This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
They have exiled me now from their society and I am pleased, because humanity does not exile except the one whose noble spirit rebels against despotism and oppression. He who does not prefer exile to slavery is not free by any measure of freedom, truth and duty.
Duty | Freedom | Humanity | Oppression | Slavery | Society | Spirit | Truth | Society |
Love is the invention of a few high cultures… it is cultural artifact. To make love the requirement of a lifelong marriage is exceedingly difficult, and only a few people can achieve it. I don’t believe in setting universal standards that a large portion of people can’t reach.
Love is the invention of a few high cultures, independent, in a sense, of marriage - although society can make it a requisite for marriage, as we periodically attempt to do... But in terms of a personal, highly intense choice, it is a cultural artifact.
Choice | Invention | Love | Marriage | Sense | Society | Society |
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, native form is Csíkszentmihályi Mihály
Harmony is usually achieved by evolutionary changes involving an increase in an organism’s complexity, that is, an increase in both differentiation and integration. (Differentiation refers to the degree to which a system (i.e., an organ such as the brain, or an individual, a family, a corporation, a culture, or humanity as a whole) is composed of parts that differ in structure or function from one another. Integration refers to the extent to which the parts communicate and enhance one another’s goals. A system that is more differentiated and integrated than another is said to be more complex.)
Culture | Family | Goals | Harmony | Humanity | Individual | Integration | System |
The ingratitude of the world can never deprive us of the conscious happiness of having acted with humanity ourselves.
Humanity | Ingratitude | World | Happiness |
Oscar Wilde, pen name for Fingal O'Flahertie Wills
A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth even glancing at, for it leaves out the one country at which Humanity is always landing. And when Humanity lands there, it looks out, and seeing a better country, sets sail. Progress is the realization of Utopias.
Better | Humanity | Looks | Progress | Utopia | World | Worth |
We cannot leave behind us the sins of our past. We must not forget that nothing disappears. Everything is eternal. Everything that has been is still in existence. The whole history of humanity is the “history of crime”... Man must go back, seek for, and destroy the causes of evil however far back they lie. It is only in this idea that the hint of the possibilities of a general evolution can be found. It is only in this idea that the possibility of changing the karma of humanity lies, because changing the karma means changing the past... There will be no possibility of thinking of evolution of humanity, if the possibility did not exist for individually evolving man to go into the past and struggle against the causes of the present evil which lie there.
Crime | Destroy | Eternal | Evil | Evolution | Existence | History | Humanity | Man | Means | Nothing | Past | Present | Struggle | Thinking | Will |
Pope John Paul II, born Karol Józef Wojtyła, aka Saint John Paul the Great NULL
When freedom does not have a purpose, when it does not wish to know anything about the rule of law engraved in the hearts of men and women, when it does not listen to the voice of conscience, it turns against humanity and society.
Conscience | Freedom | Humanity | Law | Men | Purpose | Purpose | Rule | Society |
Ram Dass, aka Baba Ram Dass, born Richard Alpert
At the beginning of the spiritual journey, many of us pushed away our humanity in an attempt to embrace our divinity... we've been learning to accept rather than reject our human qualities, creating a new partnership between the mundane and transcendent parts of ourselves.
Beginning | Divinity | Humanity | Journey | Learning | Qualities |
Benjamin Collins Brodie, fully Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, 1st Baronet
It is attention, more than any difference between minds and men.—In this is the source of poetic genius, and of the genius of discovery in science.—It was this that led Newton to the invention of fluxions, and the discovery of gravitation, and Harvey to find out the circulation of the blood, and Davy to those views which laid the foundation of modern chemistry.
Discovery | Genius | Good | Invention | Nothing | Usefulness | World | Discovery |
Benjamin Collins Brodie, fully Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, 1st Baronet
Our minds are so constructed that we can keep the attention fixed on a particular object until we have, as it were, looked all around it; and the mind that possesses this faculty in the highest degree of perfection will take cognizance of relations of which another mind has no perception. It is this, much more than any difference in the abstract power of reasoning, which constitutes the vast difference between the minds of different individuals. This is the history alike of the poetic genius and of the genius of discovery in science. “I keep the subject,” said Sir Isaac Newton, “constantly before me, and wait until the dawnings open by little and little into a full light.” It was thus that after long meditation he was led to the invention of fluxions, and to the anticipation of the modern discovery of the combustibility of the diamond. It was thus that Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood, and that those views were suggested by Davy which laid the foundation of that grand series of experimental researches which terminated in the decomposition of the earths and alkalies.
Abstract | Age | Ambition | Anticipation | Attention | Contentment | Death | Discovery | Disease | Ennui | Failure | Genius | History | Indolence | Intelligence | Invention | Little | Meditation | Men | Mind | Object | Old age | Perfection | Power | Will | Discovery |
Tears are the tribute of humanity to its destiny.
Auguste Comte, formally Isidore Auguste Marie François Xavier Comte
To love Humanity constitutes all healthy morality.
The more we can squeeze out of nature by invention and discoveries and improved organization of labour, the more uncertain our existence seems to be. It's not we who lord it over things, it seems, but thinks which lord it over us.
Existence | Invention | Lord | Nature | Organization |