This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Instead of always thinking about our plans and anxiously looking to the future, or giving ourselves up to regret for the past, we should never forget that the present is the only reality, the only certainty; the future almost always turns out contrary to our expectations; the past, too, was very different from what we suppose it to have been.
Future | Giving | Past | Present | Reality | Regret | Thinking |
The widespread modern rejection of ritual in religion is depriving people of powerful aids for spiritual development and for defense against evil... Action cannot lead beyond action, and therefore no ritual can produce Liberation... But there are many who do not specifically seek Liberation but simply greater purity, greater devotion, general spiritual betterment, or who seek Liberation as the still unseen goal of a winding path; and it is for such as these that the appropriate ritual would be a powerful armament for progress and defense.
Action | Defense | Devotion | Evil | People | Progress | Purity | Religion |
Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr., born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger
Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response. Expelled from individual consciousness by the rush of change, history finds its revenge by stamping the collective unconscious with habits, values, expectations, dreams. The dialectic between past and future will continue to form our lives.
Change | Consciousness | Dreams | Future | History | Individual | Memory | Myth | Past | Revenge | Science | Technology | Tradition | Will |
Ayn Rand, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum
Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of the tribe.
Civilization | Existence | Progress | Public | Society | Society |
There can be change without progress, but not progress without change.
The future belongs to those who see possibilities before they become obvious.
Future |
Ayn Rand, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum
Civilization is the progress toward a society of privacy. The savage's whole existence is public, ruled by the laws of his tribe. Civilization is the process of setting man free from men.
Civilization | Existence | Man | Men | Progress | Public | Society | Society |
Visionary sights unseen see future shapes never made from thoughts unthought which imagine the unimaginable in new colour vision of everything out there but not as we know it.
There is a past which is gone for ever; but there is a future which is still our own work.
Bhagavad Gītā, simply known as Gita NULL
Your sorrow is for nothing. The truly wise mourn neither for the living nor for the dead. There never was a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor any of these kings. Nor is there any future in which we shall cease to be... That Reality which pervades the universe is indestructible. No one has power to change the Changeless... Death is certain for the born. Rebirth is certain for the dead. You should not grieve for what is unavoidable.
Change | Death | Future | Mourn | Nothing | Power | Reality | Sorrow | Time | Universe | Wise |
The future of the world would be assured if every child were loved.
Let any man examine his thoughts, and he will find them ever occupied with the past or the future. We scarcely think at all of the present; or if we do, it is only to borrow the light which it gives for regulating the future. The present is never our object; the past and the present we use as means; the future only is our end. Thus, we never live, we only hope to live.
Future | Hope | Light | Man | Means | Object | Past | Present | Will | Think |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
It is because modern education is so seldom inspired by a great hope that it so seldom achieves a great result. The wish to preserve the past rather than to hope of creating the future dominates the minds of those who control the teaching of the young.
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
Change is one thing, progress is another. "Change" is scientific, "progress" is ethical; change is indisputable, whereas progress is a matter of controversy.
Change | Controversy | Progress |
To eternity itself there is no other handle than the present moment. Let any man examine his thoughts and he will find them ever occupied with the past or the future. We scarcely think at all of the present; or if we do, it is only to borrow the light which it gives for regulating the future. The present is never our object; the past and the present we use as means; the future only is our end. Thus, we never live, we only hope to live; and always hoping to be happy, it is inevitable that we will never be so. All the miseries of mankind come from one thing, not knowing how to remain alone.
Eternity | Future | Happy | Hope | Inevitable | Knowing | Light | Man | Mankind | Means | Object | Past | Present | Will | Think |
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.