This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Capitalism inevitably and by virtue of the very logic of its civilization creates, educates and subsidizes a vested interest in social unrest.
Capitalism | Civilization | Logic | Virtue | Virtue | Wisdom |
Since the beginning of civilization we have explained our existence in terms of what we could observe... Maybe we will discover that the only true reality is a state of mind, shaped by the information we can process and contexts in which we see it. Maybe the Supreme Being we call God can best be appreciated as the power of ultimate understanding. Maybe our destination has always been to learn and grow as we approach the light of ultimate understanding. Only the context of our ability to process information changes.
Ability | Beginning | Civilization | Existence | God | Light | Mind | Power | Reality | Understanding | Will | Wisdom | God | Learn |
No international Eighteenth Amendment will get rid of war or the instruments of war until civilization finds a way for accomplishing what war has done in the past. Simply to prohibit war is not going to get rid of it. Wars must be anticipated and the causes got rid of by a readiness to accept peaceful means of settlement.
Oscar S. Straus, fully Oscar Solomon Straus
There is a higher form of patriotism than nationalism, and that higher form is not limited by the boundaries of one's country; but by a duty to mankind to safeguard the trust of civilization.
Civilization | Duty | Mankind | Patriotism | Trust | Wisdom |
Doubt is the disease of this inquisitive, restless age. It is the price we pay for our advanced intelligence and civilization - the dim night of our resplendent day. But as the most beautiful light is born of darkness, so the faith that springs from conflict is often the strongest and the best.
Age | Civilization | Darkness | Day | Disease | Doubt | Faith | Intelligence | Light | Price | Wisdom |
The only limitless thing I know of is human want. Civilization itself is nothing more than the creation of wants, followed by methods of satisfying those wants.
Civilization | Nothing | Wants | Wisdom |
Melvin Tolson, fully Melvin Beaunorus Tolson
The white man’s civilization with its inhuman economic competition and rugged individualism has produced millions of physical and mental wrecks. It has produced enough vices to fill Dante’s hell. Nine-tenths of the people who reach forty are suffering from shattered nerves.
Civilization | Competition | Enough | Hell | Man | People | Suffering | Wisdom |
We talk about a space race. There is a space race down here on the ground. In this race every human being is superpower and the competition no longer stands a chance. Other species are bound to this or that patch of turf, and this planet. We feel bound to no patch of turn on Earth, bound only for the stars. We sacrifice a marsh, a bay, a park, a lake. We sacrifice a sparrow. We trade one countdown for another.
Chance | Competition | Earth | Race | Sacrifice | Space | Wisdom |
The farmers are the founders of civilization and prosperity.
Civilization | Prosperity | Wisdom |
We do not have to hold on to our identity to survive... We see that no states of mind are solid; they only become solid when we weave them into a story. We discover that opening to the vast open space of awareness does not destroy us. We learn to trust in the unknown as a guide to what is most fresh and alive in the moment.
Awareness | Destroy | Mind | Space | Story | Trust | Wisdom | Awareness | Learn |
The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterward.
Civilization | History |
The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first and deadly afterwards.
Civilization | History |
John Blofeld, fully John Eaton Calthorpe Blofeld
The world is full of paradox. For example, [in Buddhism] though no notion of a creator is entertained, great stress is laid upon the need for faith and piety. By faith is meant not trust in a benevolent diety avid for love, praise and obedience, but conviction that beyond the seeming reality misreported by our senses which is inherently unsatisfactory, lies a mystery which, when intuitively unsatisfactory, lies a mystery which, when intuitively perceived, will give our lives undreamed-of meaning and endow the most insignificant object with holiness and beauty.
Beauty | Example | Faith | Love | Meaning | Mystery | Need | Obedience | Object | Paradox | Piety | Praise | Reality | Trust | Will | World |
Trust each other again and again. When the trust level gets high enough, people transcend apparent limits, discovering new and awesome abilities for which they were previously unaware.