This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Richard Niebuhr, fully Helmut Richard Niebuhr
We know tradition as a living social process constantly changing, constantly in need of criticism, but constant also as the continuing memory, value system and habit structure of a society.
Criticism | Habit | Memory | Need | Society | System | Tradition | Value |
People who know they will die live very carefully. Not careful as in fearful; careful as in full of care. Every word, every act, every relationship holds the possibility of giving birth to something filled with great care. And that thing need not be showy or dramatic, for the most potent spiritual acts are often acts of breathtaking simplicity: a simple prayer, a sip of wine and a piece of bread, a single breath in meditation, a sprinkling of water on the forehead, an exchange of rings, a kind word, a hand on the cheek, a blessing.
Birth | Care | Giving | Meditation | Need | People | Prayer | Relationship | Simplicity | Will |
Nizar Qabbani, fully Nizār Tawfīq Qabbānī
We need an angry generation, a generation to plow the horizons.
Need |
We have not so much the privilege of intelligence, viewed as something above and against nonhuman nature, but the responsibility and necessity to convert our intelligence to the earth. We need to learn how to use intelligence to mend the distortions we have created and how to convert intelligence into an instrument that can cultivate the harmonies and balances of the ecological community and bring these to a refinement.
Earth | Intelligence | Nature | Necessity | Need | Refinement | Responsibility | Learn | Privilege |
Fred Rogers, "Mister Rogers," born Frederick McFeely Rogers
There are many things children accept as “grown-up things” over which they have no control and for which they have no responsibility – for instance, weddings, having babies, buying houses, and driving cars. Parents who are separating really need to help their children put divorce on that grown-up list, so that children do not see themselves as the cause of their parents’ decision to live apart.
Cause | Children | Control | Decision | Need | Parents | Responsibility |