This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
José Bergamin, fully José Bergamín Gutiérrez
A belief which leaves no place for doubt is not a belief; it is a superstition.
Belief | Doubt | Superstition |
Peter Abelard, Latin: Petrus Abaelardus or Abailard; French: Pierre Abélard
Whosoever grows wrathful for any reason against his sufferings has therein departed from the way of the just, because he may not doubt that these things have happened to him by divine dispensation.
Omar Bradley, fully Omar Nelson Bradley
The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.
Omar Bradley, fully Omar Nelson Bradley
We have too many men of science, and too few men of God. We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount. The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical midgets. We know more about war than we know of peace, more about killing than we know about living.
Conscience | God | Men | Mystery | Peace | Power | Science | War | Wisdom | World |
Robert E. Carter, fully Robert Edgar Carter
All theories, all values, all reforms, all revolutions, all change, and all actions are built on the shifting sands of custom and opinion, and the winds of doubt and new circumstances and considerations are always blowing, always rising.
Change | Circumstances | Custom | Doubt | Opinion | Theories |
Mahatma Gandhi, fully Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, aka Bapu
Self-sacrifice of one innocent man is a million times more potent than the sacrifice of a million men who die in the act of killing others.
Man | Men | Sacrifice | Self | Self-sacrifice |
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
What no human soul desires there is no need to prohibit; it is automatically excluded. The very emphasis of the commandment, Thou shalt not kill, makes it certain that we spring from an endless ancestry of murderers, with whom the lust for killing was in the blood, as possibly it is to this day with ourselves.
Friedrich von Hügel, formally Baron Friedrich Maria Aloys Franz Karl Freiherr von Hugel
Now there is no doubt that the prayer of quiet, that a certain formless recollection and loving feeding upon the sense and presence of God, as here and now, is a most legitimate prayer.
Lao Tzu, ne Li Urh, also Laotse, Lao Tse, Lao Tse, Lao Zi, Laozi, Lao Zi, La-tsze
Knowledge creates doubt, and doubt makes you ravenous for more knowledge. You can’t get full eating this way. The wise person dines on something more subtle: he eats the understanding that the named was born from the unnamed, that all being flows from non-being, that the describable world emanates from an indescribable source. He finds this subtle truth inside his own self, and becomes completely content.
Doubt | Knowledge | Self | Truth | Understanding | Wise | World |
You do not destroy an idea by killing people; you replace it with a better one.
Carl Jung, fully Carl Gustav Jung
The cure works best when the doctor himself believes in his own formulae, otherwise he may be overcome by scientific doubt and so lose the proper convincing tone.
Doubt |
One great Reason why many Children abandon themselves wholly to silly sports and trifle away all their time insipidly is because they found their Curiosity baulk’d and their Enquiries neglected. But had they been treated with more kindness and Respect and their Questions answered, as they should, to their Satisfaction, I doubt not but they would have taken more Pleasure in Learning and improving their Knowledge, wherein there would be still Newness and Variety, which is what they are delighted with, than in returning over and over to the same Play and Playthings.
Children | Curiosity | Doubt | Kindness | Knowledge | Learning | Play | Pleasure | Reason | Respect | Time | Respect |
Golda Meir, originally named Goldie Mabovitch, later Goldie Myerson
There’s no difference between one’s killing and making decisions that will send others to kill. It’s exactly the same thing, or even worse.