This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Johann Georg Ritter von Zimmermann
Thought and action are the redeeming features of our lives.
Purpose is about developing relationships. Purpose is about bringing attention and intention into the present moment, moving ahead with new ideas, giving and receiving support, volunteering, mentoring, listening to the imagination and intuition, communicating, taking action based on inner direction and hints from the external, being adaptable, taking responsibility and ending the victim stance forever surrendering to the divine will and working with the lessons developing fluidity, tolerance, compassion, and the ability to love.
Ability | Action | Attention | Compassion | Giving | Ideas | Imagination | Intention | Intuition | Listening | Love | Present | Purpose | Purpose | Responsibility | Will | Victim |
Focus on being grateful… Whatever you focus on with true appreciation and gratitude – you are generating a higher frequency of energy. By living and taking action in a higher frequency (which is also a deeper and richer frequency) you are more aligned with your purpose.
Action | Appreciation | Energy | Focus | Gratitude | Purpose | Purpose | Appreciation |
Man is ever a contingent being in search of necessity.
Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter
Whether or not you decide to emulate that which you have come to understand through empathetic identification, you will never be quite the same again. In learning to think and to feel, to understand and to value more like another you will have grown in your own self-understanding and in your capacity to speak and interact with others. You, and that which you are now able to embrace, may well find in one another nurture, respect, protection, and enrichment. It is in such qualities of living that true meaning will be encountered, however tentative and fluctuating that meaning may be. It is in the very midst of the flux of the meaningful that its perpetuation and its renewal is to be found.
Capacity | Learning | Meaning | Qualities | Respect | Self | Understanding | Will | Think | Understand | Value |
Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter
In order to live we must decide on one course of action rather than another, moment by moment. We declare our values and take our stands in both small ways and large. Were we to admit that we are never certain that we have chosen correctly, and never reassured that this chosen course was the correct course of action, then we would be open to the unending exploration and revision in our way of living. We would have learned to put our prejudices and assumptions, our convictions and beliefs at risk.
Action | Convictions | Order | Risk |
Fidel Castro, fully Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz
Whoever hesitates while waiting for ideas to triumph among the masses before initiating revolutionary action will never be a revolutionary. Humanity will, of course, change. Human society will, of course, continue to develop – in spite of men and the errors of men. But that is not a revolutionary attitude.
Action | Change | Humanity | Ideas | Men | Society | Waiting | Will | Society |
Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter
Much of our ethical life is lived unthinkingly, for we do as we do by habit, custom, tradition, or because we have thought the pros and cons of similar situations. We must somehow be able to decide what is valuable at this moment while at the same time remaining open to future revisions in our valuational pattern. This willingness to revise, to be open to new possibilities of value, is for me a key to life and value enhancement.
Custom | Future | Habit | Life | Life | Thought | Time | Tradition | Thought | Value |
How we view life is ultimately that which gives us meaning, value and purpose… Our worldview determines how we solve these problems: What are we? Where did we come from? What does it mean to be human? What is truth? What is the meaning and purpose of life? Why is there so much evil in the world? How should we live? What happens when we die? Does it matter?
Evil | Life | Life | Meaning | Problems | Purpose | Purpose | Truth | World | Value |
The best and the deepest moral training is that which one gets by having to enter into proper relationships with others… Present educational systems, so far as they destroy or neglect this unity, render it difficult or impossible to get any genuine, regular moral training.