This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Kerry Thornley, fully Kerry Wendell Thornley, aka Omar Khayyam Ravenhurst or Lord Omar
What we imagine is order is merely the prevailing form of chaos.
Order |
Mao Tse-tung, alternatively Zedong, Ze dong, aka Chairman Mao
Our strategy is “pit one against ten,” and our tactics are “pit ten against one” – This is one of our fundamental principles for gaining mastery over the enemy.
Enemy | Principles |
Leo Tolstoy, aka Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy or Tolstoi
I believe that the true welfare of man lies in the fulfillment of the Will of God; and that His will consists in men loving each other, and therefore behaving toward others as they desire that others should behave with them. I believe that the meaning of life of every man, therefore, lies only in the increase of love in himself; that this increase of love leads the individual man in this life toward greater and greater welfare; that after death it gives the greater welfare the more love there be in the man; and that, at the same time, more than anything else, it contributes to the establishment of the Kingdom of God on earth, i.e., to an order of life where the discord, deceit, and violence which now reign will be replaced by free agreement, truth, and brotherly love between men.
Death | Deceit | Desire | Earth | Fulfillment | God | Individual | Life | Life | Love | Man | Meaning | Men | Order | Time | Truth | Will | God |
Allen Tate, fully John Orley Allen Tate
Man is a creature that in the long run has got to believe in order to know, and to know in order to do.
When it comes to more complex behavior mathematics has never in fact done well at explaining most of what we see every day in nature.
Behavior | Day | Mathematics | Nature |
Computational irreducibility tends to make infinite questions undecidable. The presence of universality implies that there must at some level be computational irreducibility… This means that today’s mathematics will be viewed as small and surprisingly uncharacteristic sample of what is possible. If a system is computationally irreducible this means that there is in effect a tangible separation between the underlying rules for the system and its overall behavior associated with the irreducible amount of computational work needed to go from one to the other. And it is this separation that the basic origin of the apparent freedom we see in all sorts of system lie – whether those systems are abstract cellular automata or actual living brains.
Abstract | Behavior | Freedom | Mathematics | Means | System | Will | Work |
Niels Bohr, fully Neils Henrik David Bohr
We have been forced step by step to forgo a causal description of the behavior of individual atoms in space and time, and to reckon with a free choice on the part of nature between various possibilities.
Behavior | Choice | Free choice | Individual | Nature | Space | Time |
Beauty captivates the flesh in order to obtain permission to pass right through to the soul... When the feeling for beauty happens to be associated with the sight of some human being, the transference of love is made possible, at any rate in an illusory manner. But it is all the beauty of the world, it is universal beauty, for which we yearn.
To love is not a passive thing. To love is active voice. When I love I do something, I function, I give. I do not love in order that I may be loved back again, but for the creative joy of loving. And every time I do so I am freed, at least a little, by the outgoing of love, from enslavement to that most intolerable of master, myself.
Just as individual ethics can be understood only in relation to the society within which it is practiced, it is also true that individual ethical behavior is far likelier to flourish within a just society. It might be argued that to lead an ethical life one must work to build a just society.
Behavior | Ethics | Individual | Life | Life | Society | Work | Society |
Marquis de Sade, born Donatien Alphonse François de Sade
Social order at the expense of liberty is hardly a bargain.
In order for the amygdala region [of the brain] to respond to fear reactions, the prefrontal region has to shut down.