This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
While your parents and teachers are, for the most part, well-meaning people, they are nevertheless more interested in your finding ways to please them than in your finding ways to please yourself. And so, in the process of socialization, almost all people in almost all societies lose their way because they are coaxed or coerced away from their own Guidance System.
A great many people think they are thinking when they are merely rearranging their prejudices.
There is no liberation without prophets. The story of the exodus makes it quite clear that a people does not spontaneously struggle out of a state of wretched dependence.
Dependence | People | Story | Struggle |
Those who labor on the earth are the chosen people of God, if ever he had a chosen people, whose breasts he has made his peculiar deposit for substantial and genuine virtue. It is the focus in which he keeps alive that sacred fire, which otherwise might escape from the face of the earth.
Earth | Focus | God | Labor | People | Sacred | Virtue | Virtue |
He must summon his people to be with him – yet stand above, not squat beside them. He must question his own wisdom and judgment – but not too severely. He must hear the opinions and heed the powers of others – but not too abjectly. He must appease the doubts of his critic and assuage the hurts of the adversary – sometimes. He must ignore their views and achieve their defeat – sometimes… He must respect action – without becoming intoxicated with his own. He must have a sense of purpose inspiring him to magnify the trivial event to serve his distant aim – and to grasp the thorniest crisis as if it were the merest nettle. He must be pragmatic, calculating, and earthbound – and still know when to spurn the arithmetic of expediency for the act of brave imagination, the sublime gamble with no hope other than the boldness of his vision
Action | Boldness | Critic | Defeat | Hope | Imagination | Judgment | People | Purpose | Purpose | Question | Respect | Sense | Vision | Wisdom | Respect | Crisis |
Fatima Jinna, also known as Madr-e-Millat, mother of the nation
No individual or people can achieve anything without industry, suffering and sacrifice.
Individual | Industry | People | Sacrifice | Suffering |
That government is best which governs the least, because its people discipline themselves.
Discipline | Government | People | Government |
I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers of society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.
Control | Discretion | Education | Enough | People | Safe | Society | Society | Think |
Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley
I believe in transhumanism”: once there are enough people who can truly say that, the human species will be on the threshold of a new kind of existence, as different from ours as our is from that of Peking man. It will at last be consciously fulfilling its real destiny.
One must remember equality, yet also be aware of difference, for if the people are allowed to act as it pleases them without coming up against displeasure, if one gives rein to its desires without setting [any] limit, it becomes confused and can no longer take delight in anything.
Robert E. Hunter, fully Robert Edwards Hunter
Procedure is only as good as the people administering it and the quality of their relationships.
Rites [li] rest on three bases: heaven and earth, which are the source of all life; the ancestors, who are the source of the human race; [and] sovereigns and teachers, who are the source of government... Should any of the three be missing, either there would be no people or people would be without peace. Hence rites are to serve Heaven on high and earth below, and to honor the ancestors and elevate the sovereigns and teachers... Who holds to the rites is never confused in the midst of multifarious change; who deviates therefrom is lost. Rites - are they not the culmination of culture?
Change | Culture | Earth | Government | Heaven | Honor | Human race | Life | Life | Peace | People | Race | Rest | Rites |
Purpose directs decision making. We look for leaders with vision, people who can imagine possible futures, describe desirable ideals, then tell us how they might be achieved. Our willingness to accept direction in almost all walks of life suggest that many, if not most, may actually prefer to be told what to think, how to behave, and what to buy. Being told simplifies life.
Decision | Ideals | Life | Life | People | Purpose | Purpose | Vision |
Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley
The human species can, if it wishes, transcend itself… not just sporadically, an individual here in one way, an individual there in another way, but in its entirety, as humanity. We need a name for this new belief. Perhaps trans-humanism will serve: man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realizing new possibilities of and for his human nature… I believe in trans-humanism: once there are enough people who can truly say that, the human species will be on the threshold of a new kind of existence, as different from ours as ours is from that of Peking man. It will at last be consciously fulfilling its real destiny.
Belief | Destiny | Enough | Existence | Human nature | Humanity | Individual | Man | Nature | Need | People | Will | Wishes |
Religion is not an opiate, for religion does not help people to forget, but to remember. It does not dull people. It does not say take, but give.