This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
I believe each person should take responsibility to forge their own destiny in life and find what they feel is the true meaning for themselves. The meaning of life will ultimately be perceived differently by everyone and could actually be looked at as a sort of fingerprint of the mind because of the varying outlooks and perceptions.
Destiny | Life | Life | Meaning | Mind | Responsibility | Will |
We are material in the hands of the Genius of the universe for a still larger destiny that we cannot see in the everlasting rhythm of worlds.
Winston Churchill, fully Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill
It is a mistake to look too far ahead. Only one link in the chain of destiny can be handled at a time.
Philosophy has the task and the opportunity of helping banish the concept that human destiny here and now is of slight importance in comparison with some supernatural destiny.
Destiny | Opportunity | Philosophy |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
Religion: What at one time was a dynamic structure, mediating between man and his destiny and interpersonal responsibilities, has become mere mechanical ritual that dwarfs men rather than strengthens them.
Fate is what we are given. Destiny is what we make of what is given to us. We cannot choose our fate but we can shape our destiny. And in that choice lies all the difference… We are not only shaped by our environment; we shape it. We are not only the creatures of circumstance; we are also the creators of circumstance.
The most fateful choices are made in tragic loneliness. In the valley of decision, we stand alone, accompanied by our haunting fears and our stubborn hopes, by dread despair or gritty faith. Yet, though we appear to stand solitary, in truth we are accompanied by the tall and brave spirits who have stood where we stand and who, when torn between “No” and “Yes” to life and its infinite possibilities; by those who have had the wisdom to focus not on what they had lost but on what they had left; by those who understood that fate is what life gives us and that destiny is what we do with what’s given; and by those who, therefore, grasped the liberating truth that while we have no control over our fate, we do have an astonishing amount of control over our destiny.
Control | Decision | Despair | Destiny | Dread | Faith | Fate | Focus | Life | Life | Loneliness | Truth | Wisdom | Fate |
Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley
Biology… has thus revealed man’s place in nature. Hs is the highest form of life produced by the evolutionary process on this planet, the latest dominant type, and the only organism capable of further advance or progress. Whether he knows it or not, whether he wishes it or not, he is now the main agency for the further evolution of the earth and its inhabitants. In other words, his destiny is to realize new possibilities for the whole terrestrial sector of the cosmic process, to be the instrument of further evolutionary progress on this planet.
Destiny | Earth | Evolution | Life | Life | Man | Nature | Progress | Wishes | Words |
Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley
Any conflict which prevents the personality from attaining wholeness is a hindrance: all taboos against considering any part of the universe in relation to man and his destiny are hindrances; so, too, are all restrictions upon the free use of reason, or the free appeal of conscience. In other words, any religion which is not an affirmation of the ultimate value of truth and knowledge, beauty and its expression, and goodness and moral action, which ever sets itself up against these, is in that respect a false, low and incomplete religion.
Action | Beauty | Conscience | Destiny | Knowledge | Man | Personality | Reason | Religion | Respect | Truth | Universe | Wholeness | Words | Respect | Beauty | Value |
A religion is the organized quest of a people for salvation, for helping those who live by the civilization of that people to achieve their destiny as human beings.
Civilization | Destiny | People | Religion | Salvation |
The world? It is a territory under a curse, where even its pleasures carry with them their thorns and their bitterness… A place where hope, regarded as a passion so sweet, renders everybody unhappy; where those who have nothing to hope for, think themselves still more miserable, where all that pleases, pleases never for long; and where ennui is always most the sweetest destiny and the most supportable that one can expect in it.
Bitterness | Destiny | Ennui | Hope | Nothing | Passion | World | Think |
The road from discrete scientific observations to large-scale explanations of the origin and destiny of the universe always passes through political, social, religious, and cultural precincts.
Noel M. Tichy and Stratford Sherman
Control your destiny or someone else will.