This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
A significant life - one that is more than just happy or meaningful - requires dedication to ends that we choose because they exceed the goal of personal well-being. We attain and feel our significance in the world when we create, and act for, ideals that may originate in self-interest, but ultimately benefit others.
Dedication | Ends | Happy | Ideals | Life | Life | Self | Self-interest | World |
Ultimately, what leads to wise choices is love—the attention to others as ends in themselves, as I am an end in myself, not a means to an end. The way love is implemented and practiced is care, which is attending to the true needs of others. So wise choices come about through care.
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.
Conspiracy | Conversation | Diversion | Ends | People | Public |
All men seek one goal: success or happiness. The only way to achieve true success is to express yourself completely in service to society. First, have a definite, clear, practical ideal - a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends - wisdom, money, materials and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end.
Ends | Means | Men | Money | Service | Society | Success | Wisdom |
Ayn Rand, born Alisa Zinovyevna Rosenbaum
Man - every man - is an end in himself, not a means to the ends of others. He must live for his own sake, neither sacrificing himself to others nor sacrificing other to himself; he must work for his rational self-interest, with achievement of his own happiness as the highest moral purpose of his life.
Achievement | Ends | Life | Life | Man | Means | Purpose | Purpose | Self | Self-interest | Work | Happiness |
Today. Mend a quarrel. Search out a friend. Dismiss suspicion and replace it with trust. Write a love letter. Share some treasure. Give a soft answer. Encourage youth. Manifest your loyalty in a word or deed. Keep a promise. Find the time. Forego a grudge. Forgive an enemy. Listen. Apologize if you were wrong. Try to understand. Flout envy. Examine demands on others. Think first of someone else. Appreciate, be kind, be gentle. Laugh a little more. Deserve confidence. Take up arms against malice. Decry complacency. Express your gratitude. Worship your God. Gladden the heart of a child. Take pleasure in the beauty and wonder of the earth. Speak your love. Speak it again. Still speak it again. Speak it still once again.
Beauty | Complacency | Confidence | Earth | Enemy | Envy | Friend | God | Gratitude | Heart | Little | Love | Loyalty | Loyalty | Malice | Pleasure | Promise | Search | Suspicion | Time | Trust | Wonder | Worship | Wrong | Youth | Beauty | Forgive | Think |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
All moral rules must be tested by examining whether they tend to realize ends that we desire. I say ends that we desire, not ends that we ought to desire... Outside human desires there is no moral standard.
Friendship often ends in love, but love in friendship never.
Ends | Love | Friendship |
Laziness grows on people; it begins in cobwebs, and ends in iron chains. The more one has to do the more he is able to accomplish.
Friendship often ends in love; but love in friendship - never.
Ends | Love | Friendship |
Great men often obtain their ends by means beyond the grasp of vulgar intellect, and even by methods diametrically opposite to those which the multitude would pursue. But, to effect this, bespeaks as profound a knowledge of mind as that philosopher evinced of matter, who first produced ice by the agency of heat
No matter how noble the objectives of a government, if it blurs decency and kindness, cheapens human life, and breeds ill will and suspicion - it is an evil government.
Evil | Government | Kindness | Life | Life | Objectives | Suspicion | Will |