This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
If, as Heraclitus said, “A man’s character is his fate” – that is, if our fate is largely determined by the habitual tendencies of our repetition compulsion-personality – then the power of consciousness is that it allows us to change impulses, we have what Kierkegaard called “the possibility of possibility”: the possibility of having a free choice and the moral responsibility that comes with it. In that sense, the fear of consciousness is ultimately the fear of moral responsibility, because if we own our anxiety, shame, and guilt, and allow ourselves to have full consciousness of emotions that motivate our behavior, then we will inevitably recognize the full weight of our responsibility for that behavior.
Anxiety | Anxiety | Behavior | Change | Character | Choice | Consciousness | Emotions | Fate | Fear | Free choice | Guilt | Man | Personality | Power | Responsibility | Sense | Shame | Will | Fate |
Faith is people’s evolved and evolving ways of experiencing self, others and world (as they construct them) as related to and affected by the ultimate conditions of existence (as they construct them) and of shaping their lives’ purposes and meaning, trusts and loyalties, in light of the character of being, value and power determining the ultimate conditions of existence (as grasped in their operative images – conscious and unconscious of them).
Character | Existence | Faith | Light | Meaning | People | Power | Self | World | Value |
Character is distilled out of our daily confrontation with temptation, out of our regular response to the call of duty. It is formed as we learn to cherish principles and to submit to self-discipline. Character is the sum total of all the little decisions, the small deeds, the daily reactions to the choices that confront us. Character is not obtained instantly. We have to mold and hammer and forge ourselves into character. It is a distant goal to which there is no shortcut.
Character | Deeds | Discipline | Duty | Little | Principles | Self | Temptation | Learn |
The kingdom of God means that He, the Father, the Brother, the Friend, is near, in the depths of the spirit, in the core of the heart; that loves rules perceptibly in our goings and comings, our dispensing and our receiving; the whole of existence is transfigured by it, and that, while everything is transfigured into this one thing, the essential beauty and character of each blossoms forth.
Beauty | Character | Existence | Father | Friend | God | Heart | Means | Spirit | Beauty | God |
You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him.
Out of our beliefs are born deeds. Out of our deeds we form habits; out of our habits grow our character; and on our character we build our destination.
Julian Huxley, fully Sir Julian Sorell Huxley
The future must have as its basis the consciousness of sanctity in existence – in common things, in the events of human life, in the gradually comprehended interlocking whole revealed to the human desire for knowledge, n the benedictions of beauty and love, in the catharsis, the sacred purging, of the moral drama in which character is pitted against fate and even deepest tragedy may uplift the mind.
Beauty | Character | Consciousness | Desire | Events | Existence | Fate | Future | Knowledge | Life | Life | Love | Mind | Sacred | Tragedy | Fate | Beauty |
William Kilpatrick, fully William Heard Kilpatrick
The core problem facing our schools is a moral one. All the other problems derive from it. Even academic reform depends on putting character first.
A man’s character is determined by how hard he fights for what he believes in.
Thomas Lickona, fully Thomas Edward Lickona
Schools inevitably teach good or bad values in everything they do. Every interaction, whether part of the academic curriculum or the human curriculum of rules, roles, and relationships, has the potential to affect a child’s values and character for good or for ill. The question is not whether to do values education but whether to do it well.
Thomas Lickona, fully Thomas Edward Lickona
Schools cannot be ethical bystanders at a time when our society is in deep moral trouble. Rather, schools must do what they can to contribute to the character of the young and the moral health of the nation.
Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
There is no better indication of a man’s character than the company which he keeps.
Niccolò Machiavelli, formally Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli
A truly great man is ever the same under all circumstances; and if his fortune varies, exalting him at one moment and oppressing him at another, he himself never varies, but always preserves a firm courage, which is so closely interwoven with his character that everyone can readily see that the fickleness of fortune has no power over him.
Character | Circumstances | Courage | Fortune | Man | Power |
Thomas Lickona, fully Thomas Edward Lickona
Character so conceived has three interrelated parts: moral knowing, moral feeling, and moral behavior. Good character consists of knowing the good, desiring the good, and doing the good – habits of the mind, habits of the heart, and habits of action. When we think about the kind of character we want for our children, it’s clear that we want them to be able to judge what is right, care deeply about what is right, and then do what they believe to be right – even in the face of pressure from without and temptation from within.
Action | Behavior | Care | Character | Children | Good | Heart | Knowing | Mind | Right | Temptation | Temptation | Think |
Richard Livingstone, fully Sir RIchard Winn Livingstone
And neither mind nor character can be made without a spiritual element. This is just the element that has grown weak, where it has not perished, in our education, and therefore in our civilization, with disastrous results.
Character | Civilization | Education | Mind |