This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
As time goes on, new and remoter aspects of truth are discovered, which can seldom or never be fitted into creeds that are changeless.
"Faith is tendency toward action." According to such a view, faith is the matrix of formulated creeds and the inspiration of endeavor... Faith in its newer sense signifies that experience itself is the sole ultimate authority.
Action | Authority | Experience | Faith | Inspiration | Sense | Wisdom |
Herbert Samuel, fully Herbert Louis Samuel, 1st Viscount Samuel
All religious organizations amend their creeds and formularies, perhaps by imperceptible stages; they select or they retain or quietly discard; so that the orthodoxy of one period is found not to be the same as that of another.
Wisdom |
The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first, and deadly afterward.
Civilization | History |
The whole history of civilization is strewn with creeds and institutions which were invaluable at first and deadly afterwards.
Civilization | History |
Most often faith is understood as belief in certain propositional, doctrinal formulations that in some essential ands static way are supposed to “contain” truth. But if faith is relational, a pledging of trust and fidelity to another, and a way of moving into the force field of life trusting in dynamic center of value and power, then the “truth” of faith takes on a different quality. Truth is lived: it is a pattern of being in relation to others and to God. In this light, doctrines and creeds come to be seen as playing a different though still crucial role. Rather than being the repositories of truth, like treasure chests to be honored and assented to, they becomes guides for the construction of contemporary ways of seeing and being.
Belief | Dynamic | Faith | Fidelity | Force | God | Life | Life | Light | Power | Trust | Truth | Value |
America, settled by peoples of many regions, races, religions, colors, creeds and cultures, should by moral example, lead the way in helping “to make the world safe for differences.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, fully Sir or Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
A study of comparative religion gives insight into the values of the various faiths, values which transcend different symbols and creeds and in transcending penetrate to the depths of the spiritual consciousness where the symbols and formulas shrink into insignificance.
Consciousness | Insight | Insignificance | Religion | Study |
Many people with different backgrounds, cultures, languages, and creeds combine to make a nation. But that nation is greater than the sum total of the individual skills and talents of its people. Something more grows out of their unity than can be calculated by adding the assets of individual contributions. That intangible additional quantity is often due to the differences which make the texture of the nation rich. Therefore, we must never wipe out or deride the differences amongst us-for where there is no difference, there is only indifference.
Indifference | People |
Nicholas of Cusa, also Nicholas of Kues and Nicolaus Cusanus NULL
Humanity will one day find that it is not a diversity of creeds but the very same creed which is everywhere proposed. There can not be but one wisdom. Humans must therefore all agree that there is but one most imple wisdom whose power is infinite. And everyone in explaining the intensity of this beauty must discover that it is a supreme and terrible beauty.
Beauty | Creed | Day | Diversity | Humanity | Power | Will | Wisdom | Beauty |
Emily Brontë, fully Emily Jane Brontë, aka pseudonym Ellis Bell
Vain are the thousand creeds that move men's hearts, unutterably vain, worthless as wither'd weeds.
Friedrich Nietzsche, fully Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche
Art raises its head where creeds relax.
Dada Vaswani, born Jashan Pahalraj Vaswani
Neither rites nor rituals, neither creeds nor ceremonies are needed to improve the condition of the world. All that is needed is to love one another.
Josh Billings, pen name for Henry Wheeler Shaw, aka Uncle Esek
The best creed we can have is charity toward the creeds of others.
One of the grat tragedies of life is that men seldom bridge the gulf between practice and profession, between doing and saying. A persistent schizophrenia leaves so many of us tragically divided against ourselves. On the one hand, we proudly profess certain sublime and noble principles, but on the other hand, we sadly practise the very antithesis of these principles. How often are our lives characterised by a high blood pressure of creeds and an anaemia of deeds! We talk eloquently about our commitment to the principles of Christianity, and yet our lives are saturated with the practices of paganism. We proclaim our devotion to democracy, but we sadly practise the very opposite of the democratic creed. We talk passionately about peace, and at the same time we assiduously prepare for war. We make our fervent pleas for the high road of justice, and then we tread unflinchingly the low road of injustice. This strange dichotomy, this agonising gulf between the ought and the is, represents the tragic theme of man's earthly pilgrimage.
Antithesis | Commitment | Devotion | Life | Life | Men | Practice | Principles | Time |