This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
This is the difference between religion and philosophy. Religion begins with the sense of the ineffable; philosophy ends with the sense of the ineffable. Religion begins where philosophy ends.
Ends | Philosophy | Religion | Sense |
I discovered that people are not really afraid of dying; they’re afraid of not ever having lived, not every having deeply considered their life’s higher purpose, and not ever having stepped into that purpose and at least tried to make a difference in this world.
Every difference of opinion is not a difference of principle. We have called by different names brethren of the same principle. We are all Republicans, we are all Federalists.
Opinion |
The most assiduous task of parenting is to divine the difference between boundaries and bondage.
Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
Fame or integrity: which is more important? Money or happiness: which is more valuable? Success or failure: which is more destructive? If you look to others for fulfillment, you will never be truly fulfilled. If you happiness depends on money you will never be happy with yourself. Be content with what you have; rejoice in the way things are. When you realize there is nothing lacking, the whole world belongs to you.
Failure | Fame | Fulfillment | Happy | Important | Integrity | Money | Nothing | Success | Will | World | Happiness |
Golda Meir, originally named Goldie Mabovitch, later Goldie Myerson
There’s no difference between one’s killing and making decisions that will send others to kill. It’s exactly the same thing, or even worse.
Golda Meir, originally named Goldie Mabovitch, later Goldie Myerson
I can honestly say that I was never affected by the question of the success of an undertaking. If I felt it was the right thing to do, I was for it regardless of the possible outcome.
Do not look for any pleasure, because you were not created for pleasure: you were created for joy. And if you do not know the difference between pleasure and spiritual joy you have not yet begun to live.
Vince Lombardi, fully Vincent Thomas "Vince" Lombardi
The difference between a successful person and others is not a lack of strength, not a lack of knowledge, but rather a lack of will.
We have mistaken our abstractions for concrete realities… The enormous success of the scientific abstractions, yielding on the one hand matter with its simple location in space and time, on the other hand mind, perceiving, suffering, reasoning, but not interfering, has foisted onto philosophy the task of accepting them as the most concrete rendering of fact. Thereby, modern philosophy has been ruined. It has oscillated in a complex manner between three extremes. There are the dualists who accept matter and mind on an equal basis, and the two varieties of monists, those who put mind into matter and those who put matter inside mind. But this juggling with abstractions can never overcome the inherent confusion introduced by the ascription of misplaced concreteness to the scientific scheme of the seventeenth century.
Mind | Philosophy | Space | Success | Suffering | Time | Yielding |
Horatio Nelson, 1st Viscount Nelson
I owe all my success in life to having been always a quarter of an hour beforehand.
Abbé Pierre, born Henri Marie Joseph Grouès
What matters today is not the difference between those who believe and those who do not believe, but the difference between those who care and those who don’t.
Care |
An open mind should be more than a catch-all receptacle. It should have a screening mechanism to keep out the trivial, a sorting capacity to organize ideas and reconcile contradictions, and a critical tool to help us decide what we believe. That’s the difference between a mind that receives information and a mind that thinks.
Jules Renard, aka Pierre-Jules Renard
Failure is not our only punishment for laziness: there is also the success of others.
Failure | Laziness | Punishment | Success |