This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Nikolai Berdyaev, fully Nikolai Alexandrovich Berdyaev, also spelled Nichlas Berdiaev
We can exist only in progress toward another world; we are not fixed in a permanent position within a crude and self-sufficient universe; we dwell in the midst of mystery.
Modern mental hospitals, where every method of control has been euphemistically renamed, can be frightening places. The actions of every staff member – the aide who holds a patient down, the nurse who injects the medication, the doctor who prescribes it – all have been defined as benevolent. Patients who dare to utter the unauthorized reality – that they are prisoners and that their “helpers” are jailers – only provide further evidence that they are indeed ill. Succumbing to brainwashing, accepting reality as defined by one’s captors, differs from a psychiatric “cure” only because in the latter case the accepted reality is the prevailing one. Holding a minority position makes a person a potential subject for psychiatric brainwashing.
Christian Century Editorial NULL
The ancient theory of the just war breaks down when victory is impossible, when the weapons are so undiscriminating as to destroy both sides.
You don't have to hold a position in order to be a leader.
Three claims: (1) Consciousness exists. There exist conscious mental states, events, and processes that have the property of being conscious. (2) Consciousness has depth, hidden structure, hidden and possibly multiple functions, and hidden natural and cultural history. Conscious mental states supervene on brain states. (3) Conscious mental states, processes, events – possibly conscious supervisory faculties, if there are any – are heterogeneous in phenomenal world. A theory of consciousness will in the end be part of a unified theory of the mind.
Consciousness | Events | History | Mind | Property | Will | World |
Moral ambiguity creates mental cramps of various sorts, which lead to reflection, discussion, and argument… Morality resists theoretical unification under either a set of special-purpose rules or single general-purpose rule or principle, such as the categorical imperative or the principle of unity. If this is right, and if it is right because the ends of moral life are plural and heterogeneous in kind and because our practices of moral education rightly reflect this, then we have some greater purchase on why the project of finding a single theoretically satisfying moral theory has failed.
Ambiguity | Argument | Discussion | Education | Ends | Life | Life | Morality | Purpose | Purpose | Reflection | Right | Rule | Unity | Theoretical |
If we do discover a complete [unified] theory [of the universe], it should be in time be understandable in broad principle by everyone, not just a few scientists. Then we shall all, philosophers, scientists, and just ordinary people, be able to take part in the discussion of the question of why it is that we and the universe exist. If we find the answer to that, it would be the ultimate triumph of human reason – for then we should know the mind of God.
Discussion | God | Mind | People | Question | Reason | Time | Universe |
David R. Hawkins, fully David Ramon Hawkins
Entitlement as an emotional/psychological position stems from unresolved infantile, narcissistic egocentricity.
Position |
Alister Hardy, fully Sir Alister Clavering Hardy
The very fact that one can conceive [a]… possible solution may save one from being in the pessimistic position of imagining that there can be no possible purpose in the process at all. Such a defeatist loss of all sense of meaning… is one of the tragic outcomes of the materialism of today.
Materialism | Meaning | Position | Purpose | Purpose | Sense | Loss |
Today scientists describe the universe in terms of two basic partial theories – the general theory of relativity and quantum mechanics. They are the great intellectual achievements of this century. The general theory of relativity describes the force of gravity and the large-scale structure of the universe (that is the structure on scales from only a few miles to as large as a million million million million miles – the size of the observable universe). Quantum mechanics, on the other hand, deals with phenomena on extremely small scales, such as a millionth of a millionth of an inch. Unfortunately, however, these two theories are known to be inconsistent with each other – they cannot both be correct.
Samuel Johnson, aka Doctor Johnson
All theory is against the freedom of the will; all experience for it.
Experience | Freedom | Will |
Stuart Kauffman, fully Stuart Alan Kauffman
If we are to attain a final theory in biology, we will surely, surely have to understand the commingling of self-organization and selection. We will have to see that we are the natural expressions of a deeper order. Ultimately, we will discover in our creation myth that we are expected after all.
Myth | Order | Organization | Self | Will | Understand |
Darwin’s and Huxley’s picture of man’s place in the universe prepared the way for the Holocaust… Darwin the scientist directly inspired Nietzsche’s superman theory and the Nazi corollary that some people were subhuman… People have to learn to stop thinking of other people as machines and learn to think of them as men and women possessed of souls… History doesn’t need another one hundred million deaths to prove that scientific atheism is a form of mental illness.
Atheism | History | Machines | Man | Men | Need | People | Thinking | Universe | Learn | Think |
As nearly as I can see, all the new isms – Socialism, Communism, Fascism, and especially the late but not lamented Technocracy – outdo even Capitalism itself in their preoccupation with one thing: The distribution of more machine-made commodities to more people. They all proceed on the theory that if we can all keep warm and full, and all own a Ford and a radio, the good life will follow. Their programs differ only in ways to mobilize machines to this end. Though they despise each other, they are all, respect of this objective, as identically alike as peas in a pod. They are competitive apostles of a single creed: salvation by machinery.
Capitalism | Creed | Despise | Good | Life | Life | Machines | People | Respect | Salvation | Will | Respect |
Moral thought seems to behave like all other kinds of thought. Progress through the moral levels and stages is characterized by increasing differentiation and increasing integration, and hence is the same kind of progress that scientific theory presents.
Integration | Progress | Thought | Thought |