience | Obedience | Responsibility | Society | Society |
The scene changes but the aspirations of men of good will persist.
Body | Knowledge | Men | Nature | Responsibility | Understand |
Sincerity is no test of truth - no evidence of correctness of conduct. - You may take poison sincerely believing it the needed medicine, but will it save your life?
Guilt | Responsibility |
Thomas Szasz, fully Thomas Stephen Szasz
[Growing up] is especially difficult to achieve for a child whose parents do not take him seriously; that is, who do not expect proper behavior from him, do not discipline him, and finally, do not respect him enough to tell him the truth.
Action | Freedom | Responsibility | Self |