This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Lyndon Johnson, fully Lyndon Baines Johnson, aka LBJ
The noblest search is the search for excellence.
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What is a scientist?… We give the name scientist to the type of man who has felt experiment to be a means guiding him to search out the deep truth of life, to lift a veil from its fascinating secrets, and who, in this pursuit, has felt arising within him a love for the mysteries of nature, so passionate as to annihilate the thought of himself.
Experiment | Love | Man | Means | Search | Thought | Truth | Thought |
There is a part of a child's soul that has always been unknown but which must be known. With a spirit of sacrifice and enthusiasm we must go in search like those who travel to foreign lands and tear up mountains in their search for hidden gold. This is what the adults must do who seeks the unknown factor that lies hidden in the depths of a child's soul. This is a labor in which all must share, without distinction of nation, race, or social standing since it means the bringing forth of an indispensable element for the moral progress of mankind.
Distinction | Enthusiasm | Indispensable | Labor | Means | Progress | Sacrifice | Search | Soul | Spirit |
Max Planck, fully Max Karl Ernst Ludwig Planck
In this identification, however, we have to take into account also one essential difference. For a religious man the god is given immediately and primarily. In him, in his allmighty will, originates all life and all happenings in bodily as in spiritual life. Though he cannot be grasped by reason, he is, nevertheless, directly perceived through religious symbols and he puts his holy message in the souls of those who give up to him in faith [here Planck does not consider god to be a world order, since the latter, as far as I know, does not send any holy messages]. On the contrary, for a scientist, the only primarily given facts are the contents of his sensual perceptions and the measurements following from them. Scientists use the latter to approach, as close as possible, god and his world order, as the highest, eternally unattainable goal, with the help of inductive researches, [is this actually the sole goal of any scientist?]. If then, both religion and science, need for their activities the belief in god [does the science really need god – this is stated here for the first time, with no justification], the god stands for the former in the beginning, for the latter at the end of the whole thinking. For the former, god represents the basis, for the latter the crown of any reasoning concerning the world view. This difference corresponds to different roles played in human life by religion and science. Science needs man for gaining knowledge, religion, however, needs him for action [aha, and I had no idea at all till now, what is the religion good for!] ... Since we find ourselves amidst life and must ... frequently make instant decisions, ... in which we are not helped by long deliberation but only by a safe and clear guidance (Weisung), which we will gain from immediate contact with god [here again god cannot be identical with the world order, because the latter does not provide anyone with quick guidance] ... and if besides omnipotence and omniscience we ascribe god [we really can ascribe god anything at will?] also the attributes of good and love [I thought all the time that god has properties independent of us, but here I see that they are given him by people], then resorting to him (Zuflucht zu ihm) guarantees a man, who is in search for consolation, higher measure of reliable feeling of happiness. One cannot object anything against such an idea from the standpoint of science, since the questions of ethics, as we have already emphasized, do not belong at all to its competence.
Action | Belief | Deliberation | Faith | God | Good | Guidance | Life | Life | Love | Man | Need | Object | Omnipotence | Omniscience | Religion | Safe | Science | Search | Thought | Time | Will | World | Following | Deliberation | Guidance | God | Thought |
Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani
Supremacy over others will never cause a man to find a change in himself; the greater his conquests the stronger is his confirmation of what his mind tells him—that there is no God other than his own power. And he remains separated from God, the Absolute Power. But when the same mind tells him that there is something which may be called God, and, further, when it prompts him to search for God that he may see Him face to face, he begins to forget himself and to forgive others for whatever he has suffered from them. And when he has forgiven everyone and has completely forgotten himself, he finds that God has forgiven him everything, and he remembers Who, in reality, he is.
Absolute | Cause | Change | God | Man | Mind | Search | Will | God | Forgive |
Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani
God's nature as the ocean of love cannot be grasped by the mind. God has to be known through love and not through the intellectual search after miracles. That is the reason why, for those who are closest and dearest to me, I do not perform miracles. I would rather have no following than use miracles for convincing others of my Divinity.
God | Love | Miracles | Nature | Reason | Search | Following | God |
Menachem Mendel Schneerson, known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe
With all our human capacity for technological advancement, we must never forget our higher objective. We must strive to enhance our scientific search for truth by constantly expanding our spiritual search for the divine.
Menachem Mendel Schneerson, known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe
There is much to learn from the technological revolution, as long as we understand its role in our lives and see it as a final step in our dramatic search for unity throughout the universe. After all, developments in science and technology have taught us to be more sensitive to the intangible and the sublime: the forces behind computers, telephones, television, and so on are all invisible, and yet we fully recognize their power and reach. Similarly, we must come to accept that the driving force behind the entire universe is intangible and sublime, and we must come to experience the transcendent and G-dly in every single thing — beginning, of course with ourselves.
Experience | Force | Power | Science | Search | Technology | Unity | Universe | Learn | Understand |
Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani
The experiences which drugs induce are as far removed from Reality as is a mirage, from water. No matter how much you pursue the mirage, you will never quench your thirst, and the search for Truth through drugs must end in disillusionment.
Meher Baba, born Merwan Sheriar Irani
Absolute honesty is essential in one's search for God (Truth). The subtleties of the Path are finer than a hair. The least hypocrisy becomes a wave that washes one off the Path. It is your false self that keeps you away from your true Self by every trick it knows. In the guise of honesty this self even deceives itself. For instance your self claims, I love Baba. The fact is, if you really loved Baba you would not be your false self making the self-asserting statement!
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
I know well what I am fleeing from but not what I am in search of.
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Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
This ahimsa [non-harm] is the basis of the search for truth . . . It is quite proper to resist and attack a system, but to resists and attack its author is tantamount to resisting and attacking oneself.
If anyone removes (one of the) anxieties of this world from a believer, God will remove (one of the) anxieties from him on the Day of Resurrection if one smoothes the way for one who is destitute, God will smooth the way for him in this world and the next and if anyone conceals the faults of a Muslim, God will conceal his faults in this world and the next. God helps a man as long as he helps his brother. If anyone pursues a path in search of knowledge God will thereby make easy for him a path to paradise.
The only method that proved effective, not justified or moral but effective, when Arabs plant mines on our side [is retaliation]. If we try to search for the [particular] Arab [who planted mines], it has not value. But if we harass the nearby village . . . then the population there comes out against the [infiltrators] . . . and the Egyptian Government and the Transjordanian Government are [driven] to prevent such incidents, because their prestige is [assailed], as the Jews have opened fire, and they are unready to begin a war . . . the method of collective punishment so far has proved effective.
Government | Method | Punishment | Search | War | Government |
The search of knowledge is an obligation laid on every Muslim.
Knowledge | Obligation | Search |
Morris West, fully Morris Langlo West
It costs so much to be a full human being that there are very few who have the enlightenment, or the courage, to pay the price…. One has to abandon altogether the search for security, and reach out to the risk of living with both arms. One has to embrace the world like a lover, and yet demand no easy return of love. One has to accept pain as a condition of existence. One has to court doubt and darkness as the cost of knowing. One needs a will stubborn in conflict, but apt always to the total acceptance of every consequence of living and dying.
Acceptance | Cost | Darkness | Doubt | Pain | Risk | Search | Will | World |
He who leaves home in search of knowledge, walk in the path of God.
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Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
This is no appeal made by a man who does not know his business. I have been practising with scientific precision non-violence and its possibilities for an unbroken period of over fifty years. I have applied it in every walk of life, domestic, institutional, economic and political. I know of no single case in which it has failed. Where it has seemed sometimes to have failed, I have ascribed it to my imperfections. I claim no perfection for my self. But I do claim to be a passionate seeker after Truth, which is but another name for God. In the course of the search the discovery of non-violence came to me. Its spread is my life-mission. I have no interest in living except for the prosecution of that mission.
Discovery | Man | Perfection | Precision | Search | Precision | Discovery |