This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Paul Tillich, fully Paul Johannes Tillich
Absolute faith, the acceptance of being accepted. Of course, in the state of despair there is nobody and nothing that accepts. But there is the power of acceptance itself which is experienced. Meaninglessness, as long as it is experienced, includes an experience of the power of acceptance. To accept this power of acceptance consciously is the religious answer of absolute faith, of a faith which has been deprived by doubt of any concrete content, which nevertheless is faith and the source of the most paradoxical manifestation of the courage to be.
Absolute | Acceptance | Courage | Despair | Doubt | Experience | Faith | Nothing | Power |
Paul Tillich, fully Paul Johannes Tillich
Serious doubt is confirmation of faith. It indicates the seriousness of the concern, its unconditional character.
Doubt |
It’s the possibility of having a dream come true that makes life interesting… It's doubt that drives a man onward… It's a good idea always to do something relaxing prior to making an important decision in your life… It's best to accept life as it really is and not as I imagined it to be… It takes a huge effort to free yourself from memory… It's not for us to predict the events of the next moment, however, see us move forward, because we have confidence, because we have the faith… It's one thing to feel that you are on the right path, but it's another to think that yours is the only path.
Decision | Doubt | Effort | Events | Good | Important | Life | Life | Man | Right | Think |
If you accept such love with purity and humility, you will understand that Love is neither giving nor receiving - it is participating… If you are traveling the road of your dreams, be committed to it. Do not leave an open door to be used as an excuse such as, 'Well, this isn't exactly what I wanted.' Therein are contained the seeds of defeat. Walk your path. Even if your steps have to be uncertain, even if you know that you could be doing it better. If you accept your possibilities in the present, there is no doubt that you will improve in the future. But if you deny that you have limitations, you will never be rid of them. Confront your path with courage, and don't be afraid of the criticism of others. And, above all, don't allow yourself to become paralyzed by self-criticism. God will be with you on your sleepless nights, and will dry your tears with His love. God is for the valiant… Remember, the first road to God is prayer, the second is joy.
Criticism | Doubt | Giving | God | Love | Purity | Tears | Will | God | Afraid | Understand |
Haven't you learned anything, not even with the approach of death? Stop thinking all the time that you're in the way, that you're bothering the person next to you. If people don't like it, they can complain. And if they don't have the courage to complain, that's their problem… Having the courage to take the steps we always wanted to take is the only way of showing that we trust in God… He has done things that caused me to doubt His wisdom, but never His existence… He knows that perseverance is not the same thing as insistence… We can see the Divine in each speck of dust, but that doesn't stop us from wiping it away with a wet sponge. The Divine doesn't disappear; it's transformed into the clean surface.
Courage | Doubt | People | Perseverance | Thinking | Time | Trust |
The good fight is the one we run on behalf of our dreams. If they flare up with a vengeance in our youth, we do have a lot of courage, but we have not yet learned to fight. If we have learned to deal with many troubles, has left us the courage to fight. Therefore, we turn against ourselves and our worst enemies. We say that our childish dreams, were too difficult to realize or just so touched that we had from the realities of life do not know. We kill our dreams because we are afraid to take the good fight… The first symptom that we are killing our dreams is that we never have time. The most busy people I've met in my life were at the same time those who had always time for everything. Those who did nothing were always tired, did not realize how little they made, and complained constantly about the fact that the day was too short. In truth, they were afraid to fight the good fight. The second symptom that our dreams are dead, our certainties. Because we see life not as a big adventure, which it is to live, we believe in the end, that we are the few things we have asked of life, wise, just and behave properly…. The third symptom of the death of our dreams is finally peace. Life becomes one Sunday afternoon, nothing great demands of us want no more of us than we are willing to give. We then keep for ready to believe that we have overcome our childish fantasies and gain the fulfillment of personal and professional level. We are surprised when someone says, in our age, that he still expected life of this or that. But in truth, deep inside our hearts, we know that we have given it up in reality only to fight for our dreams to live the good fight.
Courage | Day | Death | Dreams | Fulfillment | Good | Kill | Life | Life | Little | Nothing | People | Reality | Time | Vengeance | Afraid |
The young all have the same dream: to save the world. Some quickly forget this dream, convinced that there are more important things to do, like having a family, earning money, traveling, and learning a foreign language. Others, though, decide that it really is possible to make a difference in society and to shape the world we will hand on to future generations… There is a work of art each of us was destined to create. That is the central point of our life, and -no matter how we try to deceive ourselves -we know how important it is to our happiness. Usually, that work of art is covered by years of fears, guilt and indecision. But, if we decide to remove those things that do not belong, if we have no doubt as to our capability, we are capable of going forward with the mission that is our destiny. That is the only way to live with honor.
Art | Doubt | Future | Guilt | Important | Learning | Mission | Society | Will | Work | World | Society | Art |
It is not possible to remake this country, to democratize it, humanize it, make it serious, as long as we have teenagers killing people for play and offending life, destroying the dream, and making love unviable. If education alone cannot transform society, without it society cannot change either.
Change | Education | Love | People | Play | Society | Society |
Don't be like those people who believe in positive thinking and tell themselves that they're loved and strong and capable. You don't need to do that because you know it already. And when you doubt it — which happens, I think, quite often at this stage of evolution — do as I suggested. Instead of trying to prove that you're better than you think, just laugh. Laugh at your worries and insecurities. View your anxieties with humor. It will be difficult at first, but you'll gradually get used to it. Now go back and meet all those people who think you know everything. Convince yourself that they're right, because we all know everything; it's merely a question of believing… Don't explain. Your friends do not need it, and your enemies will not believe you… Don't think about what you'll tell people afterward. The time is here and now. Make the most of it… Don't waste your time with explanations: people only hear what they want to hear.
Better | Doubt | Evolution | Need | People | Question | Thinking | Time | Waste | Will | Friends | Think |
Peter Kropotkin, fully Prince Pyotr Alexeyevich Kropotkin
If every Socialist will carry his thoughts back to an earlier date, he will no doubt remember the host of prejudices aroused in him when, for the first time, he came to the idea that abolishing the capitalist system and private appropriation of land and capital had become an historical necessity.
As a matter of strict logic, perhaps, there is no contradiction in taking an interest in animals on both compassionate and gastronomic grounds. If a person is opposed to the infliction of suffering on animals, but not to the painless killing of animals, he could consistently eat animals that had lived free of all suffering and been instantly, painlessly slaughtered. Yet practically and psychologically it is impossible to be consistent in one's concern for nonhuman animals while continuing to dine on them. If we are prepared to take the life of another being merely in order to satisfy our taste for a particular type of food, then that being is no more than a means to our end. In time we will come to regard pigs, cattle, and chickens as things for us to use, no matter how strong our compassion may be; and when we find that to continue to obtain supplies of the bodies of these animals at a price we are able to pay it is necessary to change their living conditions a little, we will be unlikely to regard these changes too critically. The factory farm is nothing more than the application of technology to the idea that animals are means to our ends. Our eating habits are dear to us and not easily altered. We have a strong interest in convincing ourselves that our concern for other animals does not require us to stop eating them. No one in the habit of eating an animal can be completely without bias in judging whether the conditions in which that animal is reared caused suffering.
Change | Compassion | Contradiction | Habit | Life | Life | Means | Nothing | Order | Price | Regard | Suffering | Taste | Technology | Time | Will |
Peter Ustinov, fully Sir Peter Alexander Ustinov
Beliefs are what divide people. Doubt unites them.
Doubt |
Legally, the doctor should not [kill the infant], and in this respect the law reflects the sanctity of life view. Yet people who would say this about the infant do not object to the killing of nonhuman animals. How can they justify their different judgments? Adult chimpanzees, dogs, pigs, and members of many other species far surpass the brain-damaged infant in their ability to relate to others, act independently, be self-aware, and any other capacity that could reasonably be said to give value to life. The only thing that distinguishes the infant from the animal, in the eyes of those who claim it has a "right to life," is that it is, biologically, a member of the species Homo sapiens...But to use this difference as the basis for granting a right to life to the infant and not to the other animals is, of course, pure speciesism. It is exactly the kind of arbitrary difference that the most crude and overt kind of racist uses in attempting to justify racial discrimination.
Ability | Capacity | Justify | Law | Life | Life | Object | People | Respect | Right | Respect | Value |
Pitirim A. Sorokin, fully Pitirim Alexandrovich (Alexander) Sorokin
Let us consider contemporary science, noting just how it defines man and what it contributes both to his well-being and to his detriment. The current scientific conceptions of man exhibit him as a sort of `electron-proton complex'; `a combination of physico-chemical elements'; `an animal closely related to the ape or monkey'; `a reflex mechanism'; or `variety of stimulus-response relationship'; `a special adjustment mechanism'; a psychoanalytical libido; a predominantly subconscious or unconscious organism controlled mainly by alimentary and economic forces; or just a homo faber, manufacturing various tools and instruments. No doubt man is all of this. But does this exhaust his essential nature? Does it touch his most fundamental properties, which make him a unique creature? Most of the definitions masquerading as scientific rarely, if ever, even raise such questions. Some, indeed, go so far as to deprive man even of mind, or thought, of consciousness, of conscience, and of volition, reducing him to a purely behaviouristic mechanism of unconditioned and conditioned reflexes. Such are the current concepts of our leading physicists, biologists, and psychologists.
People tend to care about dogs because they generally have more experience with dogs as companions; but other animals are as capable of suffering as dogs are. Few people feel sympathy for rats. Yet rats are intelligent animals, and there can be no doubt that rats are capable of suffering and do suffer from countless painful experiments performed on them. If the army were to stop experiments on dogs and switch to rats instead, we should not be any less concerned.
And, to all married men, be this a caution, Which they should duly tender as their life, Neither to dote too much, nor doubt a wife.
Doubt |
Petrarch, anglicized from Italian name Francesco Petrarca NULL
The end of doubt is the beginning of repose.
Philip Wheaton and Duane Shank
Yet in killing the hero and murdering the Word of Life, the Powers necessarily reveal their own corrupt nature and through that revelation, we - as the faithful in these United States - are liberated from America’s idolatry
Let us admit that no matter how small the chance it could happen, one molecule could be created by such astronomical odds of chance. However, one molecule is of no use. Hundreds of millions of identical ones are necessary. Thus we either admit the miracle or doubt the absolute truth of science.