This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Calvin Trillin, fully Calvin "Bud" Marshall Trillin
There are a lot of ways wars can end - a truce, a surrender, the complete destruction of the planet - but there’s no established way to end a correspondence.
It is not impossible that to some infinitely superior being the whole universe may be as one plain, the distance between planet and planet being only as the pores in a grain of sand, and the spaces between system and system no greater than the intervals between one grain and the grain adjacent.
Disciplining one’s appetite may be the biggest spiritual challenge many of us will face this side of dying. In a world where the future of the planet depends on how many of us will agree to say not to excessive lifestyles, fasting can teach us that physical satisfaction is not the purpose of life.
Appetite | Challenge | Future | Life | Life | Purpose | Purpose | Teach | Will | World |
Anthony F.C. Wallace, fully Anthony Francis Clarke Wallace
It has been estimated that since the dawn of humankind our planet has hosted nearly 100,000 religions.
Dawn |
The effects of treating the planet in ways that ignore our inherent inseparability were never more evident. And from the perspective of a consciousness shared by all living beings, the peoples of the Earth are not isolated individuals.
Consciousness | Earth |
You are privileged to participate in the transformation of consciousness on the planet earth. This is the most cherishable and glorious destiny of all.
Consciousness | Destiny | Earth |
Alice Walker, fully Alice Malsenior Walker
It's essential that we understand that taking care of the planet will be done as we take care of ourselves. You know that you can't really make much of a difference in things until you change yourself.
Care | Change | Will | Understand |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
In the visible world, the Milky Way is a tiny fragment; within this fragment, the solar system is an infinitesimal speck, and of the spec our planet is a microscopic dot. On this dot, tiny lumps of impure carbon and water, of complicated structure, with somewhat unusual physical and chemical qualities, crawl about for a few years, until they are dissolved again into the elements of which they are compounded.
Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.
For all our conceits about being the center of the universe, we live in a routine planet of a humdrum star stuck away in an obscure corner ... on an unexceptional galaxy which is one of about 100 billion galaxies. ... That is the fundamental fact of the universe we inhabit, and it is very good for us to understand that.
Good | Universe | Understand |
Galileo Galilei, known simply as Galileo
The sun is 93 million miles from the Earth; it is the center of the solar system, and by the power of gravity holds every planet in its orbit. Yet that very same sun can ripen a bunch of grapes as though that was all it had to do.
George Gurdjieff, fully George Ivanovich Gurdjieff
The sole means now for the savings of the beings on the planet Earth would be to implant into their presences a new organ with such properties that every one of these unfortunates during the process of existence should constantly sense and be cognizant of the inevitability of his own death as well as the death of everyone upon whom his eyes or attention rests. Only such a sensation and such a cognizance can now destroy the egoism completely crystallized in them that has swallowed up the whole of their Essence and also the tendency to hate others which flows from it - the tendency, namely, which engenders all those mutual relationships existing there, which serve as the chief cause of all their abnormalities unbecoming to three-brained beings and maleficent for them themselves and for the whole Universe.
Attention | Cause | Death | Destroy | Earth | Existence | Hate | Means | Sense | Universe |
Michael Jackson, fully Michael Joseph Jackson, aka MJ or King of Pop
The meaning of life is contained in every single expression of life. It is present in the infinity of forms and phenomena that exist in all of creation... Each of us arrives on this planet with a purpose. To fulfill that purpose is to ignite the spark of divinity in us and give meaning to our lives.
Divinity | Life | Life | Meaning | Phenomena | Present | Purpose | Purpose |
Ted Turner, fully Robert Edward "Ted" Turner III
You talk about Marshall McLuhan’s idea of TV connecting us all in one “global village.” I believe mass communication has helped make us all closer today than we’ve ever been. And I believe that the gathering and dissemination of worthwhile information to all the peoples of the world is the most important tool we have for achieving the end of realizing that our planet is the address for paradise.
Love is never abstract. It does not adhere to the universe of the planet or the nation or the institution or the profession, but to the singular sparrows of the street, the lilies of the field, “the least of these my brethren.” Love is not, but its own desire, heroic. It is heroic only when compelled to be. It exists by its willingness to be anonymous, humble and unrewarded.