This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
While an open mind is priceless, it is priceless only when its owner has the courage to make a final decision which closes the mind for action after the process of viewing all sides of the question has been completed. Failure to make a decision after due consideration of all the facts will quickly brand a man unfit for a position of responsibility. Not all of your decisions will be correct. None of us is perfect. But if you get into the habit of making decisions, experience will develop your judgment to a point where more and more of your decisions will be right. After all, it is better to be right 51 percent of the time and get something done, than it is to get nothing done because you fear to reach a decision.
Action | Better | Consideration | Courage | Decision | Experience | Failure | Fear | Habit | Judgment | Man | Mind | Nothing | Position | Question | Responsibility | Right | Time | Will | Wisdom | Failure |
Shmuel Tzvi of Alexander, fully Admor Shmuel Tzvi Dantziger from Alexander, aka Samuel Alexander
If a person is indecisive about which of two courses of action to take, the question to ask himself is: “Which choice will bring more honor to the Almighty?” The reply to this question is the path to choose.
Jacqueline-Marie-Angélique Arnauld, or Arnault, called La Mère Angélique
Perfection consists not in doing extraordinary things, but in doing ordinary things extraordinarily well. Neglect nothing; the most trivial action may be performed to God.
Elizabeth Anscombe, fully Gertrude Elizabeth Margaret "G. E. M." Anscombe
You cannot take any performance (even an interior performance) as itself an act of intention; for if you describe a performance, the fact that it has taken place is not a proof of intention; words for example may occur in somebody’s mind without his meaning them. so intention is never a performance in the mind, though in some matters a performance in the mind which is seriously meant may make a difference to the correct account of the man’s action - e.g., in embracing someone. But the matters in question are necessarily ones in which outward acts are ‘significant’ in some way.
Action | Example | Intention | Man | Meaning | Mind | Question | Wisdom | Words |
Tzu-Ssu or Zisi, born Kong Ji NULL
Sincerity is the fulfillment of our own nature, and to arrive at it we need only follow our true self. Sincerity is the beginning and end of existence; without it, nothing can endure. Therefore the mature person values sincerity above all things.
Beginning | Character | Existence | Fulfillment | Nature | Need | Nothing | Self | Sincerity |
Waldemar Argow, fully Wendelin Waldemar Wieland Argow
Religion is a hunger for beauty and love and glory. It is wonder and the mystery and majesty, passion and ecstasy. It is emotion as well as mind, feeling as well as knowing, the subjective as well as the objective. It is the heart soaring to heights the head alone will never know; the apprehension of meanings science alone will never find; the awareness of values ethics alone will never reveal. It is the human spirit yearning for, and finding, something infinitely greater than itself which it calls God.
Awareness | Beauty | Ecstasy | Ethics | Glory | God | Heart | Hunger | Knowing | Love | Mind | Mystery | Passion | Religion | Science | Spirit | Will | Wisdom | Wonder | Beauty | Awareness |
Mary Warnock, fully Helen Mary Warnock, Baroness Warnock
Without some element of objectivity, without any criterion for preferring one scheme of values to another, except the criterion of what looks most attractive to oneself, there cannot in fact be any morality at all.
Character | Looks | Morality | Objectivity |
Poetry is not concerned with telling people what to do, but with extending our knowledge of good and evil, perhaps making the necessity for action more urgent and its nature more clear, but only leading us to the point where it is possible for us to make a rational and moral choice.
Action | Choice | Evil | Good | Knowledge | Nature | Necessity | People | Poetry | Wisdom |