This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Anyone can become part of the critical mass that offers us a chance of improving the world before it is too late. You can rethink your goals and question what you are doing with your life. If your present way of living does not stand up against an impartial standard of value, then you can change it.
Chance | Change | Goals | Life | Life | Present | Question | World |
To be fully aware of one's existential situation means that one becomes aware of self-creation. To be aware of the fact that one constitutes oneself, that there are no absolute external referents, that one assigns an arbitrary meaning to the world, means to become aware of one's fundamental groundlessness.
Human life will never be understood unless its highest aspirations are taken into account. Growth, self-actualization, the striving toward health, the quest for identity and autonomy, the yearning for excellence (and other ways of striving "upward") must now be accepted beyond question as a widespread and perhaps universal tendency.
Excellence | Growth | Health | Life | Life | Question | Self | Will | Excellence |
Human beings seek a prior meaning in everything as a defense against doubts about the importance of anything, including man's existence ... To affirm that there is a supreme meaning of life is to give the intellect an opportunity to escape the disquieting conclusion that nothing people do can possibly have more than slight importance.
Defense | Existence | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Nothing | Opportunity | People | Intellect |
To see what students learn in school, look at how they leave school. If they leave thinking that reading and writing are difficult and pointless, that mathematics is confusing, that history is irrelevant, and that art is a bore, then that is what they have been taught. People learn what is demonstrated to them, and this reality will not change to suit the convenience of politicians and educations administrators.
Art | Change | History | Mathematics | People | Reading | Reality | Thinking | Will | Writing | Art | Learn |
We are by nature thinking beings, and if we cannot escape anxiety about the inherent structure of our thought processes, how can we hope to creative purposive ideals that are congruent with reality instead of deflecting us from it?
Anxiety | Anxiety | Hope | Ideals | Nature | Reality | Thinking | Thought | Thought |
The art of peace does not rely on weapons or brute force to succeed; instead we put ourselves in tune with the universe, maintain peace in our own realms, nurture life, and prevent death and destruction. The true meaning of the term samurai is one who serves and adheres to the power of love.
Art | Death | Force | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Peace | Power | Universe | Weapons | Art |
A Course In Miracles, aka ACIM
Exploring the question brings more wisdom than having the answer
Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defense of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all.
Defense | Government | Property | Reality | Security |
There is only one philosophical problem that is really serious, and that is suicide. To decide whether life is worth living or not is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy.
There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question in philosophy.
I see myself as a man who is searching for the meaning in life. This is rather different from being a staunch believer in something. A believer is someone who senses a consciousness or a direction and believes in it. The one who searches for meaning has not yet found the direction yet.
Consciousness | Life | Life | Man | Meaning |
Can art be completely invented? It’s a matter of shaping reality with the help of imagination.
Art | Imagination | Reality | Art |