This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
To repeat what others have said, requires education, to challenge it, requires brains.
Throughout human history, progress has come through the men and women who dared to challenge the precepts and dogmas that curtailed freedoms. Freethinking (which includes skepticism, rationalism, unbelief, atheism, agnosticism, humanism and so forth) has made great and lasting contributions to human freedom, human rights, and human equality.
Atheism | Challenge | Equality | Freedom | History | Men | Progress | Rights | Skepticism | Unbelief |
There persists, however, throughout the whole period the fixed scientific cosmology which presupposes the ultimate fact of an irreducible brute matter, or material, spread throughout space in a flux of configurations. In itself such a material is senseless, valueless, purposeless. It just does what is does do, following a fixed routine imposed by external relations which do not spring from the nature of being. It is this assumption that I call scientific materialism. Also it is an assumption which I shall challenge as being entirely unsuited to the scientific situations at which we have now arrived.
Challenge | Materialism | Nature | Space | Following |
Arthur Meier Schlesinger, Jr., born Arthur Bancroft Schlesinger
The sin of racial pride still represents the most basic challenge to the American conscience. We cannot dodge this challenge without renouncing our highest moral pretentions.
Challenge | Conscience | Pride | Sin |
Charles A. Beard, fully Charles Austin Beard
I am convinced that the world is not a mere bog in which men and women trample themselves in the mire and die. Something magnificent is taking place here amid the cruelties and tragedies, and the supreme challenge to intelligence is that of making the noblest and best on our curious heritage prevail.
Challenge | Intelligence | Men | World |
The greatest challenge of the day is: how to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution which has to start with each one of us?
Challenge | Day | Heart | Revolution |
Your ‘personal’ life cannot have a lasting intrinsic meaning. It can acquire a contingent meaning, but only by being fitted into and subordinated to something which ‘lasts’ and has a meaning in itself. Is this something what we attempt to identify when we speak of ‘Life’? Can your life have a meaning as a tiny fragment of life? Does Life exist? Seek and you shall find, experience Life as reality. Has Life a ‘meaning’? Experience Life as reality and the question becomes meaningless. Seek - ? Seek by daring to take the leap into unconditional obedience. Dare this when you are challenged, for only by the light of a challenge will you be able to see the cross-roads and, in full awareness of your choice, turn your back upon your personal life - with no right ever to look back. You will find that ‘in the pattern’ you are liberated from the need to live ‘with the herd’. You will find that, thus subordinated, your life will receive from Life all its meaning, irrespective of the conditions given you for its realization. You will find that the freedom of the continual farewell, the hourly self-surrender, gives to your experience of reality the purity and clarity which signify - seal-realization. You will find that obedience requires an act of will which must continually be re-iterated, and that you will fail, if anything in your personal life is allowed to slip back into the center.
Awareness | Challenge | Choice | Daring | Experience | Freedom | Life | Life | Light | Meaning | Need | Obedience | Purity | Question | Reality | Receive | Right | Self | Surrender | Will | Awareness |
Frank Lloyd Wright, born Frank Lincoln Wright
Take nothing for granted as beautiful or ugly, but take every building to pieces, and challenge every feature. Learn to distinguish the curious from the beautiful. Get the habit of analysis - analysis will in time enable synthesis to become your habit of mind. 'Think simples' as my old master used to say - meaning to reduce the whole of its parts into the simplest terms, getting back to first principles.
Challenge | Distinguish | Habit | Meaning | Mind | Nothing | Principles | Time | Ugly | Will | Learn | Old |
A good educational system should have three purposes: it should provide all who want to learn with access to available resources at anytime in their lives; empower all who want to share what they know to find those who want to learn it from them; and finally, furnish all who want to present an issue to the public with the opportunity to make their challenge known.
Challenge | Good | Opportunity | Present | Public | System | Learn |
Life is growth - a challenge of environment. If we cannot meet our everyday surroundings with equanimity and pleasure and grow each day in some useful direction, then this splendid balance of cosmic forces which we call life is on the road toward misfortune, misery and destruction. Therefore, health is the most precious of all things.
Balance | Challenge | Day | Equanimity | Growth | Health | Life | Life | Misfortune | Pleasure |
Maya Angelou, born Marguerite Annie Johnson
To be human is to be challenged to be more divine. Not even to try to meet such a challenge is the biggest defeat imaginable.
Neil Armstrong, fully Neil Alden Armstrong
Man must understand his universe in order to understand his destiny. Mystery, however, is a very necessary ingredient in our lives. Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis for man’s desire to understand. Who knows what mysteries will be solved in our lifetime, and what new riddles will become the challenge of the new generations? Science has not mastered prophesy. We predict too much for next year yet far too little for the next ten. Responding to challenge is one of democracy’s great strengths. Our successes in space lead us to hope that this strength can be used in the next decade in the solution of many of our planet’s problems.
Challenge | Democracy | Desire | Destiny | Hope | Little | Man | Mystery | Order | Problems | Science | Space | Strength | Universe | Will | Wonder | Understand |
Nelson Mandela, fully Nelson Rolihlahla Mandela
We speak here of the challenge of the dichotomies of war and peace, violence and non-violence, racism and human dignity, oppression and repression and liberty and human rights, poverty and freedom from want.
Challenge | Freedom | Liberty | Oppression | Poverty | Right | Time | War |
Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson
Crisis is creative... Out of crises flow new ideas, new approaches, new patterns, new inventions, new discoveries, new leadership... Crisis is challenge. It can challenge you to create a new life. Out of disappointment and defeat, out of illness and despair you can find victory.
Challenge | Defeat | Despair | Ideas | Life | Life | Crisis |
Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson
The key to the art of listening is selectivity... Listen critically. Mentally challenge assertions, ideas, philosophies. Seek the truth with an open mind. Listen with your heart... Listen for growth. Be an inquisitive listener. Listen creatively... Listen to yourself. Listen to your deepest yearnings, your highest aspirations, your noblest impulses. Listen to the better man within you. Listen with depth. Be still and meditate. Listen with the ear of intuition for the inspiration of the Infinite.
Art | Better | Challenge | Growth | Heart | Ideas | Inspiration | Intuition | Listening | Man | Mind | Truth | Yearnings | Art |
Wilferd Peterson, fully Wilferd Arlan Peterson
You can’t pursue happiness and catch it. Happiness come upon you unawares while you are helping others... Happiness does not depend upon a full pocketbook, but upon a mind full of rich thoughts and a heart full of rich emotions. Happiness does not depend upon what happens outside of you but on what happens inside of you; it is measured by the spirit in which you meet the problems of life. Happiness is a state of mind... Happiness doesn’t come from doing what we like to do but from liking what we have to do... Happiness grows out of harmonious relationships with others, based on attitudes of good will, tolerance, understanding and love... The master secret of happiness is to meet the challenge of each new day with the serene faith that: “All things work together for good to them that love God.”
Challenge | Day | Emotions | Faith | God | Good | Heart | Life | Life | Love | Mind | Problems | Spirit | Understanding | Will | Work | Happiness |
Chinua Achebe, formally Albert Chinụalụmọgụ Achebe
Creation is a continuing process... One meaning of our life, then, is the opportunity and challenge it presents to us for participation in the continuous process of creation - through discussion and cooperative work rather than conflict.
Challenge | Discussion | Life | Life | Meaning | Opportunity | Work |
Emil Brunner, fully Heinrich Emil Brunner
This autonomy of man, this attempt of the Ego to understand itself out of itself, is the lie concerning man which we call sin. The truth about man is that his ground is not in himself but in God -- that his essence is not in self sufficient reason but in the Word, in the challenge of God, in responsibility, not in self-sufficiency. The true being of man is realized when he bases himself upon God's Word. Faith is then not an impossibility or a salto mortale [mortal leap], but that which is truly natural; and the real salto mortale (a mortal leap indeed!) is just the assertion of autonomy, self-sufficiency, God-likeness. [It is] through this usurped independence [that] man separates himself from God, and at the same time isolates himself from his fellows. Individualism is the necessary consequence of rational autonomy, just as love is the necessary consequence of faith.
Assertion | Challenge | Ego | Faith | God | Impossibility | Love | Man | Mortal | Reason | Self | Time | Truth | God | Understand |
The first question to be answered by any individual or any social group, facing a hazardous situation, is whether the crisis is to be met as a challenge to strength or as an occasion for despair.
Challenge | Individual | Question | Strength | Crisis |