This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Søren Kierkegaard, fully Søren Aabye Kierkegaard
An eternal happiness is a security for which there is no longer any market value in the speculative nineteenth century; at the very most it may be used by the gentlemen of the clerical profession to swindle rural innocents.
Relationship means to respond. The root meaning of that word, not what we have made of that word, is to respond completely to another, like responsibility. Do we ever respond totally with each other, or it is always a fragmentary response, a partial response?
Character | Meaning | Means | Relationship | Responsibility |
Jaron Lanier, fully Jaron Zepel Lanier
Life is based on limitation and compromise. The fact that we forget the meaning of life is the meaning of life. Being in a state of partial awareness allows experience and life to progress. God, as an omniscient being, is not an “experiencing being” because his or her experience is not new. If You were going to start a universe, what would Your options be? You could choose to remain totally stagnant, but that wouldn’t amount to a true universe. You’d need entities that experience it, entities that are fragile and temporary and not omniscient. That’s who we are and why we’re here.
Awareness | Character | Experience | God | Life | Life | Meaning | Need | Progress | Universe | Awareness |
Wilma Mankiller, fully Wilma Pearl Mankiller
The meaning of life is to live in balance and harmony with every other living thing in creation. We must all strive to understand the interconnectedness of all living things and accept our individual role in the protection and support of other life forms on earth. We must also understand our own insignificance in the totality of things.
Balance | Character | Earth | Harmony | Individual | Insignificance | Life | Life | Meaning | Understand |
Emmanuel Lévinas , originally Emanuelis Lévinas
The best thing about philosophy is that it fails. It is better that philosophy fail to totalize meaning for it thereby remains open to the irreducible otherness of transcendence.
Better | Character | Meaning | Philosophy |
He who always seeks more light the more he finds, and finds more the more he seeks, is one of the few happy mortals who take and give in every point of time. The tide and ebb of giving and receiving is the sum of human happiness, which he alone enjoys who always wishes to acquire new knowledge, and always finds it.
Character | Giving | Happy | Knowledge | Light | Time | Wishes |
Georgii Litichevsky Semenovich
Life means love. We are here for love. Only love is real and everything is real thanks to love. We are nomads wandering through illusionary space. How to make it real? Only by destroying limits that separate us from others. No violence, no attempts at escape can help, only love. Too often love is more painful than joyful. The instances of love are much shorter than the periods during which we wait for love to emerge. The meaning of living is mastering the art of waiting.
Art | Character | Life | Life | Love | Meaning | Means | Space | Waiting | Art |
Life really doesn’t have much meaning without death. Death gives each moment its value. It makes each instant precious and meaningful. When you understand how valuable each moment is, you begin to act accordingly.