This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Our freedom depends on our willingness to see Perfection. The imperfection that we have been taught to see has led only to suffering... Perfection is not a standard to be achieved, but a truth to be acknowledged. It is not the difference between us and God, but the hallmark of our unity with Him. And the honoring of Perfection is not a sin of vanity, but the humble acceptance of our identity as offspring of the Eternal.
Acceptance | Eternal | Freedom | God | Imperfection | Perfection | Sin | Suffering | Truth | Unity |
The reward of the adventure of life is freedom. The irony of the adventure is that we were free before we set out, but we needed to learn that freedom was not to be found where we fantasized it to be. We needed to learn, like our old friend Dorothy from Kansas, that there’s no place like home, because there is no place but Home. When we learn that God is everywhere, that Love fills all space, and that Truth is the very Ground of our Being, we may surely release the little to embrace the All.
Adventure | Freedom | Friend | God | Irony | Life | Life | Little | Love | Reward | Space | Truth | God | Learn | Old |
Absolute freedom mocks justice; absolute justice denies freedom.
The task of democracy is to relive mass misery and yet preserve the freedom of the individual.
Democracy | Freedom | Individual |
Alexis de Tocqueville, Alexis-Charles-Henri Clérel de Tocqueville
Those who prize freedom only for the material benefits it offers have never kept it for long.
Freedom |
The responsibility for change… lies with us. We must begin with ourselves, teaching ourselves not to close our minds prematurely to the novel, the surprising, the seemingly radical. This means fighting off the idea-assassins who rush forward to kill any new suggestion on grounds of its impracticality, while defending whatever now exists as practical, not matter how absurd, oppressive, or unworkable it may be. It means fighting for freedom of expression – the right of people to voice their ideas, even if heretical.
Absurd | Change | Fighting | Freedom | Ideas | Kill | Means | People | Responsibility | Right |
I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind. As for any other freedom it is but a mockery and a delusion, for however free you may think yourself, you have to use the door when you go out of the room, nor are you free to make yourself young at will or to profit by the sun at night... Not-being is not freedom.
I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind.
Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
My own view of history is that human beings do have genuine freedom to make choices. Our destiny is not predetermined for us; we determine it for ourselves.
On realizing one’s true Self one does not change into a different being but simply realizes that one is not a being at all but simply “Being”; one attains freedom from identification with this or any other body-mind complex. The speeding arrow of karma may hit the body, but one is not the body. The body is subject to karma but the pure being of one’s Self is not... A Realized Man sees repercussions that could be called destiny overtaking the body that he occupies, but it does not occur to him that they concern him, and therefore he feels no emotion towards them. His body is subject to destiny, but he is not.
Arnold J. Toynbee, fully Arnold Joseph Toynbee
As human beings, we are endowed with freedom of choice, and we cannot shuffle off our responsibility upon the shoulders of God or nature. We must shoulder it ourselves. It is up to us.