This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Do not measure (others) by your own arshin (=28 inches) (Do not judge others by yourself; do not apply your own standard to other)
Shunryu Suzuki, also Daisetsu Teitaro or D.T. Suzuki or Suzuki-Roshi
When you understand a frog through and through, you attain enlightenment.
Shunryu Suzuki, also Daisetsu Teitaro or D.T. Suzuki or Suzuki-Roshi
So it is not a matter of whether it is possible to attain Buddhahood, or if it is possible to make a tile a jewel. But just to work, just to live in this world with this understanding is the most important point, and that is our practice. That is true zazen.
Arthur Conan Doyle, fully Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle
I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it - there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.
The history of life is more adequately represented by a picture of 'punctuated equilibria' than by the notion of phyletic gradualism. The history of evolution is not one of stately unfolding, but a story of homeostatic equilibria, disturbed only 'rarely' (i.e. rather often in the fullness of time) by rapid and episodic events of speciation.
Great theories are expansive; failures mire us in dogmatism and tunnel vision.
My visceral perception of brotherhood harmonizes with our best modern biological knowledge. […] Many people think (or fear) that equality of human races represents a hope of liberal sentimentality probably squashed by the hard realities of history. They are wrong. This essay can be summarized in a single phrase, a motto if you will: Human equality is a contingent fact of history. Equality is not true by definition; it is neither an ethical principle (though equal treatment may be) nor a statement about norms of social action. It just worked out that way. A hundred different and plausible scenarios for human history would have yielded other results (and moral dilemmas of enormous magnitude). They didn't happen.
Dedication | Good | Ideas | Judgment | Opinion | Power | Practice | Worry | Guilty | Think |
Ted Sorensen, fully Theodore Chalkin "Ted" Sorensen
During my 11 years with JFK, my most important national contributions — advising him on civil rights, on the decision to go to the moon and especially on the Cuban missile crisis — did not center on the speechwriting.
Peace cannot be built on exclusivism, absolutism, and intolerance. But neither can it be built on vague liberal slogans and pious programs gestated in the smoke of confabulation. There can be no peace on earth without the kind of inner change that brings man back to his right mind. p. 31
Depression | Despair | Peace | Time | Worry |
Souls are like athletes, that need opponents worthy of them, if they are to be tried and extended and pushed to the full use of their powers, and rewarded according to their capacity.
It is in deep solitude that I find the gentleness with which I can truly love my brothers. The more solitary I am the more affection I have for them… Solitude and silence teach me to love my brothers for what they are, not for what they say.
The widespread willingness to rely on thermonuclear bombs as the ultimate weapon displays a cavalier attitude toward death that has always puzzled me. My impression is that...most of the defenders of these weapons are not suitably horrified at the possibility of a war in which hundreds of millions of people would be killed...I suspect that an important factor may be belief in an afterlife, and that the proportion of those who think that death is not the end is much higher among the partisans of the bomb than among its opponents.
Business | Happy | Knowing | Object | People | Reason | Worry | Business | Politeness | Think |
William Henley, fully William Ernest Henley
Between the dusk of a summer night And the dawn of a summer day, We caught at a mood as it passed in flight, And we bade it stoop and stay. And what with the dawn of night began With the dusk of day was done; For that is the way of woman and man, When a hazard has made them one. Arc upon arc, from shade to shine, The World went thundering free; And what was his errand but hers and mine -- The lords of him, I and she? O, it's die we must, but it's live we can, And the marvel of earth and sun Is all for the joy of woman and man And the longing that makes them one.
Here may we prove the pow'r of pray'r, to strengthen faith, and sweeten care; to teach our faint desires to rise, and bring all heav'n before our eyes.