This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel
Civilization and the life of nations are governed by the same laws as prevail throughout nature and organic life.
Individual | Men |
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
In large-scale enterprise, private ownership is a fiction for the purpose of enabling functionless owners to live parasitically on the labor of others. It is not only unjust but also an irrational element which distorts all relationships within the enterprise.
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
The foundations of peace cannot be laid by universal prosperity, in the modern sense, because such prosperity, if attainable at all, is attainable only by cultivating such drives of human nature as greed and envy, which destroy intelligence, happiness, serenity, and thereby the peacefulness of man.
Little | Science | Technology | Truth | Wisdom |
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
From the point of view of the employer, it is in any case simply an item of cost, to be reduced to a minimum if it cannot be eliminated altogether, say, by automation. From the point of view of the workman, it is a 'disutility'; to work is to make a sacrifice of one's leisure and comfort, and wages are a kind of compensation for the sacrifice.
Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara
Our universities produced lawyers and doctors for the old social system, but did not create enough agricultural extension teachers, agronomists, chemists, or physicists. In fact, we do not even have mathematicians.
Erwin Schrödinger, fully Erwin Rudolf Josef Alexander Schrödinger
God knows I am no friend of probability theory, I have hated it from the first moment when our dear friend Max Born gave it birth. For it could be seen how easy and simple it made everything, in principle, everything ironed and the true problems concealed. Everybody must jump on the bandwagon [Ausweg]. And actually not a year passed before it became an official credo, and it still is
Awe | Heart | Joy | Light | Man | Men | Pain | Self | Time | Woman |
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
The cultivation and expansion of needs is the antithesis of wisdom. It is also the antithesis of freedom and peace. Every increase in needs tends to increase one's dependence on outside forces over which one cannot have control, and therefore increases existential fear. Only by a reduction of needs can one promote a genuine reduction in those tensions which are the ultimate causes of strife and war.
Attention | Economics | People | Problems | System | Thinking | Thought | Will | Wisdom | Thought |
Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara
To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary.... These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution!
Men |
Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel
The real cause of personal existence is not the favor of the Almighty, but the sexual love of one's earthly parents.
Antithesis | Courage | Desire | Faith | Knowledge | Man | Men | Mind | Nature | Purpose | Purpose | Reality | Religion | Soul | Thinking | World |
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
The point is that the real strength of the theory of private enterprise lies in this ruthless simplification, which fits so admirably also into the mental patterns created by the phenomenal successes of science.
Most people have no imagination. If they could imagine the sufferings of others, they would not make them suffer so. What separated a German mother from a French mother?
Men |
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
Excellent! This is real life, full of antinomies and bigger than logic. Without order, planning, predictability, central control, accountancy, instructions to the underlings, obedience, discipline—without these, nothing fruitful can happen, because everything disintegrates. And yet—without the magnanimity of disorder, the happy abandon, the entrepreneurship venturing into the unknown and incalculable, without the risk and the gamble, the creative imagination rushing in where bureaucratic angels fear to tread—without this, life is a mockery and a disgrace.
Ends | Guidance | Need | People | Science | Wisdom | Work | Guidance | Value |
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
It might be said that energy is for the mechanical world what consciousness is for the human world. If energy fails, everything fails.
Men |
Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara
To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate. We must create the pedagogy of the paredón [execution wall].
We must desire God for ourselves and not as a means of fulfillment of our own wishes. It is a blessed mark of growth out of spiritual infancy when we can forgo the joys which once appeared to be essential, and can find our solace in him who denies them to us.
Authenticity | Feelings | God | Wisdom | Worship | God | Think |
Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson
So we must try to distinguish between two questions that are often confused in this discussion. Is the existence of God a truth demonstrable by natural reason, so that it is knowable and known with certitude? Without a doubt the answer to this first question is “yes.” The second question is whether everyone can consider his natural reason infallible in its effort to demonstrate rationally the existence of God? The merciless criticism of the proofs of St. Augustine, St. Anselm, Descartes, Malebranche and many others are timely reminders of the need for modesty. Are we keener philosophers than they? That is the whole question. Modesty is not skepticism. So we should not be afraid to let our mind pursue the proof of God’s existence until we reach the greatest possible certitude, but we should keep intact our faith in the word that reveals this truth to the most simple folk as well as to the most learned. Here it is well to meditate on the very complex and nuanced passage in ST 2-2.2.4: “Is it necessary to believe what can be proved by natural reason?” The answer is in the affirmative: “We must accept by faith not only what is above reason but also what can be known by reason.”
Beginning | Body | Experience | Giving | Life | Life | Looks | Philosophy | Wisdom | Learn |