This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.
There is nothing more dangerous than ignorance being practiced.
B. H. Liddell Hart, fully Captain B. H. Liddell
For collective action it suffices if the mass can be managed; collective growth is only possible through the freedom and enlargement of individual minds.
Action | Freedom | Growth | Individual |
David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
In spiritual work, there is no tangible worldly gain to be acquired, but there is instead an inner reward of pleasure, satisfaction, and even joy. Goals replace gains as motives. There is a greater freedom from living on the exciting knife edge of the moment than being a prisoner of the past or having expectations of the future.
Freedom | Future | Goals | Joy | Motives | Past | Pleasure | Reward | Work |
It is dangerous to take human freedom for granted, to regard it as a prerogative rather than as an obligation, as an ultimate fact rather than as an ultimate goal. It is the beginning of wisdom to be amazed at the facts of our being free.
Beginning | Freedom | Obligation | Regard | Wisdom |
Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative [or creation] there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too... Whatever you think you can do or believe you can do, begin it. Action has magic, grace and power in it.
Action | Chance | Grace | Ideas | Ignorance | Initiative | Magic | Power | Providence | Truth | Think |
Responsibility implies freedom, and man, who is in bondage to environment, to social ties, to inner disposition, may yet enjoy freedom before God.
Freedom | God | Man | Responsibility |
On liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.
Muriel James and Dorothy Jongeward
It takes courage to experience the freedom that comes with autonomy, courage to accept intimacy and directly encounter other persons, courage to take a stand in an unpopular cause, courage to choose authenticity over approval and to choose it again and again, courage to accept the responsibility for your own choices, and, indeed, courage to be the unique person you really are.
Authenticity | Cause | Courage | Experience | Freedom | Responsibility | Unique | Approval |
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
All theory is against the freedom of the will; all experience for it.
Experience | Freedom | Will |
T. E. Hulme, fully Thomas Ernest Hulme
The process of evolution can only be described as the gradual insertion of more and more freedom into matter.
Karl Jaspers, fully Karl Theodor Jaspers
Man is always something more than what he knows of himself. He is not what he is simply once for all, but is a process; he is not merely an extant life, but is, within that life, endowed with possibilities through the freedom he possesses to make of himself what he will by the activities on which he decides.
Vladimir Lenin, fully Vladimir Ilyich Lenin
While the State exists, there can be no freedom. When there is freedom there will be no State.