This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
John Schaar, fully John Homer Schaar
The future is not a result of choices among alternative paths offered by the present, but a place that is created--created first in the mind and will, created next in activity. The future is not some place we are going to, but one we are creating. The paths are not to be found, but made, and the activity of making them, changes both the maker and the destination.
The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership THE LAW OF THE LID — Leadership Ability Determines a Person’s Level of Effectiveness. THE LAW OF INFLUENCE — The True Measure of Leadership is Influence — Nothing More, Nothing Less. THE LAW OF PROCESS — Leadership Develops Daily, Not in a Day. THE LAW OF NAVIGATION — Anyone Can Steer the Ship, But It Takes a Leader to Chart the Course.. THE LAW OF ADDITION — Leaders Add Value by Serving Others. THE LAW OF SOLID GROUND — Truth is the Foundation of Leadership. THE LAW OF RESPECT — People Naturally Follow Leaders Stronger Than Themselves. THE LAW OF INTUITION — Leaders Evaluate Everything with a Leadership Bias. THE LAW OF MAGNETISM – Who You Are is Who You Attract. THE LAW OF CONNECTION. – Leaders Touch a Heart Before They Ask for a Hand. THE LAW OF THE INNER CIRCLE – A Leader’s Potential is Determined by Those Closest to Him. THE LAW OF EMPOWERMENT – Only Secure Leaders Give Power to Others. THE LAW OF THE PICTURE – People Do What People See. THE LAW OF BUY-IN – People Buy into the Leader, Then the Vision. THE LAW OF VICTORY – Leaders Find a Way for the Team to Win. THE LAW OF THE BIG MO – Momentum is a Leader’s Best Friend. THE LAW OF PRIORITIES – Leaders Understand that Activity is Not Necessarily Accomplishment. THE LAW OF SACRIFICE – A Leader Must Give Up to Go Up. THE LAW OF TIMING – When to Lead is As Important as What to Do and Where to Go. THE LAW OF EXPLOSIVE GROWTH – To Add Growth, Lead Followers – To Multiply, Lead Leaders. THE LAW OF LEGACY – A Leader’s Lasting Value is Measured by Succession.
Ability | Growth | Heart | Important | Influence | Intuition | Law | Nothing | People | Power | Respect | Sacrifice | Truth | Respect | Leader | Leadership | Understand | Value |
Religion is more than a creed or a doctrine, more than faith or piety; it is an everlasting fact in the universe, something that exists outside knowledge and experience, an order of being, the holy dimension of existence. It does not emanate from the affections and moods, aspirations and visions of the soul. It is not a divine force in us, a mere possibility, left to the initiative of man, something that may or may not take place, but an actuality, the inner constitution of the universe, the system of divine values involved in every being and exposed to the activity of man, the ultimate in our reality. As an absolute implication of being, as an ontological entity, not as an adorning veneer for a psychical wish or for a material want, religion cannot be totally described in psychological or sociological terms.
Absolute | Creed | Faith | Force | Initiative | Knowledge | Order | Religion | System |
Milton Friedman, fully John Milton Friedman
The ICC [Interstate Commerce Commission] illustrates what might be called the natural history of government intervention. A real or fancied evil leads to demands to do something about it. A political coalition forms consisting of sincere, high-minded reformers and equally sincere interested parties. The incompatible objectives of the members of the coalition (e.g., low prices to consumers and high prices to producers) are glossed over by fine rhetoric about “the public interest,” “fair competition,” and the like. The coalition succeeds in getting Congress (or a state legislature) to pass a law. The preamble to the law pays lip service to the rhetoric and the body of the law grants power to government officials to “do something.” The high-minded reformers experience a glow of triumph and turn their attention to new causes. The interested parties go to work to make sure that the power is used for their benefit. They generally succeed. Success breeds its problems, which are met by broadening the scope of intervention. Bureaucracy takes its toll so that even the initial special interests no longer benefit. In the end the effects are precisely the opposite of the objectives of the reformers and generally do not even achieve the objectives of the special interests. Yet the activity is so firmly established and so many vested interests are connected with it that repeal of the initial legislation is nearly inconceivable. Instead, new government legislation is called for to cope with the problems produced by the earlier legislation and a new cycle begins.
Attention | Body | Commerce | Evil | Experience | Government | History | Law | Objectives | Power | Problems | Public | Rhetoric | Service | Success | Work | Government | Commerce |
Where speculation ends — in real life — there real, positive science begins: the representation of the practical activity, of the practical process of development of men. Empty talk about consciousness ceases, and real knowledge has to take place. When reality is depicted, philosophy as an independent branch of activity loses its medium of existence.
Consciousness | Ends | Knowledge | Life | Life | Philosophy | Reality | Science | Speculation |
Karl Jaspers, fully Karl Theodor Jaspers
But each one of us is guilty insofar as he remained inactive. The guilt of passivity is different. Impotence excuses; no moral law demands a spectacular death. Plato already deemed it a matter of course to go into hiding in desperate times of calamity, and to survive. But passivity knows itself morally guilty of every failure, every neglect to act whenever possible, to shield the imperiled, to relieve wrong, to countervail. Impotent submission always left a margin of activity which, though not without risk, could still be cautiously effective. Its anxious omission weighs upon the individual as moral guilt. Blindness for the misfortune of others, lack of imagination of the heart, inner differences toward the witnessed evil--that is moral guilt.
Guilt | Imagination | Individual | Law | Misfortune | Moral law | Neglect | Submission | Misfortune | Guilty |
Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
One man does not assert the truth which he knows, because he feels himself bound to the people with whom he is engaged; another, because the truth might deprive him of the profitable position by which he maintains his family; a third, because he desires to attain reputation and authority, and then use them in the service of mankind; a fourth, because he does not wish to destroy old sacred traditions; a fifth, because he has no desire to offend people; a sixth, because the expression of the truth would arouse persecution, and disturb the excellent social activity to which he has devoted himself. One serves as emperor, king, minister, government functionary, or soldier, and assures himself and others that the deviation from truth indispensable to his condition is redeemed by the good he does. Another, who fulfills the duties of a spiritual pastor, does not in the depths of his soul believe all he teaches, but permits the deviation from truth in view of the good he does. A third instructs men by means of literature, and notwithstanding the silence he must observe with regard to the whole truth, in order not to stir up the government and society against himself, has no doubt as to the good he does. A fourth struggles resolutely with the existing order as revolutionist or anarchist, and is quite assured that the aims he pursues are so beneficial that the neglect of the truth, or even of the falsehood, by silence, indispensable to the success of his activity, does not destroy the utility of his work. In order that the conditions of a life contrary to the consciousness of humanity should change and be replaced by one which is in accord with it, the outworn public opinion must be superseded by a new and living one. And in order that the old outworn opinion should yield its place to the new living one, all who are conscious of the new requirements of existence should openly express them. And yet all those who are conscious of these new requirements, one in the name of one thing, and one in the name of another, not only pass them over in silence, but both by word and deed attest their exact opposites.
Aims | Change | Consciousness | Desire | Destroy | Deviation | Doubt | Existence | Good | Government | Humanity | Indispensable | Life | Life | Man | Means | Men | Neglect | Opinion | Order | People | Position | Public | Regard | Reputation | Sacred | Service | Silence | Society | Soul | Success | Truth | Society | Government | Old |
Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
Formerly...when he tried to do anything for the good of everybody, for humanity...for the whole village, he had noticed that the thoughts of it were agreeable, but the activity itself was always unsatisfactory; there was no full assurance that the work was really necessary, and the activity itself, which at first seemed so great, ever lessened and lessened till it vanished. But now...when he began to confine himself more and more to living for himself, though he no longer felt any joy at the thought of his activity, he felt confident that his work was necessary, saw that it progressed far better than formerly, and that it was always growing more and more.
Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
Art is a human activity consisting in this, that one consciously, by means of certain external symbols, conveys to others the feelings one has experienced, whereby people so infected by these feelings, also experience them.
Experience | Feelings | Means | People |
Martyn Lloyd-Jones, fully David Martyn Lloyd Jones
Prayer is beyond any question the highest activity of the human soul. Man is at his greatest and highest when upon his knees he comes face to face with God.
Marcus Aurelius, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus
If you work at that which is before you, following right reason seriously, vigorously, calmly without allowing anything else to distract you, but keeping your divine part pure, as if you might be bound to give it back immediately; if you hold to this, expecting nothing, fearing nothing, but satisfied with your present activity according to nature . . . you will be happy. And there is no man who is able to prevent this.
Man | Nature | Present | Reason | Right | Will | Work | Following |
The teacher's task is not to talk, but to prepare and arrange a series of motives for cultural activity in a special environment made for the child.
Motives |
Respect all the reasonable forms of activity in which the child engages and try to understand them.
Child | Understand |
The environment must be rich in motives which lend interest to activity and invite the child to conduct his own experiences.
And so we discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being. It is not acquired by listening to words, but in virtue of experiences in which the child acts on his environment. The teacher’s task is not to talk, but to prepare and arrange a series of motives for cultural activity in a special environment made for the child.
Education | Listening | Motives | Virtue | Virtue | Child | Teacher |
I start from unified experince and from there acquire, in a secondary way, consciousness of a unifying activity when, taking up an analytical attitude, I break up perception into qualities and sensations, and when, in order to recapture on the basis of these the object into which I was in the first place blindly thrown, I am obliged to suppose an act of synthesis which is merely the counterpart of my analysis.
Consciousness | Object | Order | Perception | Qualities |
Meister Eckhart, formally Meister von Hochheim
The soul has two eyes: an inner and an outer eye. The inner eye of the soul is the one which perceives being and receives its own being directly from God: This is the activity which is particular to itself. The outer eye of the soul is that which is directed towards all creatures and which perceives them in the manner of an image and the function of a faculty. But they who are turned within themselves so that they know God according to their own taste and in their own being, are freed from all created thingss and are secure in themselves in a very fortress of truth.
Michel de Montaigne, fully Lord Michel Eyquem de Montaigne
The study of books is a languishing and feeble activity that gives no heat, whereas discussion teaches and exercises us at the same time.
Books | Discussion | Study |