This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Richard Smolowe, fully Richard Edward Smolowe
The ultimate function of prophecy is not to tell the future but to make it.
Depend on this one fact: The future of mankind, peace, progress and prosperity must be finally determined by the extent to which men can be brought to a state of common and honest understanding.
Future | Mankind | Men | Peace | Progress | Prosperity | Understanding | Wisdom |
There is no greater unreasonableness in the world than in the designs of ambition; for it makes the present certainly miserable, unsatisfactory, troublesome, and discontented, for the uncertain acquisition of an honor which nothing can secure; and, besides a thousand possibilities of miscarrying, it relies upon no greater certainty than our life; and when we are dead all the world sees who was the fool.
Ambition | Honor | Life | Life | Nothing | Present | Wisdom | World |
When the mind is fully present with an activity, a radiance, a visually perceptible authenticity emerges.
Authenticity | Mind | Present | Wisdom |
Robert Louis Stevenson, fully Robert Louis Balfour Stevenson
There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.
With all its alluring promise that some one else will guarantee for a rainy day, social security can never replace the program that man's future welfare, is after all, a matter of individual responsibility.
Day | Future | Guarantee | Individual | Man | Promise | Responsibility | Security | Will | Wisdom |
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 |
David Swing, aka Professor Swing
Ethics is the science of human duty. Arithmetic tells man how to count his money; ethics how he should acquire it, whether by honesty or fraud. Geography is a map of the world; ethics is a beautiful map of duty. This ethics is not Christianity, it is not even religion; but it is the sister of religion, because the path of duty is in full harmony, as to quality and direction, with the path of God.
Duty | Ethics | Fraud | God | Harmony | Honesty | Man | Money | Religion | Science | Wisdom | World |
Duane Elgin and Arnold Mitchell (1918-1985)
Proposed four consumption criteria for simple living. (1) Does what I own or buy promote activity, self-reliance, and involvement, or does it induce passivity and dependence? (2) Are my consumption patterns basically satisfying, or do I buy much that serves no real need? (3) How tied is my present job and lifestyle to installment payments, maintenance and repair costs, and the expectations of others? (4) Do I consider the impact of my consumption patterns on other people and on the Earth?
Dependence | Earth | Need | People | Present | Self | Self-reliance | Wisdom |
Ultimately, our purpose is to be so alive, compassionate and creative in our own lives that the whole universe quivers with excitement and enthusiasm and brings forth a new spirit, a new possibility, in our midst. Our purpose is to be both the womb and the midwife for the birthing into our world of a holy spirit filled with new potentials for life and creativity. We exist in order to quicken the creativity and spirit of our world so that new worlds, new wonders, new blessings may emerge... To truly appreciate the meaning of life, we must be prepared to let the meanings we have known stand in the presence of new insights and be transformed. We have no final answers, only the questions that lead to further discoveries, creativity and emergence. We are here that life may discover, know and express itself more abundantly for the blessing and fulfillment of all creation - past, present and potential.
Blessings | Creativity | Enthusiasm | Excitement | Fulfillment | Life | Life | Meaning | Order | Past | Present | Purpose | Purpose | Spirit | Universe | Wisdom | World |
The faculty of imagination is the great spring of human activity, and the principal source of human improvement. As it delights in presenting to the mind scenes and characters more perfect than those which we are acquainted with, it prevents us from ever being completely satisfied with our present condition, or with our past attainments, and engages us continually in the pursuit of some untried enjoyment, or of some ideal excellence. Destroy this faculty, and the condition of man will become as stationary as that of the brutes.
Destroy | Enjoyment | Excellence | Imagination | Improvement | Man | Mind | Past | Present | Will | Wisdom |
No enjoyment, however inconsiderable, is confined to the present moment. A man is the happier for life from having made once an agreeable tour, or lived for any length of time with pleasant people, or enjoyed any considerable interval of innocent pleasure.
Enjoyment | Life | Life | Man | People | Pleasure | Present | Time | Wisdom |
Faith is a certain image of eternity. All things are present to it - things past, and things to come; it converses with angels, and antedates the hymns of glory. Every man that hath this grace is as certain there are glories for him, if he perseveres in duty, as if he had heard and sung thanksgiving song for the blessed sentence of doomsday.
Angels | Duty | Eternity | Faith | Glory | Grace | Man | Past | Present | Wisdom | Blessed |
Expand your thinking of where you are to include your family - your neighbors - your country- other countries - a global village - the universe. Think not as a unit of one, but as a part of a unit of many. And look to the future with hope.
Family | Future | Global | Hope | Thinking | Universe | Wisdom | Think |