This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Happiness is growth through the enlargement of one's comfort zone, the expansion of what one has attempted, and the self-confidence to attempt even more... It is unfortunate but indisputable truth that happiness often comes with a price... You will find creating a life of happiness is not one large, overwhelming task, but rather a series of small, manageable steps.
Comfort | Confidence | Growth | Life | Life | Price | Self | Self-confidence | Truth | Will | Happiness |
Real growth comes only through self-acceptance. AS long as we deny any aspect of our being, we make believe that something could be outside of God. It is as if we say, “God is everywhere; He fills all time and space - except for this part of my body and what I did at age fifteen.”
Acceptance | Age | Body | God | Growth | Self | Space | Time |
We believe that the most basic of all changes in human social organization have been the result of three processes. Starting 8,000 to 10,000 years ago, agriculture was invented in the Middle East – probably by a woman. That’s the First Wave. Roughly 250 years ago, the Industrial Revolution triggered a Second Wave of change. Brute-force technologies amplified human and animal muscle power and gave rise to an urban, factory-centered way of life. Sometime after World War II, a gigantic Third Wave began transforming the planet, based on tools that amplify mind rather than muscle. The Third Wave is bigger, deeper and faster than the other two. This is the civilization of the computer, the satellite and Internet.
Change | Civilization | Computer | Force | Internet | Life | Life | Mind | Organization | Power | Revolution | War | Woman | World |
Poverty is the parent of revolution and crime.
Crime | Poverty | Revolution | Parent |
Intellectual virtues owes both its birth and its growth to teaching (for which reason it requires experience and time), while moral virtue comes about as a result of habit... From this fact it is plain that none of the moral virtues arises in us by nature; for nothing that exists by nature can form a habit contrary to its nature.
Birth | Experience | Growth | Habit | Nature | Nothing | Reason | Time | Virtue | Virtue |
Happiness does not come from possessions, but from our appreciation of them. It does not come from our work, but from our attitude toward that work. It does not come from success, but from the spiritual growth we attain in achieving that success.
Appreciation | Growth | Possessions | Success | Work | Appreciation |
Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
Inevitable | Revolution | Will |
Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
The regular social progress though which a growing society advances from one stage in its growth to another is a compound movement in which a creative individual or minority first withdraws from the common life of the society, then works out, in seclusion, a solution for some problem with which the society as a whole is confronted, and finally re-enters into communion with the rest of society in order to help it forward on its road by imparting to it the results of the creative work which the temporarily secluded individual or minority has accomplished during the interval between withdrawal and return.
Growth | Individual | Life | Life | Order | Progress | Rest | Seclusion | Society | Work | Society |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence that it is not utterly absurd; indeed, in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
Almost all education has a political motive: It aims at strengthening some group, national or religious or even social, in the competition with other groups. It is the motive, in the main, which determines the subjects taught, the knowledge offered and the knowledge withheld, and also decides what mental habits the pupils are expected to acquire. Hardly anything is done to foster the inward growth of mind and spirit; in fact, those who have most education are very often atrophied in their mental and spiritual life.
Aims | Competition | Education | Growth | Knowledge | Life | Life | Mind | Spirit |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it is not utterly absurd; indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind, a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible.
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
Not... what opinions are held, but... how they are held: instead of being held dogmatically, [liberal] opinions are held tentatively, and with a consciousness that new evidence may at any moment lead to their abandonment.
Change is inevitable but perpetual growth is a choice.
Change | Choice | Growth | Inevitable |
Conflicts bring experience; and experience brings that growth in grace which is not to be attained by any other means.
Experience | Grace | Growth | Means |
The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?
Challenge | Day | Heart | Revolution |
To bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has at start with each one of us. When we begin to take the lowest place, to wash the feet of others, to love our brothers and sisters with that burning love, that passion, which led to the cross, then we can truly say, ‘Now I have begun.’
Heart | Love | Passion | Revolution |