This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
There is no such thing as ethical truth. However, those committed to humane-egalitarian ideals can make a truth-claim rare and precious: they can look reality and the truths of science in the face and find nothing that makes them flinch.
I think that a particle must have a separate reality independent of the measurements. That is an electron has spin, location and so forth even when it is not being measured. I like to think that the moon is there even if I am not looking at it.
Find meaning not in possessions or positions, but in personal commitments to ideals bigger than our own needs. And the ideals that seem to consistently provide this kind of meaning are ideals of service-of acting for the common good and overcoming whatever risks and obstacles may lie in the way.
Good | Ideals | Meaning | Possessions | Service |
Life's most persistent and urgent question is, 'What are you doing for others?
In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law ... that would lead to anarchy. An individual who breaks a law that his conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.
Anarchy | Conscience | Individual | Injustice | Injustice | Law | Order | Reality | Respect | Sense | Respect |
If humanity, or life in general, was created to serve a particular purpose beyond itself, our being would be analogous to a manufactured artifact. There seems to be little in this state of affairs to justify the exultation that religious people sometimes feel in thinking that God's plan reveals the purpose and the meaning of all reality.
God | Humanity | Justify | Life | Life | Little | Meaning | People | Plan | Purpose | Purpose | Reality | Thinking |
Our species is unique in its great creativity with respect to meaningfulness. Our systems of meaning vary tremendously from moment to moment, from one individual to another, and from society to society.
Creativity | Individual | Meaning | Respect | Society | Unique | Society | Respect |