This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Where there is no knowledge, ignorance calls itself knowledge.
If you help others, you will be helped, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps in one hundred years, but you will be helped. Nature must pay off the debt... It is a mathematical law and all life is mathematics.
Debt | Law | Life | Life | Mathematics | Nature | Tomorrow | Will |
It is evident to any one who takes a survey of the objects of human knowledge, that they are either ideas actually imprinted on the senses, or else such as are perceived by attending to the passions and operations of the mind, or lastly ideas formed by help of memory and imagination, either compounding, dividing, or barely representing those originally perceived in the aforesaid ways... But besides all that endless variety of ideas or objects of knowledge, there is likewise something which knows or perceives them, and exercises divers operations, as willing, imagining, remembering about them. This perceiving, active being is what I call mind, spirit, soul or my self. By which words I do not denote any of my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them, wherein they exist, or, which is the same thing, whereby they are perceived; for the existence of an idea consist in being perceived.
Existence | Ideas | Imagination | Knowledge | Memory | Mind | Self | Soul | Spirit | Words |
Any man who is attached to things of this world is one who lives in ignorance and is being consumed by the snakes of his own passions.
If any hesitate in his Words, help him not, nor Prompt him without [being asked]. Interrupt him not, nor Answer him till his Speech is ended.
Most men tend to imprison themselves without the help of authorities.
Men |
There is no liberty to men whose passions are stronger than their religious feelings; there is no liberty to men in whom ignorance predominates over knowledge; there is no liberty to men who know not how to govern themselves.
To tell men that they cannot help themselves is to fling them into recklessness and despair.
Despair | Men | Recklessness |
If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them."
Beyond doubt, the worshipper of God shows ignorance when he criticizes others on account of their beliefs. If he understood the saying of Junayd, “The color of the water is the color of the vessel containing it,” he would not interfere with the beliefs of others, but would perceive God in every form and in every belief.