This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
H. G. Wells, fully Herbert George Wells
I grieved to think how brief the dream of the human intellect had been. It had committed suicide. It had set itself steadfastly towards comfort and ease, a balanced society with security and permanency as its watchword, it had attained its hopes—to come to this at last. Once, life and property must have reached almost absolute safety. The rich had been assured of his wealth and comfort, the toiler assured of his life and work. No doubt in that perfect world there had been no unemployed problem, no social question left unsolved. And a great quiet had followed. It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble. An animal perfectly in harmony with its environment is a perfect mechanism. Nature never appeals to intelligence until habit and instinct are useless. There is no intelligence where there is no change and no need of change. Only those animals partake of intelligence that have to meet a huge variety of needs and dangers.
Absolute | Change | Comfort | Compensation | Doubt | Habit | Harmony | Instinct | Intelligence | Law | Life | Life | Nature | Need | Property | Question | Quiet | Security | Society | Wealth | World | Society | Intellect | Think |
What is sacred among one people may be ridiculous in another; and what is despised or rejected by one cultural group, may in a different environment become the cornerstone for a great edifice of strange grandeur and beauty.
Huston Smith, fully Huston Cummings Smith
If human life is to survive on this planet, the old dualistic worldview, with people on one side and the environment on the other, must yield to a new vision that connects us with everything else and leads us to care for and take responsibility for it.
Care | Life | Life | People | Responsibility | Vision | Old |
We are society; we are not independent of society. We are the result of the environment - of our religion, of our education, of the climate, of the food we eat, the reactions, the innumerable repetitive activities that we indulge in every day. That is our life. And the society in which we live is part of that life. Society is relationship between man and man. Society is cooperation. Society, as it is, is the result of man's greed, hatred, ambition, competition, brutality, cruelty, ruthlessness - and we live in that pattern. And to understand it - not intellectually, not merely theoretically, but actually - we have to come into contact directly with that fact, which is, a human being - that is you - is the result of this social environment, its economic pressure, religious upbringing, and so on. To come into contact with anything directly is not to verbalize it but to look at it.
Man | Relationship | Ruthlessness | Society | Society | Understand |
Jane Goodall, fully Dame Jane Morris Goodall, born Valerie Jane Morris-Goodall
The hardest part of returning to a truly healthy environment may be changing the current totally unsustainable heavy-meat-eating culture of increasing numbers of people around the world. But we must try. We must make a start, one by one.
Thought and character are one, and as character can only manifest and discover itself through environment and circumstance, the outer conditions of a person’s life will always be found to be harmoniously related to his inner state. This does not mean that a man’s circumstances at any given time are an indication of his entire character, but that those circumstances are so intimately connected with some vital thought element within himself that, for the time being, they are indispensable to his development.
Character | Circumstances | Indispensable | Life | Life | Thought | Time | Will | Thought |
Jimmy Carter, fully James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr.
I believe that anyone can be successful in life, regardless of natural talent or the environment within which we live. This is not based on measuring success by human competitiveness for wealth, possessions, influence, and fame, but adhering to God's standards of truth, justice, humility, service, compassion, forgiveness, and love.
Robinson Jeffers, fully John Robinson Jeffers
I think that one may contribute (ever so slightly) to the beauty of things by making one's own life and environment beautiful, as far as one's power reaches.This includes moral beauty, one of the qualities of humanity, though it seems not to appear elsewhere in the universe. But I would have each person realize that his contribution is not important, its success not really a matter for exultation nor its failure for mourning; the beauty of things is sufficient without him.
Beauty | Failure | Life | Life | Power | Qualities | Success | Failure | Beauty | Think |
The achievement of the hero is one that he is ready for and it's really a manifestation of his character. It's amusing the way in which the landscape and conditions of the environment match the readiness of the hero. The adventure that he is ready for is the one that he gets ... The adventure evoked a quality of his character that he didn't know he possessed.
Achievement | Adventure | Character | Hero |
Kurt Hahn, fully Kurt Martin "the rod" Hahn
As our society has become information rich, it has become action poor. It has become poor in the necessity and possibility for struggle against the environment. As affluence has increased, the young person's environment has become impoverished for responsible and productive action, or any action that tests and develops him.
The teacher's task is not to talk, but to prepare and arrange a series of motives for cultural activity in a special environment made for the child.
Motives |
We must, therefore, quit our roles as jailers and instead take care to prepare an environment in which we do as little as possible to exhaust the child with our surveillance and instruction.
The environment must be rich in motives which lend interest to activity and invite the child to conduct his own experiences.
Marshall McLuhan, fully Herbert Marshall McLuhan
Theirs is the customary human reaction when confronted with innovation: to flounder about attempting to adapt old responses to new situations or to simply condemn or ignore the harbingers of change--a practice refined by the Chinese emperors, who used to execute messengers bringing bad news. The new technological environments generate the most pain among those least prepared to alter their old value structures. The literati find the new electronic environment far more threatening than do those less committed to literacy as a way of life. When an individual or social group feels that its whole identity is jeopardized by social or psychic change, its natural reaction is to lash out in defensive fury. But for all their lamentations, the revolution has already taken place.
Individual | Pain | Practice | Revolution | Old | Value |
And so we discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being. It is not acquired by listening to words, but in virtue of experiences in which the child acts on his environment. The teacher’s task is not to talk, but to prepare and arrange a series of motives for cultural activity in a special environment made for the child.
Education | Listening | Motives | Virtue | Virtue | Child | Teacher |
Max DePree, alternatively De Pree or Depree
If you want the best things to happen in corporate life you have to find ways to be hospitable to the unusual person. You don't get innovation as a democratic process. You almost get it as an anti-democratic process. Certainly you get it as an antithetical process, so you have to have an environment where the body of people are really amenable to change and can deal with the conflicts that arise out of change an innovation.
Menachem Mendel Schneerson, known as the Lubavitcher Rebbe
The divine purpose of the present information revolution, for instance, which gives an individual unprecedented power and opportunity, is to allow us to share knowledge—spiritual knowledge—with each other, empowering and unifying individuals everywere. We need to use today’s interactive technology not just for business or leisure but to interlink as people – to create a welcome environment for the interaction of our souls, our hearts, our visions.
Business | Individual | Leisure | Need | People | Power | Present | Purpose | Purpose | Technology | Business |
Milarepa, fully Jetsun Milarepa NULL
A free and resourceful and fully equipped human body that's freed of the eight unfree states is not easy to get. To get to the heart of this free and resourceful occasion and to get past the pleasures of life is not easy to do. To see what is wrong with the phenomenon of samsara and accomplish nirvana is not something easy to do. Although one might practice true dharma extensively the purest conductive conditions don't easily join. A lama who masters instructions and scriptures and logic and has a compassionate heart is not easy to find. A student with faith who does not get fed up or exhausted and is able to actually practice is not easy to find. A practice environment blessed with the proper conditions free of all hazard and fear is not easy to find. Friends with the same motivation and way to apply it who’s thinking accords with your own are not easy to find A body that's able to work with its pain and illness and to do all you bid it is not something easy to find. Although you might get every one of these factors together to practice with one-pointed mind is not easy to do. These are nine things which are difficult to come by. They're difficult, but it's these difficult things you must do.
Body | Faith | Fear | Hazard | Heart | Life | Life | Mind | Pain | Past | Practice | Thinking | Work | Wrong | Blessed |