This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Henri Bergson, aka Henri-Louis Bergson
It is… by the superiority of its morality that a religion wins over souls and reveals them to a certain conception of things.
Morality | Religion | Superiority |
The discovery that one cannot well give back or be given back what one has given or been given in the same place is sometimes as painful as the discovery that one is being loved on principle and not from preference.
Discovery | Preference | Wisdom | Discovery |
It is that faculty by which we discover and enjoy the beautiful, the picturesque, and the sublime in literature, art, and nature; which recognizes a noble thought, as a virtuous mind welcome a pure sentiment by an involuntary glow of satisfaction. While the principle of perception is inherent in the soul, it requires a certain amount of knowledge to draw out and direct it.
Art | Knowledge | Literature | Mind | Nature | Perception | Sentiment | Soul | Thought | Wisdom |
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
Conscience is the spiritual, supernatural principle in man, and it is not of social origin at all. It is rather the perversion and confusion of conscience that is of social origin.
Conscience | Man |
If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable.
Government | Society | Society | Government |
This is the essence of the problem faced by evolutionists wanting to engage ethical questions. The evolutionary humanist is pressed to an inescapable conclusion: There are no absolute moral standards, and morality is merely the result of an interplay between evolution, tradition, and social convention, which can be altered, updated, and changed depending on the situation... diminished responsibility.
Absolute | Convention | Evolution | Morality | Responsibility | Tradition |
Nicolas Chamfort,fully Sébastien-Roch Nicolas De Chamfort, also spelled Nicholas
Education should be constructed on two bases: morality and prudence. Morality in order to assist virtue, and prudence in order to defend you against the vices of others. In tipping the scales toward morality, you merely produce dupes and martyrs. In tipping it the other way, you produce egotistical schemers.
Education | Martyrs | Morality | Order | Prudence | Prudence | Virtue | Virtue |
If morality be regarded as a mere convention, and God as the projection of men’s hopes and fears, then the way is open for the false religions which relieve the maimed will of the many from the burden of decision.
The chromosome reproduces itself exactly and exactly once, building itself up from materials around it, mostly proteins. Nothing similar has been known to occur outside living matter, though regarded chemically, the DNA molecule is not fundamentally different from any other large molecule. Clearly then, some other principle prevails in living nature… Consider the DNA molecule… the main constituent of the chromosomes, with its 10,000 links, in which four different types occur in various arrangements… and assuming 32 links of the chain contain 8 of each type we get for the odds of a particular arrangement 1:1017 That is, one to a hundred thousand billion… the inevitable conclusion sis that whatever evolution may depend on, it certainly does not depend on chance.
Chance | Evolution | Inevitable | Nature | Nothing |
The free man acts morally because he has a moral idea. He does not act in order that morality may come into being. A moral idea, born of intuition without compulsion, inner or outer, would be at one and the same time the highest motive and the highest driving force in man.
Is there any doctrine of immortality that can say anything more simple yet definitive about man’s fate after death? He has come from God and returns to God. From the very beginning, man is bound up with God; and this bond continues to exist, unaffected by death which befalls the body only. God’s creation of man’s spirit, then, must be understood as a principle whose consequence is immortality.
Beginning | Body | Death | Doctrine | Fate | God | Immortality | Man | Spirit | Fate | God |
The fundamental principle of revolutionary wars: strike to win; strike only when success is certain; if not, then don’t strike.
Success |
P. T. Forsyth, fully Peter Taylor Forsyth
Peace at any price can be the abnegation of morality entirely, the refusal of even a negative contribution to righteousness.
Morality | Peace | Price | Righteousness |
Federal Council of Churches of Christ in America NULL
The principle of competition appears to be nothing more than a partially conventionalized embodiment of primeval selfishness... the supremacy of the motive of self-interest... The Christian conscience can be satisfied with nothing less than the complete substitution of motives of mutual helpfulness and goodwill for the motive of private gain.
Competition | Conscience | Helpfulness | Motives | Nothing | Self | Self-interest | Selfishness |
Georges Florovsky, fully Georges Vasilievich Florovsky
Tradition is the witness of the Spirit; the Spirit’s unceasing revelation and preaching of good tidings… It is, primarily, the principle of growth and regeneration.
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
True morality consists not in following the beaten track, but in finding out the true path for ourselves and in fearlessly following it.