This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
Desire and force between them are responsible for all our actions; desire causes our voluntary acts, force our involuntary.
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
Children learn at their own pace, and it is a mistake to try to force them. The great incentive to effort, all through life, is experience of success after initial difficulties. The difficulties must not be so great as to cause discouragement, or so small as not to stimulate effort. From birth to death, this is a fundamental principle. It is by what we do ourselves that we learn.
Birth | Cause | Children | Death | Effort | Experience | Force | Life | Life | Mistake | Success | Learn |
Black Elk, formallly Heȟáka Sápa NULL
The first peace, which is the most important, is that which comes within the souls of people when they realize their relationship, their oneness, with the universe and all its powers, and when they realize at the center of the universe dwells the Great Spirit, and that this center is really everywhere, it is within each of us.
Important | Oneness | Peace | People | Relationship | Spirit | Universe |
Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to crush him: a vapour, a drop of water is enough to kill him But even if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than his slayer, because he knows that he is dying and the advantage the universe has over him. the universe knows none of this. Thus all our dignity consists in thought. It is on thought that we must depend for our recovery, not on space and time, which we could never fill. Let us then strive to think well; that is the basic principle of morality.
Dignity | Enough | Kill | Man | Morality | Nature | Need | Space | Thinking | Thought | Time | Universe | Think | Thought |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
There is a constant relation between the state of the universe at any instant and the rate of change in the rate at which any part of the universe is changing at that instant, and this relation is man-one, i.e., such that the rate of change in the rate of change is determinate when the state of the universe I given. If the ‘law of causality’ is to be something actually discoverable in the practice of science, the above proposition has a better right to the name than any ‘law of causality’ to be found in the books of philosophers.
Better | Books | Change | Law | Man | Practice | Right | Science | Universe |
Bertrand Russell, fully Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell
All the labors of the ages, all the devotion, all the inspiration, all the noonday brightness of human genius, are destined to extinction in the vast death of the solar system, and the whole temple of man’s achievement must inevitably be buried beneath the debris of a universe in ruins.
Achievement | Death | Devotion | Genius | Inspiration | Man | System | Universe |
The very scale of the universe – more than a hundred billion galaxies, each containing more than a hundred billion stars – speaks to us of the inconsequentiality of human events in the cosmic context. We see a universe simultaneously very beautiful and very violent. We see a universe that does not exclude a traditional Western or Eastern god, but that does not require one either.
The significance of man is that he is that part of the universe that asks the question, 'What is the significance of man?' He alone can stand apart imaginatively and, regarding himself and the universe in their eternal aspects, pronounce a judgment: The significance of man is that he is insignificant and is aware of it.
Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.
Religion used to provide a generally accepted understanding of our place in the universe…. The way to find out about our place in the universe is by examining the universe and examining ourselves - without preconceptions, with as unbiased a mind as we can muster.
Mind | Religion | Understanding | Universe |
For all our conceits about being the center of the universe, we live in a routine planet of a humdrum star stuck away in an obscure corner ... on an unexceptional galaxy which is one of about 100 billion galaxies. ... That is the fundamental fact of the universe we inhabit, and it is very good for us to understand that.
Good | Universe | Understand |
The essential and unbounded mercy of my Creator is the foundation of my hope, and a broader and surer the universe cannot give me.
Confucius, aka Kong Qiu, Zhongni, K'ung Fu-tzu or Kong Fuzi NULL
Moral force never dwells in solitude; it will always bring neighbors.