This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
There is nothing real, lasting, imperishable in me, but these two elements: the voice of conscience, and my free obedience.
Conscience | Nothing | Obedience |
Temptation is the voice of the suppressed evil; conscience is the voice of the repressed good.
Conscience | Evil | Good | Temptation |
We have become so preoccupied with power and control over nature that we have lost an important dimension of our being, the disposition of thankfulness, of commemoration, of perceiving and enjoying something for its own sake. Instead of viewing these immediate objects of our environment in terms of their own being, we have come to regard them solely in terms of what they are for us. And to such an exploitative mentality, nature’s own voice becomes mute. Approached as material merely, to be worked up and pressed into the service of a self-styled lord of creation, she contains no revelation and no blessing.
Control | Important | Lord | Nature | Power | Regard | Revelation | Self | Service | Thankfulness |
The root of the guilt problem lies in human nature itself, in our failure as human being to live in accordance with our potentialities and our vision of the good.
Failure | Good | Guilt | Human nature | Nature | Vision | Failure |
In the midst of our applauding the feats of civilization, the Bible flings itself like a knife slashing our complacency; remind us that God, too, has a voice in history.
Bible | Civilization | Complacency | God | History | Bible |
Religion declined not because it was refuted but because it became irrelevant, dull, oppressive, insipid. When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion – its message becomes meaningless.
Authority | Compassion | Creed | Discipline | Faith | Habit | Love | Past | Religion | Worship | Crisis |
Its effects on the soul is to be measured neither by the guilt nor by the temporal punishment inexorably fixed, but by that deep sense of loneliness it brings with it.
Guilt | Loneliness | Punishment | Sense | Soul |
[Groupthink] The dissenter was made to feel at home, providing he lived up to two restrictions: first, that he did not voice his doubts to outsiders and thus play into the hands of the opposition; and second, that he kept his criticisms within the bounds of acceptable deviation, not challenging any of the fundamental assumptions of the group’s prior commitments.
Deviation | Opposition | Play |
The conscience is… a brake, not a guide; a fence, not a way. It raises its voice after a wrong deed has been committed, but often fails to give us direction in advance of our actions.
Conscience | Wrong |
Deep down, below the surface of the average man’s conscience, he hears a voice whispering. “There is something not right,” no matter how much his rightness is supported by public opinion or by the moral code.
Conscience | Man | Opinion | Public | Right |
There is no guilt greater than to sanction ambition.