This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
We are lucky to have fossils at all. It is a remarkably fortunate fact of geology that bones, shells and other hard parts of animals, before they decay, can occasionally leave an imprint which later acts as a mold, which shapes hardening rock into a permanent memory of the animal. We don't know what proportion of animals are fossilized after their death but it is certainly very small indeed. Nevertheless, however small the proportion fossilized, there are certain things about the fossil record that any evolutionist should expect to be true. We should be very surprised, for example, to find fossil humans appearing in the record before mammals are supposed to have evolved! If a single, well-verified mammal skull were to turn up in 500 million year-old rocks, our whole modern theory of evolution would be utterly destroyed. Incidentally, this is a sufficient answer to the canard, put about by creationists and their journalistic fellow travellers, that the whole theory of evolution is an 'unfalsifiable' tautology.
The enlightenment is under threat. So is reason. So is truth. So is science, especially in the schools of America. I am one of those scientists who feel that it is no longer enough just to get on and do science. We have to devote a significant proportion of our time and resources to defending it from deliberate attack from organized ignorance. We even have to go out on the attack ourselves, for the sake of reason and sanity. Of course, excellent organizations already exist for raising funds and deploying them in service of reason, science and enlightenment values. But the money that these organizations can raise is dwarfed by the huge resources of religious foundations such as the Templeton Foundation, not to mention the tithe-bloated, tax-exempt churches.
Enlightenment | Enough | Money | Reason | Science | Service | Time |
Falsehood, like the dry rot, flourishes the more in proportion as air and light are excluded.
Light |
Richard Wagner, fully Wilhelm Richard Wagner
Property has acquired an almost greater sacredness in our social conscience than religion: for offence against the latter there is lenience, for damage to the former no forgiveness. Since Property is deemed the base of all stability, the more's the pity that not all are owners, that in fact the greater proportion of Society comes disinherited into the world. Society is manifestly thus reduced by its own principle to such a perilous inquietude, that it is compelled to reckon all its laws for an impossible adjustment of this conflict; and protection of property
Conscience | Pity | Property | Society | Society |
Rinzai, aka Lin- Chi Yi-Sen, Lin-chi I-hsuan, Rinzai Gigen, Venerable Master Lin Chi NULL
That is a big error. If you think a state of motionless clarity were Zen, you accept ignorance as your slave-master.
Every man is rich or poor according to the proportion between his desires and his enjoyments.
Man |
Worldly wealth is the Devil's bait; and those whose minds feed upon riches recede, in general, from real happiness, in proportion as their stores increase, as the moon, when she is fullest, is farthest from the sun.
Rinzai, aka Lin- Chi Yi-Sen, Lin-chi I-hsuan, Rinzai Gigen, Venerable Master Lin Chi NULL
That is a big error. If you think a state of motionless clarity were Zen, you accept ignorance as your slave-master.
The kinds of spiritual practices we can undertake are limitless. However, ultimately the form is less important than these factors: the commitment to practice, the ability to keep returning to the intention, the attitude one brings to the uncontrollable and the ability to transfer the benefits of the practice into how we live our lives, how we relate to ourselves and others, how free we become to embody the values and ideals we embrace in our minds, how we deal with temptations of all sorts. In other words we practice to live with the wisdom and compassion, which we already possess. We practice to actualize the pure soul, which God has planted with us.
Ability | Action | Anxiety | Anxiety | Attention | Body | Change | Character | Consciousness | Consequences | Desire | Focus | Forgetfulness | Generosity | Habit | Intention | Language | Meditation | Mind | Nature | Object | Order | Pain | Power | Practice | Prayer | Promise | Reality | Sabbath | Speech | Taste | Temptation | Time | Training | Unconsciousness | Torah | Temptation |
Rumi, fully Jalāl ad-Dīn Muḥammad Rumi NULL
Everything in the universe is a pitcher brimming with wisdom and beauty.
They love their neighbors with the same love with which they love me.
Not only do we have to accept that God wounds us, but we have to accept to be wounded where He desires; we have to let God choose, because it is His right.
Circumstances | Excess | Marriage | Mortal | Soul |
Salvador de Madariaga, fully Salvador de Madariaga y Rojo
The world has reached such a degree of interdependence... that international cooperation has become essential... the only self-supporting region of the world is the whole world... Only one opinion and only one market cover the face of the earth.
Absolute | Aims | Beauty | Discussion | Force | Men | Rule | Truth | Will | Words | Beauty |
The workers of America have felt most keenly the pernicious results of the establishment of foreign standards of work, wages and conduct in American industries and commerce. Foreign standards of wages do not permit American standards of life. Foreign labor has driven American workers out of many trades, callings, and communities, and the influence of those lower standards has permeated widely. . . . The labor movement has urged the adoption of a national policy that would enable us to select as future citizens of our country those who can be assimilated and made truly American. . . . It is only a half-truth to say that the literacy test would close the gates of opportunity to illiterate foreigners. As a matter of fact there is very little real opportunity for these people in our industrial centers. Usually they have been brought over here either by steamship or railroad companies and other greedy corporations, by employers, or as a result of collusion between these groups. They have been brought over here for the purpose of exploitation, and until they develop powers of resistance and determination to secure things for themselves they have little opportunity here. These same qualities would secure for them within their own countries many of the advantages that later come to them here.
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
Every man ought to aim at eminence, not by pulling others down, but by raising himself; and enjoy the pleasures of his own superiority, whether imaginary or real, without interrupting others in the same felicity.
Attainment | Future | Hope | Man | Means | Riches | Time | Riches |
Our subconscious minds have no sense of humor, play no jokes and cannot tell the difference between reality and an imagined thought or image. What we continually think about eventually will manifest in our lives.
Ability | Accuracy | Change | Future | Life | Life | Need | Present | Time | Will | Wise | World |
Every new development for the last three centuries has brought men closer to a state of affairs in which absolutely nothing would be recognized in the whole world as possessing a claim to obedience except the authority of the State. The majority of people in Europe obey nothing else.