This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Men in general are too material and do not make enough human contacts. If we search for the fundamentals which actually motivate us, we will find that they come under four headings: love, money, adventure and religion. It is to some of them that we always owe that big urge which pushes us onward. Men who crush these impulses and settle down to everyday routine are bound to sink into mediocrity. No man is a complete unity of himself; he needs the contact, the stimulus and the driving power which is generated by his contact with other men, their ideas and constantly changing scenes.
Adventure | Character | Enough | Ideas | Love | Man | Mediocrity | Men | Money | Power | Religion | Search | Unity | Will |
Nonresistance isn’t passive. Passivity suggests powerlessness. But non-resistance is extremely powerful. It means we’re consciously choosing what we wish to empower. Nonresistance is the action of wisdom that assesses a situation and realizes there is nothing to be gained from fighting it.
It is not the truth which a man possesses, or believes he possesses, but the earnest effort which he puts forth to reach the truth, which constitutes the worth of a man. For it is not by the possession, by the search after truth that he enlarges his power, wherein alone consists his ever-increasing perfection. Possession makes one content, indolent, proud.
Character | Effort | Man | Perfection | Power | Search | Truth | Worth |
Joshua L. Liebman, fully Joshua Loth Liebman
Maturity is achieved when a person accepts life as full of tension; when he does not torment himself with childish guilt feelings, but avoids tragic adult sins; when he postpones immediate pleasures for the sake of long-term values... Our generation must be inspired to search for that maturity which will manifest itself in the qualities of tenacity, dependability, co-operativeness and the inner drive to work and sacrifice for a nobler future of mankind.
Character | Feelings | Future | Guilt | Life | Life | Mankind | Qualities | Sacrifice | Search | Tenacity | Will | Work |
The mingled incentives which lead to action are often too subtle and lie too deep for us to analyze.
Ursula Le Guin, fully Ursula Kroeber Le Guin
When action grows unprofitable, gather information; when information grows unprofitable, sleep.
All the Actions, that we have any Idea of, reducing themselves, as has been said, to these two, viz. Thinking and Motion, so far as a Man has a power to think, or not to think; to move or not to move, according to the preference or direction of his own mind, so far is a Man Free. Wherever any performance or forbearance are not equally in a Man’s power; wherever doing or not doing, will not equally follow upon the preference of his mind directing it, there he is not Free, though perhaps the Action may be voluntary.
Action | Character | Forbearance | Man | Mind | Power | Preference | Thinking | Will |
What is it that determines the Will in regard to our Actions?... we shall find, that we being capable but of one determination of the will to one action at once, the present uneasiness, that we are under, does naturally determine the will, in order to that happiness which we all aim at in all our actions: For as much as whilst we are under any uneasiness, we cannot apprehend ourselves happy, or in the way to it... And therefore that, which of course determines the choice of our will to the next action, will always be the removing of pain, as long as we have any left, as the first and necessary step towards happiness.
Action | Character | Choice | Determination | Happy | Order | Pain | Present | Regard | Will | Happiness |
The greatest contribution of human value one person can make to others is by example.
Molière, pen name of Jean Baptiste Poquelin NULL
Things only have the value that we give them. [Things are only worth what you make them worth.]