This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton
Truth turn into dogma the moment they are disputed.
Much of our ignorance is of ourselves. Our eyes are full of dust. Prejudice blinds us.
Bias and prejudice are attitudes to be kept in hand, not attitudes to be avoided.
E. M. Forster, fully Edward Morgan Forster
Our life on earth is, and ought to be, material and carnal. But we have not yet learned to manage our materialism and carnality properly; they are still entangled with the desire for ownership.
To ask for overt renunciation of a cherished doctrine is to expect too much of human nature. Men do not repudiate the doctrines and dogma to which they have sworn their loyalty. Instead they rationalize, revise, and reinterpret them to meet new needs and new circumstances, all the while protesting that their heresy is the purest orthodoxy.
Circumstances | Doctrine | Dogma | Human nature | Loyalty | Loyalty | Men | Nature | Wisdom |
Twin-sister of natural and revealed religion, and of heavenly birth, science will never belie her celestial origin, nor cease to sympathize with all that emanates from the same pure home. Human ignorance and prejudice may for a time seem to have divorced what God has joined together; but human ignorance and prejudice shall at length pass away, and then science and religion shall be seen blending their parti-colored rays into one beautiful bow of light, linking heaven to earth and earth to heaven.
Birth | Earth | God | Heaven | Ignorance | Light | Prejudice | Religion | Science | Time | Will | Wisdom | God |
Opinions founded on prejudice are always sustained with the greatest violence.
Organized religion obviously prevents the understanding of a problem because the mind is conditioned by dogma and belief.
What is the standpoint of materialism?... We look outwards (via the senses) for the explanation and cause of everything. We start from phenomena as absolute truth... Materialism gives sense and physical matter priority over mind or idea... The customary standpoint of scientific materialism is that primary matter is dead - and the universe is dead and nature is dead - and a dead nature can, of course, aim at nothing. It cannot be teleological.
Absolute | Cause | Materialism | Mind | Nature | Nothing | Phenomena | Sense | Truth | Universe | Wisdom |
H. L. Mencken, fully Henry Louis Mencken
It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, as pastors teach, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking their visions and hallucinations too seriously.
Idealism | Materialism | Men | Teach | Wisdom | World | Trouble |
Everybody is a bit right; nobody is completely right or completely wrong. The prevalence of this point of view among all decent people nearly always has the same dreadful result for, according to their doctrine, every time a contemporary is quite right, he must be crucified. They can never forgive him because he denies their dogma; worst still, he reveals that they hold another dogma which they conceal.
Doctrine | Dogma | People | Right | Time | Wisdom | Wrong | Forgive |
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
It is a prejudice to believe that knowledge is always rational, that there is no such thing as irrational knowledge. Actually, we apprehend a great deal more through feeling than by intellection.
It is the uncompromisingness with which dogma is held and not in the dogma or want of dogma that danger lies.
W. R. Forrester, fully William Roxburgh Forrester
Our life on earth is, and ought to be, material and carnal. But we have not yet learned to manage our materialism and carnality properly; they are still entangled with the desire for ownership.
Desire | Earth | Life | Life | Materialism |
Kenneth Hanson, aka Ken Hanson
Sufficient time must be devoted to the process of “being” rather than “doing.” This is perhaps life’s greatest lesson of all. It is not only true that mindless materialism leaves us empty; materiality alone means that we do not know the value of time. We are actually afraid of time, as well as meaning and value; and this is why we turn to materialism.
Lesson | Life | Life | Materialism | Meaning | Means | Time | Afraid | Value |