This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
The outward freedom that we shall attain will only be in exact proportion to the inward freedom to which we may have grown at a given moment. And if this is a correct view of freedom, our chief energy must be concentrated on achieving reform from within.
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 |
There is no greater satisfaction than to be used for a higher purpose. There is no richer way to live than to know you are being of service to others.
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes [err].
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
There is perhaps no phenomenon which contains so much destructive feeling as “moral indignation,” which permits envy or hate to be acted out under the guise of virtue. The “indignant” person has for once the satisfaction of despising and treating a creature as “inferior,” coupled with the feeling of his own superiority and rightness.
Envy | Hate | Indignation | Superiority | Virtue | Virtue |
B. H. Liddell Hart, fully Captain B. H. Liddell
For collective action it suffices if the mass can be managed; collective growth is only possible through the freedom and enlargement of individual minds.
Action | Freedom | Growth | Individual |
David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
In spiritual work, there is no tangible worldly gain to be acquired, but there is instead an inner reward of pleasure, satisfaction, and even joy. Goals replace gains as motives. There is a greater freedom from living on the exciting knife edge of the moment than being a prisoner of the past or having expectations of the future.
Freedom | Future | Goals | Joy | Motives | Past | Pleasure | Reward | Work |
It is dangerous to take human freedom for granted, to regard it as a prerogative rather than as an obligation, as an ultimate fact rather than as an ultimate goal. It is the beginning of wisdom to be amazed at the facts of our being free.
Beginning | Freedom | Obligation | Regard | Wisdom |
Responsibility implies freedom, and man, who is in bondage to environment, to social ties, to inner disposition, may yet enjoy freedom before God.
Freedom | God | Man | Responsibility |
On liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.
Muriel James and Dorothy Jongeward
It takes courage to experience the freedom that comes with autonomy, courage to accept intimacy and directly encounter other persons, courage to take a stand in an unpopular cause, courage to choose authenticity over approval and to choose it again and again, courage to accept the responsibility for your own choices, and, indeed, courage to be the unique person you really are.
Authenticity | Cause | Courage | Experience | Freedom | Responsibility | Unique | Approval |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
All theory is against the freedom of the will; all experience for it.
Experience | Freedom | Will |
T. E. Hulme, fully Thomas Ernest Hulme
The process of evolution can only be described as the gradual insertion of more and more freedom into matter.
Karl Jaspers, fully Karl Theodor Jaspers
Man is always something more than what he knows of himself. He is not what he is simply once for all, but is a process; he is not merely an extant life, but is, within that life, endowed with possibilities through the freedom he possesses to make of himself what he will by the activities on which he decides.