This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
Immature love says, "I love you because I need you." Mature love says, "I need you because I love you."
It is the Law that any difficulties that can come to you at any time, no matter what they are, must be exactly what you need most at the moment, to enable you to take the next step forward by overcoming them. There need be no unqualified evils. The only real misfortune, the only real tragedy, comes when we suffer without learning the lesson.
Law | Learning | Lesson | Misfortune | Need | Time | Tragedy |
We find it easy to ignore the inner voice of the soul in our pursuit of external happiness… because we are driven by our own materialistic passions and by our addictive need for quick, painless fixes for anything disturbing in our lives.
1. The information you have is not what you want. 2. The information you want is not what you need. 3. The information you need is not what you can obtain. 4. The information you can obtain costs more than you want to pay.
Need |
If, as Heraclitus said, “A man’s character is his fate” – that is, if our fate is largely determined by the habitual tendencies of our repetition compulsion-personality – then the power of consciousness is that it allows us to change impulses, we have what Kierkegaard called “the possibility of possibility”: the possibility of having a free choice and the moral responsibility that comes with it. In that sense, the fear of consciousness is ultimately the fear of moral responsibility, because if we own our anxiety, shame, and guilt, and allow ourselves to have full consciousness of emotions that motivate our behavior, then we will inevitably recognize the full weight of our responsibility for that behavior.
Anxiety | Anxiety | Behavior | Change | Character | Choice | Consciousness | Emotions | Fate | Fear | Free choice | Guilt | Man | Personality | Power | Responsibility | Sense | Shame | Will | Fate |
I believe that our choice between two models of psychiatry is really a choice between two competing sets of moral values that will ultimately determine the kind of society we live in. One is the Psychotherapeutic Model’s ideal of healing the soul with its values of self-awareness, autonomy, personal growth, an I-Thou spirit of love, respect, and compassion for others, and an acceptance of moral responsibility for our own egoistic impulses and emotions. The other is the Medical Model’s ideal of quick fix, with its swimming-pool values of stability and conformity, and an I-It orientation toward material success and other superficial addictive pleasures
Acceptance | Awareness | Choice | Compassion | Conformity | Emotions | Growth | Love | Model | Respect | Responsibility | Self | Self-awareness | Society | Soul | Spirit | Success | Will | Society |
Erich Fromm, fully Erich Seligmann Fromm
In mysticism… the attempt is given up to know God by thought, and it is replaced by the experience of union with God in which there is no more room – and no need – for knowledge about God.
Experience | God | Knowledge | Mysticism | Need | Thought | God |
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
One instance of the innate and ineradicable inequality of men is their tendency to fall into two classes of leaders and followers. The latter constitute the vast majority; they stand in need of an authority which will make decisions for them and to which they for the most part offer an unqualified submission. This suggests that more care should be taken than hitherto to educate an upper stratum of men with independent minds, not open to intimidation and eager in the pursuit of truth, whose business it would be to give direction to the dependent masses.
Authority | Business | Care | Inequality | Intimidation | Majority | Men | Need | Submission | Truth | Will | Business |
A covenant is a contract. When two people enter into a covenant, it means that one party undertakes to do certain things provided the other party does certain other things. Thus it is a mutual agreement… If you think only kindly, , optimistic, and constructive thoughts, if you will speak only positive and helpful words at all times, if you will do only good and constructive deeds, you will be fulfilling your side of the great covenant – and in no circumstances could God fail to fulfill His.
Circumstances | Deeds | God | Good | Means | People | Will | Words | God | Think |
Amitai Etzioni, born Welker Falk
We need to recognize that both the society and the individual are essential to a morality which we can use in the next century. If we could enter the next century with a wider recognition of the balance - and get away form either collectivistic excesses or the celebration of radical individualism - I think we’d be better for it.
Balance | Better | Individual | Morality | Need | Society | Society | Think |
Sigmund Freud, born Sigismund Schlomo Freud
What no human soul desires there is no need to prohibit; it is automatically excluded. The very emphasis of the commandment, Thou shalt not kill, makes it certain that we spring from an endless ancestry of murderers, with whom the lust for killing was in the blood, as possibly it is to this day with ourselves.
Never let a doctor determine your dignity. There is so much about medical care that can be humiliating and degrading. Patients need to be strict with physicians as to what is or is not acceptable.
Gary Hart, born Gary Warren Hartpence
It is often much more difficult to learn from victory than from defeat. In defeat, questions are asked abut what went wrong, so that those mistakes will not be made in the future. But victory seldom creates the need to inquire as to its sources.
Étienne Gilson, fully Étienne Henry Gilson
Poetry even at its purest is not prayer; but it rises from the same depths as the need to pray.