This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
François Fénelon, fully Francois de Salignac de la Mothe-Fénelon
In the light of eternity we shall see that what we desired would have been fatal to us, and that what we would have avoided was essential to our well-being.
True belonging is born of relationships not only to one another but to a place of shared responsibilities and benefits. We love not so much what we have acquired as what we have made and whom we have made it with.
Next to temperance, a quiet conscience, a cheerful mind, and active habits, I place early rising as a means of health and happiness.
This should not come as a surprise, for indeed ‘out there’ there is no light and no colour, and there are only electromagnetic waves; ‘out there’ there is no sound and no music, there are only periodic variations of the air pressure; ‘out there’ there is no heat and no cold, there are only moving molecules with more or less mean kinetic energy, and so on. Finally, for sure, ‘out there’ there is no pain.
A conclusion is the place where you got tired of thinking.
Go to the place where the thing you wish to know is native; your best teacher is there. Where the thing you wish to know is so dominant that you must breathe its very atmosphere, there teaching is most thorough, and learning is most easy. You acquire a language most readily in the country where it is spoken; you study mineralogy best among miners; and so with everything else.
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
Religion is an attempt to get control over the sensory world, in which we are placed, by means of the wish-world, which we have developed inside us as a result of biological and psychological necessities. But it cannot achieve its end. Its doctrines carry with them the stamp of the times in which they originated, the ignorant childhood days of the human race. Its consolations deserve no trust. Experience teaches us that the world is not a nursery. The ethical commands, to which religion seeks to lend its weight, require some other foundations instead, for human society cannot do without them, and it is dangerous to link up obedience to them with religious belief. If one attempts to assign to religion its place in man’s evolution, it seems not so much to be a lasting acquisition, as a parallel to the neurosis which the civilized individual must pass through on his way from childhood to maturity.
Belief | Childhood | Control | Evolution | Experience | Human race | Individual | Man | Means | Obedience | Race | Religion | Society | Trust | Wisdom | World | Society |
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
We know well enough how little light science has so far been able to throw on the problems that surround us. But however much ado the philosophers may make, they cannot alter the situation. Only patient, persevering research, in which everything is subordinated to the one requirement of certainty, can gradually bring about a change.
Change | Enough | Light | Little | Problems | Research | Science | Wisdom |
Garrett Hardin, fully Garrett James Hardin
Beyond the limits of his confining skin, no man can own any thing. “Property” refers not to things owned but to the rights granted by society; they must periodically be re-examined in the light of social justice.
Justice | Light | Man | Property | Rights | Society | Wisdom |
Harry Golden, born Herschel Goldhirsch
The school is a place or institution for teaching and learning. Underneath this definition in every standard dictionary is another definition: School is a large number of fish of the same kind swimming together in the same direction.
Whenever I hear people talking about "liberal ideas," I am always astounded that men should love to fool themselves with empty sounds. An idea should never be liberal; it must be vigorous, positive, and without loose ends so that it may fulfill its divine mission and be productive. The proper place for liberality is in the realm of the emotions.
Emotions | Ends | Ideas | Love | Men | Mission | People | Talking | Wisdom |
Pope Leo I, aka Pope Leo The Great, Pope Saint Leo I NULL
Peace is the first thing the angels sang. Peace is the mark of the sons of God. Peace is the nurse of love. Peace is the mother of unity. Peace is the rest of blessed souls. Peace is the dwelling place of eternity.
Angels | Eternity | God | Love | Mother | Peace | Rest | Unity | Wisdom | Blessed |
God makes the Aeon, the Aeon makes the Kosmos, the Kosmos makes Time, and Time makes Coming-to-be. The essence of God is the Good, the essence of the Aeon is sameness, the essence of the Kosmos is order, the essence of Time is change, and the essence of Coming-to-be is life. The workings of God are mind and soul, the workings of the Aeon are immortality and duration, the workings of the Aeon are immortality and duration, the workings of the kosmos are re-instatement in identity and re-instatement by substitution, the workings of Time are increase and decrease, and the workings of Coming-to-be are quality and quantity. The aeon then is in God, the Kosmos is in the Aeon, Time is in the Kosmos, and Coming-to-be takes place in Time.
Change | God | Good | Immortality | Life | Life | Mind | Order | Soul | Time | Wisdom | God |
Sometimes prayer is more than a light before us; it is alight within us.