This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Frederick Copleston, fully Frederick Charles Copleston
If our conscience tells us that we ought to perform a particular act, it is our moral duty to perform it.
Conscience | Duty |
Every time you give a bit of yourself and you plant a little seed of Future Happiness. All the rest of your life these seeds will keep springing up unexpectedly along your path. When you need a friend to give you a lift in some situation, likely as not along will come a person for whom you did something thoughtful when you were a youngster. Taking up giving-away as a hobby while you are young, and you will live a happy life. What is more, because you do so many wonderful thoughtful things on impulse, you will develop a lively and interesting personality - gracious, friendly, likable.
Friend | Future | Giving | Happy | Impulse | Life | Life | Little | Need | Personality | Rest | Time | Will |
An important way to distinguish philosophy from religion is that philosophy, at its best, raises questions, whereas religion provides answers. Answers can sometimes lose their force, however, if the questions to which they provide answers have somehow been lost, muted, or superseded. But philosophy can never end. As long as we live, we are going to ask ourselves about the meaning of life. Some have written about the “end of philosophy.” It has been thought that philosophy exists only if you can construe life as a journey traveling to a new and different dimension. Some have said that the cognitive sciences, linguistics, neuroscience, and so forth will advance so much that traditional technical problems of philosophy will diminish. Insofar as philosophy is a pursuit of the art of living providing (often conflicting) guidance for living, there is a future for philosophy.
Art | Distinguish | Force | Future | Guidance | Important | Journey | Life | Life | Meaning | Philosophy | Problems | Religion | Thought | Will | Guidance | Art | Thought |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
At the time of writing I never think of what I have said before. My aim is not to be consistent with my previous statements on a given question, but to be consistent with truth as it may present itself to me [at that] given moment. The result is that I have grown from truth to truth.
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.
Cooperation | Duty | Evil | Good |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
Whatever complaints the neurotic patient may have, whatever symptoms he may present are rooted in his inability to love, if we mean by love a capacity for the experience of concern, responsibility, respect, and understanding of another person and the intense desire for that other person’s growth.
Capacity | Desire | Experience | Growth | Love | Present | Respect | Responsibility | Understanding |
The present moment is never intolerable. It is always what is coming in five minutes or five days that makes people despair. The Law of Life is to live in the present, and this applies to both time and place. Keep your attention to the present moment, and in the place where your body is now.
Attention | Body | Despair | Law | Life | Life | People | Present | Time |
The men who build the future are those who know that greater things are yet to come, and that they themselves will help bring them about. Their minds are illuminated by the blazing sun of hope. They never stop to doubt. They haven't time.
The process of forgiveness allows you to turn your heart toward healing, release, and compassion instead of using your energy for revenge or punishment. Forgiveness allows you to build something positive in the present while still making sure not to repeat what happened in the past.
Compassion | Energy | Forgiveness | Heart | Past | Present | Punishment | Revenge | Forgiveness |
A passionate translation of the Sh’ma: Sh’ma: listen, or wake up. Yisroel: you who seek to understand and connect with God. Adonai: the Eternal One who has been present since the beginning of time and who expresses love and wisdom by entering our hearts and our world as Eloheynu: our God. Adonai Ekhad: this Eternal energy is the unity within and between all things.
Beginning | Energy | Eternal | God | Love | Present | Time | Unity | Wisdom | World | Understand |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
In my humble opinion, non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.
Cooperation | Duty | Evil | Good | Opinion |
Disciplining one’s appetite may be the biggest spiritual challenge many of us will face this side of dying. In a world where the future of the planet depends on how many of us will agree to say not to excessive lifestyles, fasting can teach us that physical satisfaction is not the purpose of life.
Appetite | Challenge | Future | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Teach | Will | World |
W. R. Forrester, fully William Roxburgh Forrester
Every war of the future will be a war of religion, for no country will go to war till it can give its cause the color of a Crusade and so secure for its maintenance absolute loyalty of a heroic quality in the whole population.
Absolute | Cause | Future | Loyalty | Loyalty | Religion | War | Will |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
The inability to act spontaneously, to express what one genuinely feels and thinks, and the resulting necessity to present a pseudo-self to others and oneself, are the root of the feeling of inferiority and weakness.
Inferiority | Necessity | Present | Self | Weakness |
Spiritual progress must be slow as long as we are worried, frightened, resentful, sick, or discouraged – and those things can be overcome only through prayer. It is a duty and a joy to help others, wisely, and to leave the world a better place than we found it – and we can do that only through prayer. The more we pray for ourselves the more power will our prayers have for any other purpose whatsoever; so we see that praying for ourselves is the reverse of selfishness – it is truly glorifying God.
Better | Duty | God | Joy | Power | Prayer | Progress | Purpose | Purpose | Selfishness | Will | World |
The only way to get rid of your problem is to change your belief, or reverse the false process of thought. Fear is always present when there is in harmony, and an affirmation will not in itself destroy fear. You must refuse to be intimidated by the seeming danger, whatever it is, and put your reliance on the Love of God. Then fear will begin to go.
Belief | Change | Danger | Destroy | Fear | God | Harmony | Love | Present | Thought | Will |