This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
In civilized life... it has at last become possible for large numbers of people to pass from the cradle to the grave without ever having had a pang of genuine fear. Man of us need an attack of mental disease to teach us the meaning of the word. Hence the possibility of so much blindly optimistic philosophy and religion.
Character | Disease | Fear | Grave | Life | Life | Man | Meaning | Need | People | Philosophy | Religion | Teach |
Wonder, connected with principle of rational curiosity, is the source of all knowledge and discovery, and it is a principle even of piety; but wonder which ends in wonder, and is satisfied with wonder, is the quality of an idiot.
Character | Curiosity | Discovery | Ends | Knowledge | Piety | Wonder |
The chief and most confounding objection to excessive skepticism, that no durable good can ever result from it; while it remains in its full force and vigor. We need only ask such a skeptic, what his meaning is? And what he proposes by all these curious researches? He is immediately at a loss, and knows not what to answer.
Love is as necessary to human beings as food and shelter; [but] without intelligence... love is impotent and freedom unattainable.
Character | Freedom | Intelligence | Love |
In the practical use of our intellect, forgetting is as important as remembering... A great many people think they are thinking when they are rearranging their prejudices... the difference between a good man and a bad one is the choice of cause.
Cause | Character | Choice | Good | Important | Man | People | Thinking | Think |
Our greatest happiness does not depend on the condition of life in which chance has placed us, but is always the result of a good conscience, good health, occupation, and freedom in all just pursuits.
Chance | Character | Conscience | Freedom | Good | Health | Life | Life | Occupation | Happiness |
Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
I have often seen individuals who simply outgrow a problem which had destroyed others. This ‘outgrowing’, revealed itself on further experience to be the raising of the level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest arose on the person’s horizon, and through the widening of his view, the insoluble problem, lost its urgency. It was not solved logically in its own terms, but faded out in contrast to a new and strong life-tendency. It was not repressed and made unconscious, but merely appeared in a different light, and so became different itself. What, on a lower level, had led the wildest conflicts and emotions full of panic, viewed from the higher level of the personality, now seemed like a storm in the valley seen from a high mountain top. This does not mean that the thunderstorm is robbed of its reality; it means that instead of being in it, one is now above it.
Character | Consciousness | Contrast | Emotions | Experience | Life | Life | Light | Means | Panic | Personality | Reality |
Happiness is not pleasure, it is order. With order come freedom, and with freedom there is responsibility.
Character | Freedom | Order | Pleasure | Responsibility |
Jaron Lanier, fully Jaron Zepel Lanier
Life is based on limitation and compromise. The fact that we forget the meaning of life is the meaning of life. Being in a state of partial awareness allows experience and life to progress. God, as an omniscient being, is not an “experiencing being” because his or her experience is not new. If You were going to start a universe, what would Your options be? You could choose to remain totally stagnant, but that wouldn’t amount to a true universe. You’d need entities that experience it, entities that are fragile and temporary and not omniscient. That’s who we are and why we’re here.
Awareness | Character | Experience | God | Life | Life | Meaning | Need | Progress | Universe | Awareness |
Relationship based on mutual need brings only conflict. However interdependent we are on each other, we are using each other for a purpose, for an end. With an end in view, relationship is not.
Character | Interdependent | Need | Purpose | Purpose | Relationship |
What is important is to free ourselves from ideas, from nationalism, from all religious beliefs and dogmas, so that we can act, not according to a pattern or an ideology, but as needs demand... It is only when the mind is free of idea and belief that it can act rightly... and freedom from ideas can take place only through self-awareness and self-knowledge.
Awareness | Belief | Character | Freedom | Ideas | Important | Knowledge | Mind | Self | Self-awareness | Self-knowledge | Wisdom |
Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
Personality is the supreme realization of the innate individuality of a particular living being. Personality is an act of the greatest courage in the face of life, the absolute affirmation of all that constitutes the individual, and the most successful adaptation to the universal conditions of existence coupled with the greatest possible freedom of personal decision.
Absolute | Character | Courage | Decision | Existence | Freedom | Individual | Individuality | Life | Life | Personality |
John F. Kennedy, fully John Fitzgerald "Jack" Kennedy
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and the enemy of growth.
Character | Conformity | Enemy | Freedom | Growth |