This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
The message of the Bhagavad Gita is that each human life has but one ultimate end and purpose: to realize the Eternal Self within and thus to know, finally and fully, the joy of union with God, the Divine Ground of Being (Brahman). Whereas such knowledge was traditionally sought in retreat from the world, the Gita, without omitting that option, teaches that it may be attained in the midst of the world through nonattached action in the context of devotion (bhakti) to God.
Action | Devotion | Eternal | God | Joy | Knowledge | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Self | World |
Repentance is not an emotion. It is not feeling sorry for your sins. It is a decision. It is deciding that you have been wrong in supposing that you could manage your own life and be your own god.
Acceptance of death is acceptance of freedom – freedom to live each day with clarity and courage… If we know we are going to die, all danger disappears. There is less fear about what can go wrong, because the worst that can possibly go wrong – our own death – is completely assured. All there is left to do is live, and live well.
Acceptance | Courage | Danger | Day | Death | Fear | Freedom | Wrong | Danger |
Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman
Human morality is composed of four interconnecting principles: a genetic predisposition toward survival, the neural development of the brain, a social imperative toward group cohesion, and a cognitive propensity to make distinctions between right and wrong and good and evil. Our moral continuum appears to be strongly influenced by the degrees of connectedness we feel with others; the more connected we feel, the more we act with generosity, compassion and fairness.
Compassion | Evil | Fairness | Generosity | Good | Morality | Principles | Right | Survival | Wrong |
Rowing harder doesn’t help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction.
Wrong |
When, in countries that are called civilized, we see age going to the workhouse and youth to the gallows, something must be wrong in the system of government.
Purity of motivation is the goal; constancy of action is the way
Faith is verification by the heart; confession by the tongue; action by the limbs.
Joseph Pothier, fully Dom Joseph Pothier
True devotion produces as of itself a song; song, in turn excites devotion, and this reciprocal action augments the value of both, like two mirrors, which, facing each other, multiply the same image even to the profondity, so to speak, of the infinite.
Right and wrong are the same for all in the same circumstances.
Circumstances | Right | Wrong |
Starhawk, born Miriam Simos NULL
Any ritual is an opportunity for transformation. To do ritual, you must be willing to be transformed in some way. That inner willingness is what makes the ritual come alive and have power.
Opportunity | Power |
Sitting Bull, aka Tȟatȟáŋka Íyotake, born Hoka Psice NULL
What treaty that the white man ever made with us have they kept? Not one. When I was a boy, the Sioux owned the world; the sun rose and set on their land; they sent ten thousand men to battle. Where are the warriors today? Who slew them? Where are our lands? Who owns them? What white man can say I ever stole his land or a penny of his money? Yet they say I am a thief. What white woman, however lonely, was ever captive or insulted by me? Yet they say I am a bad Indian. What white man has ever seen me drunk? Who has come to me hungry and unfed? Who has ever seen me beat my wives or abuse my children? What law have I broken? Is it wrong for me to love my own? Is it wicked for me because my skin is red? Because I am a Sioux; because I was born where my father lived; because I would die for my people and my country?
Abuse | Battle | Children | Father | Land | Law | Love | Man | Men | Money | People | Woman | World | Wrong |
What chiefly characterizes creative thinking from more mundane forms are (i) willingness to accept vaguely defined problem statements and gradually structure them, (ii) continuing preoccupation with problems over a considerable period of time, and (iii) extensive background knowledge in relevant and potentially relevant areas.
Fulton Sheen, fully Archbishop Fulton John Sheen
No amount of libido, or passion, no external force, and no inner prompting to sin can make the human action of man anything but free. We are never tempted beyond our strength. Every moral failure is ours alone, because our choices are our own.
Action | Failure | Force | Man | Passion | Sin | Strength | Failure |
All who allow themselves a wrong liberty make themselves their own aim and object.