This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Do not all theists insist that there can be no morality, no justice, honesty or fidelity without the belief in a Divine Power? Based upon fear and hope, such morality has always been a vile product, imbued partly with self-righteousness, partly with hypocrisy. As to truth, justice, and fidelity, who have been their brave exponents and daring proclaimers? Nearly always the godless ones: the Atheists; they lived, fought, and died for them. They knew that justice, truth, and fidelity are not conditioned in heaven, but that they are related to and interwoven with the tremendous changes going on in the social and material life of the human race; not fixed and eternal, but fluctuating, even as life itself.
Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name!
Prayer will enable you, sooner or later, to get yourself, or anyone else, out of any difficulty on the face of the earth. It is the Golden Key to harmony and happiness. To those who have no acquaintance with the mightiest power in existence, this may appear to be a rash claim, but it needs only a fair trial to prove that, without a shadow of doubt, it is a just one. You need take no one's word for it, and you should not. Simply try it for yourself, and see. God is omnipotent, and man is His image and likeness, and has dominion over all things. This is the inspired teaching, and it is intended to be taken literally, at its face value. Man means every man, and so the ability to draw on this power is not the special prerogative of the mystic or the saint, as is so often supposed, or even of the highly trained practitioner. Whoever you are, wherever you may be, the Golden Key to harmony is in your hand now. This is because in scientific prayer it is God who works, and not you, and so your particular limitations or weaknesses are of no account in the process. You are only the channel through which the divine action takes place, and your treatment will really be just the getting of yourself out of the way. Beginners often get startling results at the first time of trying, for all that is absolutely essential is to have an open mind, and sufficient faith to try the experiment. Apart from that, you may hold any views on religion, or none… We have said that the Golden Key is simple, and so it is, but, of course, it is not always easy to turn. If you are very frightened or worried it may be difficult, at first, to get your thoughts away from material things. But by constantly repeating some statement of absolute Truth that appeals to you, such as There is no power but God, or I am the child of God, filled and surrounded by the perfect peace of God, or God is love, or God is guiding me now, or, perhaps best and simplest of all, just God is with me -- however mechanical or dead it may seem at first -- you will soon find that the treatment has begun to "take," and that your mind is clearing. Do not struggle violently; be quiet but insistent. Each time that you find your attention wandering, just switch it straight back to God. Do not try to think out in advance what the solution of your difficulty will probably turn out to be. This is technically called "outlining," and will only delay the demonstration. Leave the ques tion of ways and means strictly to God. You want to get out of your difficulty -- that is sufficient. You do your half, and God will never fail to do His.
Action | Change | Life | Life | Prayer | Rest | Sense | Time |
God is still in business. All that you have to do is to realize the Presence of God where the trouble seems to be, to do your nearest duty to the very best of your ability; and to keep an even mind until the storm is over.
Action | Cause | Death | Eternal | God | Nothing | Present | Rest | God | Afraid | Child |
Refuse to tolerate anything less than harmony. You can have prosperity no matter what your present circumstances may be. You can have health and physical fitness. You can have a happy and joyous life. You can have a good home of your own. You can have congenial friends and comrades. You can have a full, free, joyous life, independent and untrammeled. You can become your own master or your own mistress. But to do this you must definitely seize the rudder of your own destiny and steer boldly and firmly for the port that you intend to make.
Ability | Absolute | Acquaintance | Action | Attention | Delay | Difficulty | Faith | God | Harmony | Man | Means | Mind | Need | Peace | Power | Prayer | Quiet | Struggle | Time | Truth | Will | Trial | God | Child | Think |
We rarely write the names of the Earth, the Sun and the Moon – each unique and surely of crucial significance – as here, honoring them with a capital letter. This may seem trivial, but our dislocation from nature is one of the most serious schisms in our dismembered psyche and probably the most urgent relationship we need to heal.
Action | Consciousness | Energy | Important | Intention | Law | Power |
People say to me, ‘How do I know if a word is real?’ You know, anybody who’s read a children’s book knows that love makes things real. If you love a word, use it. That makes it real. http://on.ted.com/BU00
Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson
It is... in the hour of his first success, that the most subtle temptation comes to the artist, to let the genius that created his public be directed by that public. Once he has won them, they always keep asking for the identical pleasure they experienced the first time. So the painter sells himself to the dealer who is certain he can place any number of copies of the same work with his customers... The novelist rewrites the same novel. The musician repeats the same songs. The artist... becomes his own disciple and calls upon his talent to exploit the creations of his genius.
When we are young we are often puzzled by the fact that each person we admire seems to have a different version of what life ought to be, what a good man is, how to live, and so on. If we are especially sensitive it seems more than puzzling, it is disheartening. What most people usually do is to follow one person's ideas and then another's depending on who looms largest on one's horizon at the time. The one with the deepest voice, the strongest appearance, the most authority and success, is usually the one who gets our momentary allegiance; and we try to pattern our ideals after him. But as life goes on we get a perspective on this and all these different versions of truth become a little pathetic. Each person thinks that he has the formula for triumphing over life's limitations and knows with authority what it means to be a man, and he usually tries to win a following for his particular patent. Today we know that people try so hard to win converts for their point of view because it is more than merely an outlook on life: it is an immortality formula.
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
But we were never lonely and never afraid when we were together. I know that the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started. But with Catherine there was almost no difference in the night except that it was an even better time. If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.
Erma Bombeck, fully Erma Louise Bombeck, born Erma Fiste
Youngsters of the age of two and three are endowed with extraordinary strength. They can lift a dog twice their own weight and dump him into the bathtub.
Fulfillment | Promise |
In other words, it is not so much a question as to whether we are able to cure a patient, whether we can or not, but whether we should or not.
Ability | Character | Comfort | Consciousness | Defense | Fear | God | Ideas | Joy | Madness | Man | Meaning | Means | Men | People | Promise | Purpose | Purpose | Thought | Wants | God | Thought |
Ernest Hemingway, fully Ernest Miller Hemingway
I started out very quiet and I beat Mr. Turgenev. Then I trained hard and I beat Mr. de Maupassant. IÂ’ve fought two draws with Mr. Stendhal, and I think I had an edge in the last one. But nobodyÂ’s going to get me in any ring with Mr. Tolstoy unless IÂ’m crazy or I keep getting better.
Imagination | Style | Think |
Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel
The common origin of man and the other mammals from a single ancient stem-form can no longer be questioned; nor can the immediate blood-relationship of man and the ape.
Ernst Haeckel, full name Ernst Heinrich Phillip August Haeckel
But few besides medical men are aware that MAN, in the course of his individual formation, passes through a series of transformations which are not less surprising and wonderful than the familiar metamorphoses of the butterfly.
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.
Che Guevara, fully Ernesto “Che” Guevara
The revolution is made through human beings, but individuals must forge their revolutionary spirit day by day.
Consequences | Mankind | Problems |
E. F. Schumacher, fully Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher
The power of ordinary people, who today tend to feel utterly powerless, does not lie in starting new lines of action, but in placing their sympathy and support with minority groups which have already started.
Consequences | Poverty | Talking | Technology |
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.